Whether you’re one year into the game or over a decade in, what are some of the tips and tricks you’ve picked up along the way that have helped you become a more profitable bettor?
Seen a couple posts on here lately from people looking for tips on gambling, bank roll management, etc. Figured I’d add in some things I’ve learned that have helped me this season.
1). Figure out your unit size and stick to it religiously, win or lose.
I would say this is the first and most important step you should take before placing a bet. A good rule of thumb is to make your unit size around 5% of your bankroll. So if your bankroll is $1,000, then your one unit should be $50.
And when making bets, try to be consistent with the unit size you’re betting. Personally, I never go over 2U on one single bet. Far too often I’ve seen someone bet $100/bet and go on a four-bet win streak, then on that fifth bet they decide to risk it all and lose. Now, instead of being 4-1 (+$300ish), you’re now 4-1 (-$100).
2). Start tracking your bets.
We’ve all had that moment trying to navigate to the “graded bets” section of our Sportsbook to look back at past bets, only to find an unorganized rambling of words.
Instead, try keeping track of your bets in an organized manner. There are several apps out there that help with tracking bets (i.e. Action Network, BetQL, etc.) but an Excel spreadsheet works just as good. This is how I set up mine.
This helps for several reasons. For one, it helps me ensure I’m keeping my units bet consistent. But it also helps me keep track of how much I’ve won (or lost). For instance, when I first started out, seeing that I was minus-$1000 helped bring me to the moment where I had to tell myself that either I need to stop gambling or I need to seriously reconsider my approach.
3). Don’t be a full-on parlay whore or a teaser slut.
It’s easy to get sucked into the lure of the parlays and teasers. As a former whore/slut to these sucker bets, I know.
Sure, winning $2,000 off of a $100 parlay sounds a lot better than winning $90 off a $100 straight bet. However, the probability of hitting one compared to the other is a heck of lot lower as well.
But if playing parlays and teasers is an itch you just need to scratch, consider playing them in smaller units. I personally play one parlay a week, but I keep it at 0.25u and I limit it to three teams max and when I play teasers, I only do two-teamers (-110 or -120 depending on your book).
4). Never make emotional or angry bets. Ever.
In simpler terms: Don’t chase losses.
In betting, you’ll have winning nights and you’ll have losing nights. But the main difference between profitable bettors and losing bettors? One knows how to take a losing night on the chin and live to fight another day while the other foolishly adds on to the losses.
Sure, you might get lucky and hit a desperation bet to recoup some of the losses. But at that point, you’re making bets purely off of emotion—or under the influence of alcohol—instead of off research. More often than not, you’re not going to like the result that comes with that style of betting.
5). Don’t pay for picks.
You’re already giving the house juice, why add more by paying someone else daily or monthly for their picks?
Instead, look into purchasing resources that are not only far more cheaper but also can help you make better-informed picks (i.e. Pro Football Focus, Action Network, Sportsline, etc.) Once you start to educate yourself on line movements, knowing which side the smart money is coming in and which sides are getting steamed, you’ll start to make educated bets on your own.
6). Learn from your mistakes and successes.
At the end of the week, I always like to take a look back at what worked and what didn’t.
If a bet lost, I try and look back and see what I read wrong. For instance, I was on the Saints spread in their MNF game against the Raiders. All the experts, all the smart money was on the Raiders. Even the line movement on the day of was going the Raiders way (from -5.5 down to -4). In hindsight, with the smart money and my gut being on opposite sides, this should have been a “no play” for me. As a result, moving forward I usually highlight 3 or 4 games I like around Tuesday and keep track of the lines posted on my books, the bet% and money% and anything else. Then when game day approaches, if everything aligns, I place the bet. If not, I hold.
As they say, sometimes the best bet you make is the one you don’t place.

That’s really all that jumps out to me. Anyone else have other things they’ve learned along the way?

Not sure if we have some UFC fans here, but hopefully we do, we have a sick card waiting, hopefully it overcompensates for the disappointment that Crotone Spezia was today.
I have some predictions set up being done, so while I wait I will be doing predictions on reddit for the next 2 ufcs. Hopefully we can make some money this Christmas. Lets get down to the details.
Prelims
Chase Hooper vs Peter Barrett
This is the classic Prelim fight with not much to it. Hooper is a big kid, has a frame advantage over most of his opponents and despite his awful striking, he has a chin that can take some shots. Barrett simply said is just not very good. This fight is simple, will Hooper be able to take Barrett down and control/submit him. The answer is most likely yes, I do not think Barrett has the movement to be able to avoid clinching, whether Hooper can take him down or wrap him up from there is a different question. Once he does however, it's most likely a wrap. The x factor here is that Barrett has a significant experience / manhood advantage, possible strength advantage too. I wouldn't trust my money on either but if you are looking for value consider the +300 Barrett line, if you are feeling adventurous the KO line is +1000 but as I said, Hooper is tough. I wouldn't feel too good betting on Hooper via SUB due to the too many unknowns here, and the fact that Barrett is actually going to a good camp, whereas Hooper keeps focusing on BJJ focused camps.
