Friday 19 April 2013

Real Life Arbitarge Betting Feedback

What is Arbitrage Betting?

Betting arbitrage, miraclebets, surebets, sports arbitraging is a particular case of arbitrage arising on betting markets due to either bookmakers' different opinions on event outcomes or plain errors. When conditions allow, by placing one bet per each outcome with different betting companies, the bettor can make a profit regardless of the outcome. In the bettors' slang an arbitrage is often referred to as an arb; people who use arbitrage are called arbers. A typical arb is around 2 percent, often less; however 4-5 percent profit is occasionally obtained, and sometimes even 20 percent. Arbitrage betting involves relatively large sums of money (stakes are bigger than in normal betting), due to large sums of money being required to generate a decent profit. It is usually detected quickly by bookmakers. Arbitrage betting is almost always insufficiently profitable due to detection, hackers, unreliable betting websites, limiting of stakes, and the use of high percentage arb's to con arbitrage bettors into giving security details.

I've been using an Arb Alert service for a few months now and I've been greatly impressed. Here is my genuine feedback though:

1) You need to know your websites. I've been laying a lot of bets at Smarkets. Smarkets sometimes makes it hard to see if your bet has went through or not. This has meant that on one occasion I clicked the "confirm bet" twice and lost £60.

2) Don't use the auto bet option in the Arb Alert software. I've found it cumbersome. I prefer to open the bookmakers windows myself.

3) Be aware of stake limits. Some of the online Bookmakers have extremely low limits. Today I was limited to a £20 bet on an English Premier League o/u bet!

Happy Arbing!




Wednesday 17 April 2013

Yyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssss! My First Competition Win of the Year!


Hi there,

 

I’m e-mailing to congratulate you on winning the Music New/Relentless Energy Drink competition to win a free MP3 J

 

You will be receiving your month’s supply of Relentless Energy Drink 250ml (to the address you provided) within the next 14 days.

 

For your free MP3 please e-mail back to this address specifying what single track you would like to receive via e-mail.

 

We would also like to add your e-mail address to our Relentless Energy Drink newsletter database. Can you please specify in your response to us if you would NOT like to be added to this list.

 

We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Best regards,

 

Dan

Tuesday 16 April 2013

A Sneak Peek at My World


I regularly get asked, "What is it that you actually do?" Below is some photos from my office which may help answer that question.
 
Picture 1 - a minor income stream for me is Google Adsense returns on this blog. Writing is easy when you (i) write about what interest you, and (ii) you plan out what you write. As easy way to plan is to stick to some basic templates. On the wall of my office I have half a dozen template plans pinned up.
 
At the moment I have 5 self published books on Amazon which provide me with a small monthly income. Previously I write an Ebook which I sold in good volumes via Ebay. I have a new book in the pipeline but have lost control of its length. Therefore I need to edit it and create more than one book from the remnants. The fashion at the moment seems to be to use the Amazon Kindle Publishing route. Suits me.
 
To the outside eye this blog may seem like a disorganised hotchpotch of half baked ideas but it is actually a repository of content which I will use at some point in the future.
 
 

Picture 2 - back in my teens I played a lot of Rugby and hence did a lot of weights to keep fit. Over time I began to enjoy the Weightlifting more than the Rugby (less arseholes!) When I left University and started working I let the Weightlifting slip and piled on the pounds. Now I'm in my Mid 30s and I'm carrying too much weight. I've got Liver problems and more off the back of this extra weight. In order to tackle it I've been doing lots of walking. In a sort of pseudo-LOA magic attempt I've pinned up a photoshop'd image of my head on a beefcake body!


Outside of my moneymaking activities one of my top hobbies is playing darts. I'm not great at it but I really enjoy it and can see myself getting better. One of my challenges this year is to hit a 180. I managed it in the pic below but I was cheating as I had thrown 9 darts! I believe that any skill can be mastered (a la Tim Ferriss) and I also know that there is good money in Darts tournaments. Once I've hit a 180 my next step will be to win cash. Any prize money at first!


