Earning Extra With Sports Betting: Doing it The Smart Way And Feeling The Difference

For many people who are not fans of betting and gambling and consider it bad habits or even sinful, it is not really possible to consider such activities as smart. All they see is losing tickets and poorly judged outcomes of sports events that eventually lead to a person’s struggle, addiction, and debt. However, that is not always the case and for many serious bettors, it never becomes the reality. Just like with everything else in life, a healthy dose of moderation combined with good habits and prior knowledge can lead to fruitful outcomes.

Being smart about choosing the odds and sticking to what you know can more than likely lead you to a steady extra income that you will feel every month, perhaps even weekly. In this article, we tackle the issue of arbitrage betting and bust the myth of whether or not something like that even exists. Read on if you are keen on placing sports bets on platforms like stake.com and want to take your precious hobby to the next level. In short, yes, you can earn from smart betting, but it is not that simple. This is why this guide is here to help you and others like you with sound and proven advice on how to bet and more importantly, how not to do it.

Being Smart is Rather Straightforward

Sure, not everyone in the world is equally smart, and not all of us have the same brain capacity. Similar to height and natural talent, our intellect varies. However, logic is always there to back us up in specific situations and rational thinking is as much of a skill as it is inherent. Therefore, being smart is straightforward if you know what it implies and if you know how to be critical, first to and about yourself and then everything else. All of this is crucial for an activity like sports betting simply because money and therefore one’s livelihood is involved. The potential for bad things to happen is real and the chances for it are high. Approaching it a certain way is key, so how can one be smart about it?

First and foremost, you need to pick a sport or a discipline you care about in some way or are familiar with on a deeper-than-surface level. If you do not make sure it is so, you cannot begin to think about what can go wrong and why certain outcomes happened. Knowing the sport inside and out and being familiar with all of its aspects, teams, transfers, and news allows you to make more niche and nuanced bets and earn more money. Moreover, it protects you from picking seemingly good odds when in reality you suspect they are a trap. For the example here, we are using football since it is the most popular and widespread sport for online betting.

When a punting enthusiast is a fan of the game first and becomes a bettor second, they have an instant advantage over those who simply like to bet. Because how can you pick a side to win and back it up with money if you lack the knowledge and information about the competition and the team? Those who follow football make the best bettors, but those who are fans of wagering do not necessarily make good fans or sports enthusiasts. So in this case, it does not go both ways. One must first do their due diligence and learn a thing or two about the whole sport of football and only then will they be able to have a side income from their gambling sessions.

If you are a fan of a club like Liverpool, Bayern Munich, or Barcelona, chances are you know their history as well as the current state and form of the team. You are familiar with the players, the management, the injuries, and which teams in the competitions where they play are stronger or weaker. Basically, you have a clear picture of the whole thing and you can use it in your betting to make informed decisions and never be disappointed or shocked when you miscalculate the outcome by a big margin. Football is a complicated game where many factors decide the final score. From pitch conditions and weather to how well the referee conducts the match, a lot can go wrong, or right, depending on who you root for and what your bet is about.

Examining the Odds

It may be difficult to leave the passion of being a fan aside when gambling but it is something you simply have to do if you want to earn from betting. There is a time and place for being a supporter, and it is not when you want to make a good wagering ticket. If you know your favorite team or player is struggling, leave the fan side out of it and stick to business. It does not mean that you no longer love them. It actually allows you to use the fact that you know enough about the situation not to make a mistake. Going against your emotions and picking a side to beat your team shows that you understand the game and that earning extra is more important right now than showing love for a team. This is especially true when national teams are playing but the same principle applies.

Take horse racing odds for example, where it clearly states that the horse you usually bet on, or at least the one you deem most worthy of your money has a low chance at a great finish. It seems strange, so you investigate further and do more homework. You then see that the animal and its jockey have struggled in the last few races and that their form is off. So why would you risk a lot of money on betting that they will win? Instead of going with the win bet, you pick a place bet and wager on the horse finishing between the 3rd and 5th place, for example, a specific bet but one that can generate money. The horse is usually good, but not right now, meaning it has better chances of coming in 3rd, 4th, or 5th than 2nd or 1st. Tacticizing and analysis are how you separate yourself from the average bettor and elevate your game.