Sergei Spivak vs Jared Vanderaa
Another relatively straight forward fight, Spivak looks to be the more well rounded fighter, with better striking and maybe better ground game, but his odds are just too slim and Vanderaa can just take him down and ground and pound him to oblivion, like Tybura could have done. Can end in several different ways, I would favour Spivak by Decision but also possible Vanderaa with Sub/TKO
Gavin Tucker vs Billy Quarantillo
Fight of the night candidate if Tony injures himself bungee jumping. You have probably seen everyone riding high on Billy and picking him which isn't surprising. I was able to take him on -110 since I felt like those were some good odds at the beginning of the week but that line quickly changed and now he is a serious favourite. The Carlyle fight was pretty damn close, it showed that Billy might have problems with really good grapplers who had the strength advantage, as long as their cardio was better than Carlyle's, those were my notes after this fight. Gavin surprisingly well fits that criteria. Billy leaves his chin open, and although Tucker throws mostly single shots he might catch him coming in, Billy has no ability to counter Tucker's wild rushes that he does when he throws combos so his only chance is pressuring Gavin with strikes. I am really going against everyone in this but as of now, if you are looking for value +300 on Tucker by Dec might be it. Of course, no one would be surprised to see Billy beating him purely by higher striking output, pressure, and better cardio. Wouldn't be surprised if we see this fight ending with a finish on either side, the props for which are insane - +800ish for Billy/Gavin by Sub, depending on your betting strategy those might be interesting to take a look at as well.My prediction for this is Billy by Dec, but the value is on Tucker by Dec, the fight *can* definitely be closer than people are making it out to be.
Renato Moicano vs Rafael Fiziev
Sadly the odds reflect this fight a bit too well. And no, Moicano picking Fiziev apart since he's "better everywhere" isn't one of those, unless something wild has happened in preparation to Fiziev he will be trickier more seasoned striker and he will be winning the exchanging and getting a decision win or a KO/TKO. The problem is Moicano's ground game, and although I do not believe he will be able to simply outwrestle Fiziev, that is usually a flawed way to approach this. There are many ways with which you can take somebody down without being the better wrestlers - opportunistic takedowns, trips, pulling guard, sweeps etc. Depending on how big the gap on the ground is between them, we don't know how good is Fiziev's submission defense, all it takes is Moicano doing just one of those to get Fiziev out of there quickly with a sub. However, that's always possible for any grappler vs striker fight, and here that is a chance we have to take, since I do believe Moicano wont be able to "Khabib" Fiziev to the ground. For the things I mentioned, as long as we are willing to take the risk my prediction is Fiziev by DEC or KO/TKO. If you are going for the latter, I would consider the 2nd round, that is most likely when Fiziev will start letting his hands go after being cautious during the first one, from the takedown threat. He probably won't be able to have the energy to finish Moicano in the 3rd but that is too dependent on how the fight plays out. You can't find certainty here in which outcome since it purely depends on Fiziev's mindset, and we don't have that information.
Cub Swanson vs Daniel Pineda
Love this fight but not ideal for betting. The Father Time factor here plays a huge role, has that caught up with Cub. He did lose many times in a row, but to the upper echelon of the division. No shame in those losses. There's something to worry about how Gracie was landing shots on him though. Once again, how age affects a fighter is out of our control and this is a risk we need to take. As betters we always juggle with risk, but we look for consistency, if we had that our life would be much easier, so we try to avoid fights that lack this. This might be one of those fights. Cub is coming from a horrendous injury that might be career ending for 20 year olds, let alone 37. That paired with Father Time, too much damage taken, and a long layoff is a recipe for disaster, especially against an aggressive game opponent. Swanson did also say that at first his sparring was awful but then it got better, the first part of this sentence worries me, seems to me like the cues that fighters give that they are not the same anymore. I see this fight going one in two ways, and those will be the predictions for this fight, either we get close to our usual Cub, and he wins a decision - +300 odds good value, or we don't. If we don't my money is on Pineda finishing Cub. That can be due to his leg kicks, his pressure or just Cub realizing he isn't the same and quitting. In this case, Pineda finished him, there's some value to be found on +250 Pineda to finish Cub in round 1 or 2.
