Tipsters are everywhere you look these days, covering every sport with many tipsters labelling themselves with things such as both teams to score tipster', 'the acca king' and 'goals tipster'. Social media is awash with tipsters these days and one of the biggest challenges facing bettors online is picking the quality out of the quantity.
For someone to proclaim themselves as a tipster, they should have a strong and proven record of making money for the public, and their focus and priority should be on doing just that. Whilst they will inevitably make money on their own picks, a tipster will most commonly charge a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly sign-up subscription fee, or a one-off cost.
What is a tipster?
A tipster will usually be based on either a public platform or else will have a private mail list where members receive their betting advice (picks) on a daily or weekly basis, on a set day and time. The email will contain things like the bet, a preview, how much to bet and where to find the best odds. There are tipsters for every sport from football to rugby, to US Sports, cricket, tennis and many, many more.
The reason most tipsters charge for their services is because many hours of research can go into just a couple of good bets, and even then there's no guarantee the tipster will win every time. It's a very time consuming business. Whilst the only tangible costs might be internet access and a laptop, the amount of working hours the job takes often leads to many good tipsters being able to making a living from their work.
A common question is "If you're that good, why don't you just bet on your picks and win?"
Well they might be good, and they probably do, but not everyone can go glamorously betting £100, £200, even £500 per bet. Even betting £50 a time, you'd have to finish 15 bets up at evens or better every month just to make the UK national average wage. That's enough to live on (barely) if you win every month- see the problem there?
A tipster provides a service just like many other kinds of business. For example, you could make a coffee at home for very low cost, but you choose to go to a coffee shop because you like the way it's prepared and the quality of the service. It also saves you time and it's an indulgence you might allow yourself to budget for. It's the same logic for buying clothes, going to a restaurant, going to the cinema or- buying a tipster. You do it to receive the best product, service or outcome possible.
A tipster can save you time and can increase your chance of winning.
What makes a good tipster?
It's well documented by now that any one can open a Twitter account, put together a spreadsheet that may just be full of fabricated (not real/never actually tipped) winners and sell themselves as a tipster, but there are ways of seeing past that. So what makes a good tipster, and what are some things you should be looking out for?
The market is teeming with eager bettors up and down the country in search of someone who can help make them those professional profits they've always dreamed of. Well, we're going to tell you that is entirely possible, but there are things you need to be wary of along the way.
Do they communicate tips reliably?
A good tipster will have good communication with their members and send out timely emails or alerts when bets are added. That's a useful indicator that tipsters are thinking about their members, because you can plan ahead to be in a situation where you are able to place the bets at that time. If alerts go out ad hoc then you might miss out on profits. Tipstrr offers automated notifications through email and web push so you'll receive an alert when your tipster adds a tip, and all tips and content goes straight onto your Tipstrr dashboard.
Do they have a verified track record?
If a record isn't verified, you will never know 100% that it is truthful and that the tipster will make you money, unless you spend ages tracking it yourself. That sounds like time wasted and profits missed.
There are some independent tipster review services out there which seem to do a good job, but again, you don't know who is behind such pages and their motivations for promoting certain tipsters. By using a website like Tipstrr you save time verifying results yourself and know that the profits recorded by tipsters are 100% real and verified over time.
Do they discuss things like staking plans or their bankroll?
A bankroll is the starting pot of money you have ready to bet with, and a stake is how much money you place on each bet. This is another thing the Tipstrr platform takes care of. You may not always see a staking plan written out in a profile or blog of a tipster, but each tipster has to share their advised stake every time you place a tip. It saves you time reading but you still know your tipster has taken the time to think carefully about their stake.
Stakes are typically between 1-10 units, and how much one unit is worth is up to you. It can be 10p, it can be £5, it can be £50- your call. If you come across outside tipsters that completely neglect to cover a staking plan, then they haven't thought very carefully about their service and you could make losses by not staking evenly.
Long term strategies
This may sound unusual to a new bettor, but it isn't all about winning. A truly good bettor will win consistently, so how you win does matter. A good tipster will seek to find value when betting, which you can read all about here.
The term tipster is more specific to Europe and in particular the UK where tipping has become a craze that's taken hold of social media. Unfortunately, for every one good tipster out there, there could be 20 who do not quite understand the industry and just want to make some money. The term tipster is now commonly used by the vast majority of people who have involvement with or take an interest in the betting community online. Twitter in particular is a thriving platform where the tipping industry is concerned, and one very good reason why a verified platform like Tipstrr is needed.
Some professionals may avoid using the word and labelling themselves as a tipster, opting for the more professional stance of just giving a straight forward name to their service or claiming to be a betting advisor. Across the pond, Americans are not privy to the wealth of various betting markets that proliferate Europe. Betting is more limited to match result, point spreads and point totals, so the term handicapper is much more common.
Any time you encounter someone calling themselves a tipster, it's important that you conduct your own research to decide if they're the right tipster for you, rather than taking what they say at face value. Make sure to consider a tipster's stats and betting records, and make sure they are verified by an independent third party.
If you're feeling comfortable with terminology, it might be the right time to learn about the different bet types and how to use them to your advantage.