Sports betting, if done well, can be very profitable. There are many people, including myself currently using Trademate as a side income or a part-time job. This article is for those looking to take on Trademate as an additional income source and want some key tips on how to get started and succeed.

Firstly, you need to set out a strategy and some goals. Be realistic and ambitious, but understand sports betting takes time. Give it time, stick to your strategy and you will succeed and make profits. You need to decide:

1. Your Bankroll size - This is your initial investment, how much you start with is dependent on your risk tolerance. Understand you may not start off on a winning streak so be prepared for variance and focus on the long run.
2. Your Strategy - This could be something as simple as placing 1000 bets per month with an average closing edge of 3%.
3. Financial goals - While in the short term it’s impossible to determine results due to randomness, you may set financial goals over a monthly, six month or yearly period.
4. EV goals - This is arguably more important than financial goals. Due to the variance element of your new part-time job, you won’t know which months will return the money you set out to make. So instead, have a goal of how much EV (expected value) you want to make over the month. Hitting those goals will better equip you to hit your long-term financial goals.

Finally and most importantly you have to make sure these points all match up. By this I mean, if you want to make €1000 a month, you will need more than a €1000 bankroll as it’s unlikely you will double your investment monthly. Your strategy also has to be taken into account, based on how risky your strategy and staking are and how much variance you can expect from it, then adjust your goals accordingly. Once you feel you have your strategy and goals aligned you can begin your job.

To elaborate on aligning your bankroll, strategy and goals it is important to understand some key factors.

Bankroll Size

Firstly it’s crucial to adjust your bankroll size to make your financial goals possible. In this previous article, Alex used Trademate for three months, after starting with a bankroll of $1000. He emphasises the limitations of a small starting bankroll, even with good short-term results there’s only so much to be made when you can only stake a limited amount. I recommend looking at the charts and tables in that article to get a better overview, but generally speaking, if you wanted to make $800-$1000 per month (long term) as a part-time job you’d need closer to a $3000 starting bankroll.

The great thing about this part-time job, is you’re able to reinvest in yourself. By not withdrawing profits or even investing more into your bankroll, you’re able to increase your future earnings.

Strategy and EV goals

Financial goals and ambitions are important to have, but similarly to bankroll sizing you’ll need a sound strategy and EV goals to hit in the short term in order to achieve the long-term success you want. In the same article, Alex goes into detail about his hypothetical profits from EV. While EV and profits won’t be the same, in the short term it’s best to focus on the growth of your EV.

So essentially you’ll need to make EV targets for each month. If you want to make $1000 each month you’ll need $1000 of closing EV and so on. You’ll need a strategy in place to obtain that amount of EV as well. This would entail making presets with a certain ‘X’ amount of minimum edge and placing a minimum of ‘X’ amount of bets each month.

Analysis

This is basically perfecting your strategy in order to better obtain your EV and financial goals. Even if your strategy is effective from the start, there are always ways to improve. You should constantly look back at your results over a decent sample size to judge where you can boost efficiency and obtain more closing EV. Our data tools can also give you a huge advantage and allow you to understand in detail which bets are giving you the most EV and profit.

I recommend keeping up to date with our content about optimising strategies. Everything from your presets, to how long before the event you place your bets matters, and can help you better achieve your goals. There’s always new content both in article format and video on Youtube on how to best optimise your betting.

Key Tips:

Here are some more tips to making your part-time job with Trademate simple and successful:

1. Start with soft retail bookmakers, here you’ll find bigger edges that are easy to place. As your bankroll increases, use more bookmakers and spread your liability across them. More bookmakers should mean more bets and more EV, the more money you can get down, generally the better. It’s best to figure out the maximum number of bookmakers you can personally handle at once without being too slow to catch the bets.
2. Prepare for limitations. You’re going to lose your accounts eventually, you’ll need to sign up to a lot of betting sites, so be prepared. Also if you’re wanting to do this for a long time, eventually you are going to need to use your friends/family accounts. Read this article for reference on how best to do so.
3. Set hours aside for Trademate, whether it has your full attention or you’re doing it alongside something else, it will take time. Further, you’ll want to pick times where you’re likely to have high volumes of bets. Evenings (if in Europe) and weekends are great times. Based on your presets you should also be able to better judge what times, i.e what sports are you betting on and what times do they play? From that, you should be able to gauge the best times for you to get the most bets.
4. Understand that while physically Trademate and sports betting is an easy part-time job, it’s mentally tough. You may hit your EV goals for your first two months in a row but be nowhere near in terms of profit. Some may give up here, but little did they know the third month was where they were going to triple their EV in terms of profit. Stick to your strategy and goals and you’ll achieve what you set out to do. For help on dealing with variance, I recommend this article.