Main Card
Junior dos Santos vs Ciryl Gane
Let's get this over with, Ciryl Gane is gonna win this fight. Yes there's the argument that Gane might get cold feet facing a legend or just HW power + luck and JDS good boxing tagging him but then again, no. My assumption is that Gane will be very careful, since that is the time he should become a big name in the HW division. He wouldn't just rush and demolish JDS, which is also not his style against lesser opponents let alone a legend. He will be taking his time probably and JDS managed to survive until the second round while looking like his old self almost vs the more dangerous Jarzinho. Gane wouldn't want to screw this up either by not being careful. Those things considered my prediction is very bold, pays off greatly - Gane by Decision +300. You might also consider Gane by KO Round 3 +1000. Of course, there are other things that can happen, it's Heavyweight after all but considering the things I listed above those are not only very likely outcomes, but also giving us extremely high odds
Kevin Holland vs Ronaldo Souza
I was astonished when I saw Jacare was the underdog here, I took him by Submission at +270, but since then that price dropped significantly to +200 and he is now the favourite, I guess people were able to see the risks clear headed. Souza is a tough mf, he fought the best of the best, including the current LHW champ to a split decision, this very well might be one of the biggest competition jumps we have seen recently for a guy like Holland, which to top all that, like it isnt bad enough, has extremely bad fight IQ. That by itself seems like a recipe for disaster, thus me finding a value on Jacare by Submission.Weirdly enough, the thing here that tells me there might be opportunities to bet on Holland is his bad fight IQ, he took lots of chances against opponents like Brendan Allen, spends lots of times on his back in many fights, losing rounds. However, now I believe he will no longer try to prove himself against opponents he has no idea how good they might be, he knows exactly how good Jacare is, so maybe that will try to make him avoid the takedown. Will and Skill aren't the same though, and Holland's TD defense last time we saw it was atrocious, so I stick by my prediction, although for the current odds it might be too risky, Jacare can always lay GnP his way to a decision win. For the brave ones, +500 on Holland by KO seems quite good, assuming Jacare might start to tire out late and him rocking 8 inches reach advantage + cleaner striking. The decision for Holland although possible is very slim and too dangerous. All in all, Jacare was the better pick, currently you need to decide that for yourself, my prediction remains the same - Jacare for the win.
Mackenzie Dern vs Virna Jandiroba
I don't like this fight. I can just tell you that it's Virna by Decision, and you might see the value in that. With fighters like these that have too many holes to exploit and too many unknowns, volatile results can happen, I dont like putting my money in such positions so take it or do the smart thing and avoid it.
Tony Ferguson vs Charles Oliveira
Here we are boys, Tony is back. Straight to the chase, things to consider for Tony. His style is widely based on his supreme confidence in his striking, will he have that now? Won't repeat the same thing again, but how did the last loss affect him, he looked like a beaten dog the last time Gaethje hit him, did that take away El Cucuy, I fucking hope not, but do we know for certain. Fighting is a very mentality oriented game. And as you know for the past year, Tony has been on a ride in that aspect that we will rarely see for any other fighter on the roster. We just have no idea how that affected him. Skillwise, Oliveira has broken under pressure before, and that is the one thing Tony brings - intensity, will, pressure and output, he just breaks people. But if you hear a million people repeating that for years, and you were Oliveira, maybe just maybe, after being told that same thing is your weakness also, you would do very well to prepare for that and mimic it in training. Did he have the time to do so, my assumption is that he has a decent plan. Oliveira's downfall has usually been his confidence in his BJJ and being too careless with it. I think now he will try to use reactive takedowns to get Tony to the mat, take his back in the meanwhile. I don't see that consistently working but it might do so just once, winning him 1 round out of 3, which is halfway to a win. It's also possible that he outstrikes Tony, since Charles has some serious striking technique now and paired that with a good game plan it might just work. Issue is that he does not have the same counter striking Gaethje does, so he most likely will fail at that.This fight is dependent on game plan and Tony's mentality and ability to be his old self through damage. We can have a quick domination on either side, but I won't count on that. I listed Charles' ways to win, but maybe I am a bit biased here picking Ferguson by Decision at the godlike price of +330. Consider a late TKO for Tony as well, but me personally would avoid that when it's an old dog versus a hungry new comer.
Deiveson Figueiredo vs Brandon Moreno
Main event between those two warriors, stepping up to save the card. Brandon offers extremely improved boxing, but tendency to leave his chin open in exchanges, you know how that ends here. His ground game is unbelievable and he might be matching Fig on that front. I believe Moreno's gameplan should be keeping his distance during the first round, playing on the counters, while avoiding big shots with lateral movement. Slowly start mixing up striking with takedowns in the later rounds hoping to not have to face early on power and be able to come on top during in rounds 3,4,5. Easier said than done. Deiveson is just a total beast, however he might have problems with Moreno's game plan in the beginning, and they will have to start trading eventually and we know how that ends. Either Moreno shoots for bad takedowns, gets caught and submitted or he gets clipped and put down. I trust Moreno here, to use a good strategy paired with decent defense, lateral movement and solid chin (he has never been finished in his career) to get out of the first round. With all that said, my prediction is Figueiredo by Submission/KO. His pressure is too great and Moreno will have to start engaging him eventually or taking him down which most likely won't end well. I would be extremely cautious on simply betting Fig by flat finish at a price this low since Moreno's toughness might lead to an upset, with this fight getting to a decision, unlikely but not justified for a price that low. As you have seen there's no much value on that bet, so I advice you to pick Figueiredo by Submission at +450 or Figueiredo KO/TKO Round 2 or Round 3 +400.
Besides the one off picks I mentioned above, I know most of you love playing on Parlays, although you know that isn't profitable, it's not always about profit, but just enjoying the fights. Just don't bet too much on those, but here are some to include:
​
Pick 3:
TuckeQuarantillo Dec
Gane Dec
Fiziev KO/Dec
Souza
Ferugson Dec
​
A wilder one, Pick 2:
Quarantillo Round 3 finish - +3000
Figueiredo Round 3 KO/TKO - +1200
Fiziev Round 2 KO/TKO - +1000
Gane Round 3 KO/TKO - +1000
^ You shouldn't treat those seriously, they are just for fun round based finishes you might come up with based on the things discussed here. For serious predictions, see only the individual fight discussions.