I make a small but regular income by selling second hand books on Amazon. My system is really simple: I buy books in bulk for 10p or less on Ebay and then relist them on Amazon individually. This is marginally profitable. I reckon I made c. £500 last year without putting too much effort in. At the moment I have an inventory of c 2500 books. All of these are housed in my little office. I have 17 Ikea Lerberg units in this room! I've just turned Pro on Amazon and I'm sending off my first batch of FBA titles soon. In the foreground of your pic you can see my desk and laptop. I work from this desk most days on my Retail Analyst work.



My first real job was at Ind Coopes Alloa. I worked there for 4 years between 1997 and 2001. It has completely gone now and an ASDA store stands in it place. I cut this pic from the local paper to remind me of it. This may be weird but I reckon if I adjusted for inflation my wages in 1997 would've been better than I get now! All that cash just for rolling kegs about. No wonder it went out of business.

It was at the Brewery that I learnt that you get paid more the less work you do! Nobody tells you that in school do they?



I must admit that I am a geek. I own my own A-Frame. On the board at the moment I have details of a debt snowball I am rolling up. A Debt Snowball is when you pay off a small debt and then roll your monthly payment straight on to your next debt. I currently run 6 different mortgages due to my property portfolio. I am looking to work up a debt snowball so that I can pay the smallest one off. The online calculators tell me that I do this in 10 years. Imagine that. Once the smallest mortgage is paid off it would only take a very small amount of time to pay off the rest (by selling up and moving the cash across to pay down the next smallest). I would estimate it would take me roughly 13 years to pay off all my mortgages in this fashion. By doing this I would easily be a millionaire by the age of 47. Who wants that though? I want to be a millionaire at 35! I've been wasting my time for too many years LOL.

At the bottom of the board you can see my chart where I keep track on all the rent payments coming in.

Just off pic to the left is my electronic gear including my hidden camera tie. Back in 2009 I did lots of work for a Management Consultancy firm. To the layman this was "Mystery Shopping". I very much enjoyed it - it wasn't like working at all. Since 2009 I've done intermittent projects for the national guys. Moving forward I want to get more work off my own back. I currently have an ad on Gumtree offering my services.



Here is another pic of some of the bookshelves in my wee office. I have all my books sorted by first letter of the title. Having such a library is a fantastic resource as well as being a pretty fluid income stream. Every night I pick a book of the shelf to read in bed. I'm not a nostalgic person though. Every book goes back on the for sale shelf the next morning.



Amazon Cash Updates

Dear uncommonadvice@googlemail.com,

We initiated a transfer to your current account (ending in 771) in the amount of £21.19 on 16/04/2013.



   I'm now set up as an Amazon Pro and have signed up for FBA. I'm expecting big things in 2013!

Monday 15 April 2013

Two Second Updates

I'm back in the swing of things now and looking forward to a productive week. Today:

  • Overtime.
  • Debt Snowball.
  • Arbitrage Betting.
  • Amazon FBA.
  • Betfair.
  • Ebay.
  • Competitions.
  • Property.
  • Darts.
  • Gumtree Ad offering my services as a Mystery Shopper.
  • Sq Ft Garden.

Thanks to Tony Robbins whose Youtube Videos have been giving me lots of inspiration.

Scotland V England Pie Eating Challenge!

   I love this pic!


Later this year I am taking on Mr. Dean Cornish of England in an International Pie Eating Challenge. What Dean doesn't know is that whilst he enjoyed Duck and Caviar at Eton, I was weaned on brick hard Scotch Pies at Lornshill Academy. I had 5 years of Pie, Beans and Chips. Hardcore Training. Rocky punched slabs of meat, I broke the crust of God's own snack. (Except when it wasn't raining when we would usually go to the Chippy instead).

Do you know that when Lornshill was demolished that the theatre, Rector's office and swimming pool lay in rubble but the Pies in the Ochil House kitchen stood proud! NO SURRENDER TO GINSTERS!

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been given by Lord of the Pies! Fair fa yer honest sonsie face!

We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana--we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all.

Dean - be afraid! My training has been vigorous!






