Introduction

Fast forward four years to 2006. I now own stakes in two businesses both earning me a substantial income, am constantly investing in and researching extra revenue streams, and have no financial worries whatsoever. The reason?




What is Betfair?

Betfair is a UK-based company, which since launching in 2000, has become the largest betting exchange in the world. It generated £107 million last year with an average of £5 million transactions every day.

It provides person-to-person betting where people can place bets anonymously with each other on a range of markets from the mainstream betting events like football and horse racing to Big Brother.


Why should I use Betfair?

You can back and lay bets. This means that instead of trawling through the racing pages looking for that elusive winner you can profit from finding a horse that you think will lose. This allows users to effectively act as a bookie, and because they set the prices themselves and generally offer slightly higher prices to get their bet matched, backers benefit from the lower overrounds and on average get upto 20% better odds than traditional bookmakers.

You can choose your odds. If you're not happy with the current odds available, you can leave your preferred odds in the system and hope it gets matched.

Greater in-play opportunities. For example, traditional bookmakers often suspend betting usually with about 10 minutes to go in a football match, whereas Betfair offers betting right up to the final whistle. Also, prices change far quicker, as punters enter thousands of bets into the system at any one time. This also presents many trading opportunies (backing and laying to secure or lock-in a profit whatever the outcome, see below for more details) and brings live events to life.

The ability to trade in-running (this is how I and a lot of other people have made their fortunes, see the FTSE section for more details) This allows you to back and lay or vice versa to secure a profit (or limit losses if a bet's going against you). Let's take a simple example of a tennis match taking place at the time of writing between Mauresmo and Dushevina. Mauresmo is available to back at 1.09 and lay at 1.1. (Betfair uses decimal odds which although seem complicated at first is actually a lot easier when you get used to them, eg 1.1=1/10, 1.5=1/2, 2=Evens, 10=9/1, etc). I decide to lay Mauresmo at 1.1 for £100 (win £100 if she loses, lose £10 if she wins) because I think she might start slowly and possibly lose the first set. Let's say that she does indeed lose the first set. I see that Mauresmo can now be backed at 1.8. I do a quick bit of maths and back her for £60 at 1.8 to lock in a profit. If Mauresmo wins, I will win £60 at odds of 1.8 = £48, minus the losing initial lay of £100 @ 1.1 = £10 = £38. If Dushevina goes on to win, I will win the initial bet of £100 that won, minus the losing bet of £60 = £40. Therefore I'm guaranteed either £38 or £40 profit (before Betfair's minimal expenses of between 2% and 5% of any profits you make, note you only pay commission on net winnings from an event, if you lose you don't pay any fees).

Extra choice of events and markets. Betfair have numerous markets in many different areas, including such diverse sports as Bandy and Handball, and events such as American Idol and Big Brother. I know for a fact that there are many people who watch hours and hours of Big Brother in order to give themselves an edge and enable them to make many thousands of pounds profit from this market alone.Winners are welcomed. You don't have to worry about Betfair closing your account if you have a few winners like a traditional bookmaker because Betfair makes commissions from the profits that their users make so they have no reason to.Top-notch security. Betfair uses the very best security and data encryption methods, so any information that is kept is secure.

profits just from the FTSE markets alone. Thanks to these profits I now own stakes in two businesses and therefore no longer have time to trade on Betfair every day. This is why I'm giving away my betting tips and resources for free, as a way of attracting more people to Betfair and to give something back to this amazing company.The key to regular long-term profits is to find a specialist area that you know a bit about (for me this was the FTSE markets), and experiment in order to find a method of trading that is profitable for you. I personally dabbled in various other sports as well, and found methods of winning (see my tips pages) but the FTSE was my main source of income.
Where do I sign-up?

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