Apologies for typos,
Happy Betting!

For instance I’ve had tons of success betting nfl and some success in mlb. However even though basketball is my favorite sport I don’t ever have success betting it. It is infuriating, especially because I believe my process and bets are good. So are there any successful NBA betters who could explain their process? I am going to try to explain how I go about choosing bets and my process in finding good nfl bets. Maybe we can all help each other. It might be a bit lengthy to explain so bear with me.
For NFL, I believe you can gain a lot of insight by watching the games and that is the number one requisite for making good game picks. I also think you should write down your picks/ideas for next week right after the previous week. That way all that you watched is fresh in your mind and you aren’t swayed by what you hear during the week. I believe there is a lot of value in statistics but that they are more beneficial to player props, team scores, and those types of bets rather than game spreads. I also put a lot of value in the game flow for each team in accordance with the game total. By game flow I mean when a team gets up big they usually start to run the ball a lot more and teams that are down start to pass. Also in a high scoring game with lots of possesions players can accumulate a lot more stats. This is by no means infallible but I have found to be very helpful The best way to explain this process might be in an example analysis for a game.
Prior to last nights game I knew from watching both teams that buffalo has an elite offense and an elite defense that has gotten much better but can be susceptible to the run. I knew the patriot’s defense was bad especially their run defense. I also knew the patriots offense was inept especially when passing. So from an eye test I knew bills were the bet and I used an alternate spread of -6.5 to avoid the key number 7. It didn’t matter but this is something I usually do. I also bet bills ML as one leg of a two leg alternate spread/teaser parlay. I wasn’t sure about the overall total however I did bet under patriots team total and under 2.5 total TDs. I did this because of eye test and game flow I talked about earlier. I suspected bills would be up and patriots would need to pass in the second half to score which they would be unable to do. This was a great scenario to bet because the bills pass defense is their strength and patriots pass offense is their weakness. There can be a lot less variation in strength against weakness.
So keeping in mind that the eye test of pats run defense is bad, they are 27th in opponents rushing yards, and bills should be playing ahead I bet over on singletarys rushing yards and over moss’s rush yards. Figuring at least one would hit covering my money and probably both. I shopped around on 3 books to make sure I got the best lines for each which mattered because singletarys varied and only went over by 1.5 yards which it would have been under on the other. I also bet under cam newton longest pass 30.5 yards and under Cam newton fantasy points because of pats bad pass offense and bills good pass defense. I did this based on the eye test, the fact that buffalos pass defense is ranked 8th and patriots pass offense is near the bottom. Again weakness against strength with game flow helping. I was thinking about over michels rush yards cause bills run defense isn’t good and rush offense is pats strength but due to the game flow I decided not. He did end up hitting but most of his yards came in the first quarter. Now this is a game where I was right about most aspects, however there are days where I am completely wrong about it all and lose every bet but today it worked out. All games aren’t clear like this in terms of strength verse weakness, this was just a great example game.
To summarize, for NFL You want to watch games, eye test can provide a lot of insight. Also check box scores after, see who got what stats then think about why. Know the strengths and weakness of the team you are betting on based on their statistics. I used to use DVOA but now it costs money to see so I use per game stats. Also think about the game flow and how that might work in your favor or against you. I would also suggest being disciplined in games you pick. Find a few games a week you really like a team or some weeks don’t even bet at all. Or find a player prop you like and don’t bet the total. I believe player props and fantasy pt totals are much easier to bet because they get less action making their lines less sharp. I believe nfl lines are usually very accurate so often bet 2 leg teasers. I never bet big parlays. I also find certain trends over time, such as a good defensive team with average offense against a good offensive team with bad defense where the spread is negligible youll want to take the good defensive team. Examples include colts verse Houston first matchup and dolphins verse raiders this past week. This all comes from experience which you need. Whenever you are making a bet, you should also be able to explain to a sports beginner why it is a smart bet. Also don’t bet big after a good day/week, you should bet small or even take a break after having a good day. Confidence isn’t your friend, just as being on tilt or emotional is your worst enemy. I also suggest switching up bets after you are successful, if you pick 5 nfl games right habit will tell you that you can pick more game winners. Chances are you won’t and should find other bets whether its totals or props. This is my view point at least, I get caught up making the same type of bet even though it’s not great because I have had prior success with it. If anyone has any questions about how to bet nfl I can try to answer.