Smart Betting Habits

It is not all about knowing the sport inside and out and having enough information on your side to make good bets. While it is a huge part of the game of wagering on the outcome of sports, it is simply not enough to be considered smart betting and allow you to feel the financial difference. In order to do that, many other things need to take shape which is where smart habits and proper gambling conduct enter the picture. Not every gambler knows this, be it with classic casino games like poker or roulette or with punters and their sports bets. If you mean to earn extra with your wagers and do it the smart way, all of the following needs to be part of your routine without any compromise.

It is all about how you approach the activity to begin with. The hobby where you risk your money day in and day out can never be something you are sure of, but you can mitigate a lot of the risks along the way. For example, the first thing you have to do is promise yourself that you will know when it is enough and how much gambling is too much. Obviously, the reason behind this is the fact that a lot of bettors eventually develop an unhealthy relationship or even an obsession with gambling and cannot help but spend most or all of their money on it. As you can guess, it is not the smartest way to bet on sports. Instead, what you should do is set limitations in terms of time spent on betting as well as how much money you are able or willing to spend on it.

This is very individual and subjective and depends on other factors in your life. Some people can set aside a few dollars per day while others are fine with $20 or even 50$. You can also do it weekly if you cannot always play on the same day and establish a routine. Whatever it is, you need to be able to afford to lose it all and not really feel it. If you can live with the bet not going through and losing your wager, things will always turn out fine. The problems start to appear when you cannot afford to spend money on bets because you need it for more important things in life. Be it rent, bills, groceries, or other hobbies and activities, you should never take from this budget to feed your betting passion. This is the surest way to get addicted and in debt, a dangerous combination that has ruined so many people who lacked discipline when gambling.

Bankroll Management is your Friend

Closely connected with developing a good bond with an activity like gambling is the bankroll management, i.e. how much you spend and on what. You can also think of it as literally managing the money and tracking how much you wager, how much you win, and how much you lose. Keeping a ledger on the side and calculating your earnings and losses is the only way to remain smart about it and track your progress. How else can you know whether or not it is a financially viable activity in your life or just another useless hobby you dump your hard-earned money on? If you want to make it more than a pastime activity, you need to be your own money manager or accountant.

Let us illustrate this with an example through the good old football betting. Say you start it all with a wager of $10 and the total odds, which are the multiplied total of all the games combined, come to 6.8. If the ticket passes, you walk away with $68. So what do you need to write down and keep track of? Well, everything, but here is how. The $10 is the wager or the money you risk. The $68 is the total win, but you only earned $58 when you remove the wager. This means the money you are richer by is $58 and not $68. It is a good idea to keep track of all of these so you can know the real state of your money management at the end of the month. You should know how much you bet, how much you cleared, and how much you lost.

Speaking of losing, what should you do that is smart when you lose a bet? Again, if the same ticket from the above example does not come your way, it means you lost the original $10 wager. Simply write it down as a loss and that is it. Where things become increasingly important is when the money limit for that day or session comes in. If you told yourself that you can only spend $20 that day, this bet means that you only have another $10 to spend. Pay close attention now: if that other $10 results in a win, you can continue betting. However, the moment you lose another $10, you have lost the original limit of $20 for the day. This is when you walk away. It does not matter if the $20 you lost turned into $100, or even $1000. You walk away and stay true to your promise.

Doing this is how you will never risk spending more than you can afford while also keeping track of your money, the one you won and the one you lost. It is the best, safest, most logical, and proven way of earning extra with sports betting while being smart about it. Eventually, you will feel the money coming as you will notice more of it at the end of the month. What you do with it is up to you, but you will not owe it to anyone and it will have come from making informed choices and using analytics while showcasing a healthy relationship with online sports betting. Good luck and know we believe in you!