Reachout to Alloa Athletic................



Let's see what response I get.

Friday 12 April 2013

Why People Hate Their Jobs - James Altucher



Why People Hate Their Jobs



James Altucher

http://jamesaltucher.quora.com/Why-People-Hate-Their-Jobs?srid=3XR&share=1

20 votes by

Marc Bodnick, Amanda Mills, Anil Chouhan, (more)


I limped out of the meeting and said, "excuse me", and took the elevator down 67 stories, went to Grand Central, limped home, and never went back to work at that job.

I never returned the constant phone calls and emails over the next month.

For all I know my name is still on my office door and my name is still on their website. I've never checked.

I just didn't feel like going back or talking to them ever again.

A few days earlier I had discussed with the managing partner how I would get paid if I brought in a huge deal. He smiled and said, "Trust me, James, I always take care of everyone."

When someone says "trust me" or "I will make you rich" then I know general fuckness will result.

The other thing that happened spooked me. I was walking with a few of my "colleagues" to lunch at some crap sandwich place on Wall Street. Suddenly I was on the ground. I had fallen straight down for no reason. I limped for the next three weeks.

So my body told me to quit also. I try to listen to my body. Else I can't sleep or crap or move properly. In this case, my body didn't even want me to walk.

Whenever things are good I always worry about what could go wrong and make things bad.

And whenever things are bad it always seems like they will never get better. It's not depression. It's how the human brain works after one million years of avoiding predators.

Every day I try to practice reversing that. I do that by listening to the body, the mind, being grateful, being around positive people, sleeping a lot, eating well.

But having a job and being controlled by Masters ruins the practice.

Some new study just came out and said more than 50% of people hate their jobs, for the first time ever.

What? For the first time ever? I doubt that.

Someone on quora asked me: why do people hate their jobs? I answered:

  • Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more. Then you take the magic pill and the tears of dirt wipe away. Come here, pretty baby, and let me hug you.
  • We are often verbally abused on the job and we take it because we think it's normal that people would yell at us.
  • The government gets up to 50% of your paycheck and then 10-20% of that goes to kill people on other parts of the planet, including our own children.
  • We are deluded into thinking our job-friends are our real-friends. With our job friends we talk about pens and cubicles. We stop having real-friends.
  • There's a glass ceiling. It doesn't matter if you are a woman or minority or a white man. The glass ceiling is that you aren't allowed to make more than your Master, even if he's an idiot.
  • From 7am to 7pm you are either going to work, at work, or coming back from work. The times when you can be most creative are garbage-compacted into your cubicle.
  • You eat shit at work. And, even worse, you have to shit next to your co-workers and Masters. Unless, like I have, you make a map of all the secret bathrooms in your local urban blight.
  • When you are paranoid at a job, you are probably correct. THEY are, in fact, talking about you and backstabbing you right now.
  • You realize that all the dollars you spent on degrees to get you a job that will make you happy were completely wasted. You were scammed but you can't let the next generation know how stupid you were so now you become part of perpetuating the scam.
  • A trillion dollar marketing campaign forced you to buy a house you didn't really want and now you will "lose a house" you never really owned if you don't bow down to the Masters every day. The words "The American Dream" were coined by Fannie Mae in a marketing campaign 40 years ago to sell mortgages to slaves.
  • Your spouse is tired of hearing about your job after six months. And you couldn't care less about hers. Ten years later you wake up next to a total stranger. 40 years later you die next to one.
  • Your IRA was not intended to provide for your retirement. It was intended to take money from you every month so you remain chained to your cubicle. Inflation then takes 90% of your IRA.
  • When you were a kid you liked to draw, and read, and run, and laugh, and play, and imagine a magical world. You're never going to do any of that again.

Over time everyone is getting fired and being replaced by younger, cheaper, more temporary, more robotic, versions of you. You see this but are afraid to do anything about it.

You see homeless people and think, "there but for the grace of God go I".

This is not meant to be depressing. There are more opportunities than ever. But you have to prepare the body and mind and spirit to find those opportunities.