As for my nba struggles. On Sunday warriors played bulls, two teams top 5 in pace. I was going to bet the over cause of this but didn’t trust two bad teams. A bet that looked great was over 6.5 curry assists. He had 10 assits in his first game in 30 mins where his team only scored 99 pts in a blowout. In his second game he had 6 assists in 29 minutes where his team only scored 99 in a blowout. So in a high scoring game that should be close curry should get 35 minutes and contribute at least 7 of his teams average 20+ assists. I did think about going with over curry points but went with his assists. He ended up with 36 pts and 6 assists. I believe I had great value here. Another bet was over harell 16.5 pts in the lakers verse timberwolves game. Anthony davis out so I figured more scoring opportunities for Harrell in a game where lakers should get 115-120+. Again I thought of betting over lakers total but didn’t. He ended up with 12 pts in 20 minutes because lakers blew them out so badly that everyone scored and he didn’t get his usual minutes. I think these bets were both great value but both didn’t happen. It seems like there is so much variance in the nba. In nfl there is one or two reasons why a bet wouldn’t hit. In nba everything can go exactly as you thought and it still doesn’t hit. So is nba just difficult to bet cause anything can happen? Does anyone have any good tips or a good process on how to bet?

Summary
As speculators circle around Palantir from both the long and short sides, trading volatility has obscured the fundamental picture as to whether the company commands a sustainable competitive advantage.
​
In this article, I intend to have an under-the-hood look at Palantir as a 'digital resources' play to answer that all-important question.
​
I believe its Gotham, bundled with forward-deployed field service representatives, has surmounted the barriers to entry and now enjoys switching cost advantage and emerging network effect.
​
As it diversifies into adjacent commercial verticals through Foundry, Palantir will benefit from economies of scope and scale. Profits will ensue.
​
Shareholders are betting on Palantir's success in completing the digging of a wide moat. The less anticipatory investors may want to wait until such a moat becomes reality.
​
Looking for a portfolio of ideas like this one? Members of The Natural Resources Hub get exclusive access to our model portfolio. Get started today »
​
Palantir Technologies: Does It Have A Sustainable Competitive Advantage?
​
There are probably as many investors who are averse to Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR), a recent public listing, as those who root for it. The stock has gone parabolic since the start of November 2020. Then, short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research entered the scene with his tweet. All of the trading volatility has obscured one important fundamental question: does Palantir have a sustainable competitive advantage?
​
Below, I attempt to answer that question with an in-depth look at this interesting company.
​
What does Palantir do?
As of 2020, Palantir's mission is to help its users, the people doing the hard work on complex, real-world problems by writing software that enables effective analysis against complicated, data-driven problems.
​
Palantir offers two principal data fusion platforms for integrating, managing, and securing any kind of data at a massive scale, i.e., Gotham for government agencies and Foundry for the commercial market. With forwarded-deployed Field Service Representatives, Palantir transforms massive amounts of disparate information into an integrated data asset that reflects their operations, and layer applications on top of the Gotham or Foundry platform to make the integrated data asset accessible and actionable and for fully interactive, human-driven, machine-assisted analysis (Fig. 1).
​
Palantir product offering as of 2020. Source: Laurentian Research based on Palantir description.
Fig. 1. Palantir product offering as of 2020. Source: Laurentian Research based on Palantir description.
​
On the backend, Palantir runs a system called Apollo as a continuous, automated means to deliver updates to the Foundry and Gotham platforms everywhere they are deployed - cloud, on-premises, and classified networks - without disrupting customer operations. Apollo reduces the demand for field engineering teams to manage software deployments and gives Palantir SaaS operating efficiency in a very heterogeneous environment.
​
Looking ahead, Palantir is poised to become the default central operating system for data across the U.S. government and its allies. The company also aspires to be the central operating system for data at large businesses and even entire industries. To appreciate Palantir's ambition with regard to B2B big data, it may be helpful to recall how much economic benefit has been captured by Microsoft (MSFT) after Windows OS took the lead over MacOS of Apple (AAPL) in the PC era, and by Google and Apple in the consumer mobile phone age with their respective Android and iOS operating systems.
​
The data competitive landscape
The big data landscape is a sprawling one, with Palantir positioning itself in the 'data analyst platform' field (Fig. 2).
​
The big data landscape
Fig. 2. The big data landscape. Source.
​
There is a range of potential competitors that offer similar services in some capacity, including (1) traditional IT consultancies, e.g., Booz Allen (BAH) and Accenture (ACN), which lack the technical prowess as well as niche focus; (2) blue-chip data companies, e.g., IBM/i2 (IBM), which cannot scale down efficiently enough to compete on price; and (3) defense contractors such as Booz Allen (BAH), Raytheon Technologies (RTX), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and BAE Systems plc (OTCPK:BAESF), which cannot compete on costs and end-user responsiveness with Palantir. These juggernauts are not nimble enough to pivot away from their legacies and wide-ranging service offerings to effectively match the focus and end-user friendliness of Palantir, although they may occasionally chip away some revenue.
​
Silicon Valley heavyweights, such as Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), are unwilling to work for the Pentagon citing it's being "unethical" even though it thought it was okay to collaborate with the Chinese government in project Dragonfly (see here).
