Steve's Serious Bet blog
As the founder, co-developer and one of several content writers for Serious Bet I thought it would be interesting to keep some notes of the site's development and my personal betting experiences - if only for me to look back on in years to come! If anyone out there ever find's the time (or inclination) to follow what I have to say then please feel free to contact me using the contact us link and I'll do my best to include what you have to say.
Steve Carter
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Steve's Blog
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sbmaster Master Account Wed, 18 Oct 2006 2:09 am Ref: 6 |
I'll start with some background. I'm 38 years old, married with two lovely young children and I've spent most of my working life being moderately successful in the financial services sector - doing things like product development, research, client management and marketing for a fund management company. In June I resigned from my job to concentrate on this website and to spend more time with my family and with my betting. I left with the firm belief that if I had the time to spend on betting, I should be able to make a reasonable living from it - with the website providing a useful side income and an interesting hobby. As I write it is 2 in the morning and I have much to do tomorrow, including beers in the evening with old friends from fund management. I've been reasonably disciplined in keeping to a work schedule, even getting out of the house and doing the odd bit of excercise. I usually try to break off around 6pm and spend a bit of time with the kids then the evening with my wife. But some nights I find myself back at the screen. The main problem I am realising is that developing and running a website - and running my betting and trading book - takes up far more time than I ever imagined. The important thing is that I am enjoying it. |
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sbmaster Master Account Thu, 26 Oct 2006 2:09 pm Ref: 10 |
Lots of new content and tools have been added over the last week or two and many minor technical matters have been resolved. I have a holiday coming up next week and I'm inclined to submit the site, as far as it has got, to Google and the other main search engines. I realise there are some important pages still and features to be added but I'll just hide them from the menus for the time being and finish them on my return. At least that way I'm getting something into the system and it'll be a few months minimum before anything shows up in the search engines. |
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sbmaster Master Account Thu, 26 Oct 2006 2:34 pm Ref: 11 |
I'm pleased to report the successful transition of the site over to a new hosting company, Dataflame. We were previously with one of the big, low-cost US hosts, which was intentional during the early development, though we always intended to move to a decent UK host once we were up and running - partly because of the speed improvement and partly because UK users, if submitting personal information, will probably be happier with their data being held in the UK. To be honest it doesn't hurt that this link with the US has be severed given the recent (and somewhat protectionist) anti-internet-gambling legislation in the US - even though Serious Bet only provides an information based service rather than taking bets. Dataflame have been absolutely exceptional and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend their shared hosting. Just note how fast these pages load now! I think I might set up an affiliate account with them. |
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sbmaster Master Account Wed, 6 Dec 2006 12:21 am Ref: 14 |
Spoke to Johnny Boy earlier this evening, he mentioned he'd been looking over the site and that he'd even taken the time to read my blog. This prompted me (a) to check what I had actually written and (b) to put in this update. Since I last wrote I've been focusing my efforts on my other main betting related activity - that is figuring out whether it is possible to automate trading on Betfair. Whilst I have managed, with some consistency, to make a small amount of money manually, this has its problems - namely "I can make a small amount of money" and it is very time intensive. I figured that to make more money I need to be able to apply a trading strategy to many markets simultaneously. I then realised the main problem, aside from the programming challenges, was that I couldn't really articulate my strategy as well as I thought I could! So that's a process I'm now going through and I hope to report some positive news on that front in the next week or two. On the website front the news is positive given how new it all is. We've decided that the new year will be the right time for a 'serious' PR/marketing push. Right now I'm off to ebay to join some bidding. If I win I'll let you know what it was, otherwise I won't bore you.... |
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sbmaster Master Account Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:38 am Ref: 15 |
I know the suspense has been killing you - no I didn't win my eBay auction! It was for a Canon Pixma ip1500 printer for my dad. The problem with most printers on the market today is that they force you to use the extortionately priced manufacturers ink cartridges. But up until about a year ago, Canon were still making printers that accepted compatible ink at about 1/10th of the cost. So its worth picking up an older model Canon if you can find one in good condition. |
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sbmaster Master Account Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:48 am Ref: 16 |
So where have I been for the last few months? Sadly, the need to start earning some real money again has meant I have taken a contact with an investment firm in London, to do with the marketing of 'alternatives' such as hedge funds and private equity. Its actually quite interesting and my wife is certainly happier to see the bank account being replenished. I have every intention of continuing the betfair trading project in my spare time, which is a slow process, and if/when my contract here finishes. I know it can make it worthwhile if I automate many aspects of the trading process - otherwise I'm restricted by time as to the amount I can make. I intend to add some new features to this site too - probably during next month. |
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sbmaster Master Account Wed, 21 Mar 2007 8:36 pm Ref: 17 |
Decided today to set up a private area on the site for friends and I to use to discuss betting ideas and forthcoming poker nights. This should avoid the heavy abuse of our various company email systems from time to time - Cheltenham week being the notable recent example. Might make it 'unbranded' so that passers by in the office don't see anything suspicious! |
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