​
There are some smaller start-ups that work in the same general field as Palantir, but they lack the resources (capital and talent) to climb the steep learning curve and compete against Palantir head-to-head. These may include Digital Reasoning, which entered the intelligence field even before Palantir and also received funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm of the CIA, which seems not to be particularly well run which is why its founder recently returned to the CEO helms; Ayasdi, acquired by the SymphonyAI Group in 2019, which has a core topological analysis platform on top of which custom applications for customers mostly in healthcare and finance are built; and Beijing-based MiningLamp, self-styling as "the Palantir of China" and with US$300 million just raised in a funding round co-led by Temasek and Tencent, which may pose some threat in the commercial arena given it reportedly got business from western firms (see here).
​
With regard to the OS platform for data especially on the government front, Palantir more or less owns the niche. On the commercial front, Palantir is industry agnostic but is focused on forging ties with approximately 6,000 companies in the world with more than $500 million in annual revenue. Palantir has been saying the real competition is the in-house development projects of its potential customers.
​
The digital resources space
I believe some of the key characteristics of Palantir can be better understood in the context of what I call the "digital resources" investment space at The Natural Resources Hub (Table 1). This is a group of businesses from various industries, which in a nutshell share the following features:
​
A unique value proposition. By accumulating and processing big data, or enabling data-intensive operations, these B2B companies generate recurring, subscription-based revenue from business or government customers.
Wide moat. They command a monopolistic or oligarchic position in their niche, protected by enormous barriers to entry, some network effects, and switching costs, which gives them a sustainable competitive advantage over the fellow industry participants they serve. They tend to show resilience during industry crises.
Dominance in native industry. They are deeply entrenched in their respective native industries. Some of them were even bankrolled at their birth by home industry advocacy groups. They then expand into adjacent industries in pursuit of economies of scope.
Aggressive acquisitions. In an expansion of their service into adjacent verticals, they usually face a fragmented competitive landscape, fertile for M&A, which further fuels rapid growth.
Capital and operational efficiency. They develop scalable solutions that are built once and installable or sellable countless times. So, they are capital-light and can operate very efficiently. They typically generate superior profitability and deliver a high rate of return on invested capital.
The competitive landscape of the digital resources space. Source: Laurentian Research.
Table 1. The competitive landscape of the digital resources space. Source: Laurentian Research.
​
As I shall demonstrate below, Palantir shares most, if not all, of the characteristics of the verified members of the 'digital resources" space. Prima facie, it is a wide moat prospect and worth a deeper examination.
​
Does Palantir have a sustainable competitive advantage?
In the consumer-oriented internet arena, winners are known to take all thanks to a number of traits, including the economies of scale and scope, network effects, the advantage of big data and machine learning, brand power, switching costs, the attraction of talents, the charisma of hard-driving founders, and benefits of geographical clustering, as has been summarized here.
​
The same may not be said about the B2B platform race, where peers compete mainly on products, services, and customer experience (see here). The outcome of the competition may not be binary (the winner takes all, and the losers die) due to the lack of viral growth.
​
The technological edge
​
As I stated above, B2B platform rivals compete primarily on products, services, and customer experience. Palantir follows the approach of bundling superior technology with top-notch forward-deployed field service representatives.
​
In its home industry - intelligence and defense, Gotham was created with native attention to security rules, access privilege, and user action logging. No other systems allow users to draw associations between disparate data sets and to visualize the connections as easily and quickly. Palantir has maintained a laser-sharp focus on developing the world's best platform for data, while its primary competitors such as Booz Allen or Raytheon are widely diversified. From competition outcome to reputation among end-users, Palantir not only has a clear technological edge but also is more cost-effective than competitors (see here and here). That's why Palantir is confident it only needs to be placed in front of the right people to prove its worth.
But then, what makes Gotham shine are the forward-deployed field service representatives. Palantir field service representatives proved to be not only some of the brightest engineers known to government agencies but also extremely responsive to the needs of end-users. These forwarded-deployed engineers examine customer needs, resolve all data source and complexity issues, and build out applications on top of Gotham. Once the applications are built, they train users on site until the customers are ready to use the product on their own. The forwarded-deployed engineers also bring their experience acquired in the reality of deployment back to Palantir development centers as they rotate assignments.
Although its technology and approach are by no means cannot be replicated, Palantir makes the smart decision of focusing on a narrow scope in the sprawling B2B data landscape and, in that niche, it excels at helping customers solving complex data problems at relatively low costs, which actually takes a lot to accomplish, from well-written software, via responsive backend support, to knowledgeable forward-deployed field service representatives. It is no wonder Palantir has earned a sterling reputation for effectiveness and ease of use in the intelligence and defense circle, which I believe it can parlay into the commercial market (Fig. 2).
​
Palantir as a B2B platform provider competes on products, services, and customer experience. Source: Laurentian Research.
Fig. 2. Palantir as a B2B platform provider competes on products, services, and customer experience. Source: Laurentian Research.
​
Palantir brand and talent attraction
​
Given the forwarded-deployed engineers play such an important role in the technological advantage of Palantir (as do the backend developers), it follows that it is critical for it to attract the smartest engineers in the market if that edge is to be maintained and expanded. To that end, the founders have successfully created an aura of mystery around Palantir:
​
In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm of the CIA, being its very first investor; catcher of Osama bin Laden and the would-be preventer of 9/11; buster of the hacker of Dalai Lama's personal computer and Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff;
software vendor to a slew of U.S. intelligence and military agencies (including the CIA, FBI, DHS, NSA, Special Operations, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Army and West Point, the U.S. Navy, the USAF, and the U.S. Space Force), police departments like NYPD, the governments of U.S. allies, and commercial businesses Ferrari (RACE), Airbus (OTCPK:EADSF), BP (BP), Merck (MRK), and JP Morgan (JPM);
helper of the NIH, CDC, and NHS to track the COVID-19 virus, the World Food Program to stop famine, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to fight child exploitation;
high-profile politicians such as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet advising, while luminaries Mike Kelly, David MacNaughton, Louis Mosley (grandson of Oswald Mosley), and Fabrice Brégier (former No. 2 at Airbus) joining to lead its Australian, Canadian, British, and French subsidiaries, respectively;
a dissent in Silicon Valley that takes side with the U.S.A.; let alone the persona of the hard-driving founders, including Peter Thiel who is said to be the smartest guy in the Silicon Valley besides being a co-founder of PayPal (EBAY) and the first outside investor in Facebook (FB), the lawyer-philosopher-hedge fund manager CEO Alex Karp, and the genius engineers Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, and Nathan Gettings; even Shyam Shankar, the COO, has also been getting a lot of attention...
The mystique proves to be a powerful recruiting advantage; it helps line up a self-replenishing stream of the best applicants from some of the top-ranked colleges and graduate schools, who are confident they are the smartest computer geeks, who join to work long hours with a cultish band of fellow geniuses to solve the world's hardest problems in spite of lower salaries than Silicon Valley juggernauts like Google, Facebook, and Apple (AAPL).
​
Becoming a publicly-traded company only strengthens the staffing edge, thus posing a serious challenge for the big IT consultancies, traditional defense contractors, and smaller start-ups. Hiring the best talents will undoubtedly help sustain Palantir's technological advantage.
​
High barriers to entry
​
There exist extremely high barriers to entry in the intelligence and defense sector. Even the best end-user experience and reputation alone are not enough to get deals closed. Below, I highlight two hurdles.
​
Just to open doors. To open doors and lubricate negotiations, some major defense contractors spend as much as $14 million per year on lobbying.
​
Palantir had been quick in learning the rope of getting things done in Washington D.C. It consulted Washington insiders early on and went ahead hiring former senators John Braux and Trent Lott for formal lobbying (see here). Its lobbying spending has been on a steady rise and, in the last few years, reached well over $1 million per year by hiring ~20 lobbyists (Fig. 3).
Palantir also retained former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet as advisers (see here).
Palantir lobbying spending by year.
Fig. 3. Palantir lobbying spending by year. Source.
​
To overcome buyer inertia gently and forcefully. Another major challenge faced by Palantir was the department of defense saw it as an outsider that tries to sell software not even in response to any specific requests in its conventional acquisition system, oblivious to the capabilities and cost-effectiveness of Palantir Gotham.
​
In response, Palantir allowed free trials of Gotham and provided free services before potential military clients made any purchases; it offered free or reduced-price training to military units that purchased its software. Forward-deployed field service representatives listened to the needs of its end-users and were capable of implementing requested changes quickly.
Palantir's entrepreneurial approach led to a number of successes with, e.g., some Army military intelligence units and the Marine Corps. Some intelligence officials in the Marine Corps even went so far as to say they would not be surprised to see Palantir remain the de facto standard (see here).
Even though Palantir has demonstrated the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Gotham, the U.S. Army stuck to the plan of developing its internal intelligence software suite, i.e., the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) Increment 2, and released a procurement solicitation in December 2015 for its development, thus effectively excluding the ready-to-deploy commercial alternative - Gotham - from being considered. The Army decision was a major blow to Palantir because Gotham does exactly what DCGS-A is trying to do yet at a much lower cost; in other words, the Army is reinventing the wheel, unnecessarily and wastefully.
​
After a pre-award bid protest filed with the Government Accountability Office had been denied, Palantir sued the Army in the Court of Federal Claims in June 2016, arguing the Army violated the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act by not conducting the market research necessary to determine if commercially available items could meet its needs, with or without modification. The lawsuit is an extremely bold move because defense contractors typically dared not to sue its largest customer, even when their interest as protected by the 1994 law had been infringed. The judge ruled in favor of Palantir in October 2016 and upheld Palantir’s argument the Army violated the 1994 law (see here), which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on September 7, 2018.
​
Even while the appeal was ongoing, the Army rethought its acquisition plan and, in March 2018, picked Raytheon and Palantir to provide new intelligence analysis platform offerings that could be used effectively at the tactical level in place of DGCS-A. In March 2019, the Army announced Gotham beat out Raytheon's FoXTEN system and won the $20 million first delivery order, as part of an $876 million contract over 10 years. Significantly, the Army's loss in court forced it to transform its procurement process. The Army now follows a “try, buy, decide approach” when it comes to commercially available products (see here). The win in the court is expected to create a lot of opportunities for Palantir down the road.
​
The distance Palantir has gone to gain access to the intelligence and military market proves one thing: the presence of enormous barriers to entry. In the face of such formidable hurdles, few aspirants have the determination, investment time horizon, and resources to pull off the feat of entering and establishing itself as the de facto standard in that market. Over a time span of 15+ years, Palantir sunk quite a few billions of VC dollars on software development, offering products and services for free or on lean fees, and lobbying and suing to get a level playing field, yet without a single major botch-up over all those years. Those who sneer at Palantir for still losing money after 17 years of investment fail to appreciate how impossible a strategic goal the company has come to set for itself: to become a wide-moat software supplier to the governments of the U.S. and its allies.
​
Switching cost, economies of scale, and network effect
​
Having earned contracts from the intelligence and defense sector, Palantir became an insider so to speak, and the barriers to entry work to its advantage. Gotham has been deployed as the platform for data integration at various intelligence and military units displacing the existing system including DGCS-A, a myriad of applications has been developed for the agents, and thousands of end-users have been trained to use those applications on a tactical level in critical missions and battlefields. A switching cost has arisen in favor of Palantir and it will only get higher.
​
As more contracts are signed with the U.S. government and its allies, Palantir will begin to enjoy economies of scale, thanks to the large fixed costs incurred for building the software once and the relatively low costs associated with deploying it countless times.
​
Just playing out according to Palantir's plan, Gotham is increasingly being used for sharing disparate data sets across different government agencies. Once those siloed data sets are all integrated on Gotham, there will emerge a huge network effect, further heightening the existing barriers to entry. Under such a network effect, a new entrant may land an isolated deal sporadically, but it is beyond me how this hypothetical incursor can dislodge Palantir by convincing dozens of stodgy government agencies to simultaneously give up perfectly-functional, mission-critical Gotham and install an unproven piece of software instead. That's why I believe Palantir's competitive advantage in the government sector will prove to be sustainable.
​
The commercial market
As I discussed above, 'digital resources' companies tend to expand into adjacent verticals for the benefit of economies of scope. Palantir's expansion into various industries in the commercial sector is precisely for that end. The same technological know-how sharpened in defense deployments can be parlayed into serving the commercial sector. The utilization of Apollo, the backend system for continuous, automated software update deployment, doubles the economies of scope as it supports Foundry in addition to Gotham. The corporate resources are shared by operations in both sectors, resulting in lower overhead per dollar of revenue. The direct sales force will be able to cross-sell Gotham to some commercial customers. Diversification into additional industries reduces the risk associated with the slowdown of any individual industry. As opposed to the high barriers to entry in its home industry of intelligence and defense, the commercial world tends to have more competitors. However, economies of scope will likely offset the narrowness of the moat.
​
Network effect in the commercial sector
​
Over the long term, Palantir (PLTR) estimates the total addressable commercial market contains ~6,000 companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue (see here). Palantir began to develop Foundry for the commercial sector in 2012 and launched it in 2016. Foundry is poised to become a central operating system not only for individual institutions but also for entire industries. In 2017, e.g., the five-year, $300 million partnership with Airbus allowed Foundry to expand into a platform for the aviation industry, which today connects data from >100 airlines and 9,000 aircraft around the world.
​
If successful, an industry-wide central operating system for data will effectuate an extensive network effect. However, to get there, Palantir needs to rapidly grow the commercial top-line. Foundry pulled in $340 million in 2018 and $397 million in 2019. Commercial revenue grew 35% from the 3Q2019 to the same period one year ago (see here). How will Palantir further accelerate commercial sales momentum?
​
Commercial sales strategies to accelerate the network effect
​
In the near term, Palantir plans to focus on building partnerships with institutions that have the leadership necessary to effect structural change within their organizations - to reconstitute their operations around data. Buy-in from the top brass is imperative. Hopefully, Palantir can leverage its reputation and relationships gained in the government sector, as in an early case in which NYPD, then a customer, introduced Palantir to its first commercial client JP Morgan (JPM).
​
Palantir used to have a policy of not hiring direct salespeople, given how intelligence and military contracts are acquired and serviced and perhaps due to a post-dotcom bubble belief "technology is primarily about product development, not distribution". However, there is absolutely no viral growth in B2B as there occasionally is in B2C. The common practice in the 'digital resources' space is to maintain a large force of salespeople each managing a few customer accounts, with responsibilities such as opening new sales territory, scouting for client needs, scaling within existing customer accounts, coordinating technical presentations by engineers, securing technical support for clients, and managing customer relationships. Palantir began to recruit direct salespeople in end-2018. The commercial sales growth in 2019 seems to prove the concept of direct sales works, so Palantir is poised to triple the headcount of the sales force.
​
Historically, data-inundated organizations either build in-house or buy dozens of off-the-shelf products and sew them together, both approaches having been proven inefficacious in a rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain world. Foundry offers the third, and better, option for those organizations. However, Palantir comes to realize that, in the near-term, institutions do have an imperative to stick to their internally-built software. So, Palantir makes its own solutions fully modular such that customers can "take what they need, build on what they have" (see here). Such a flexible approach should help overcome corporate inertia to reach out for external assistance and accelerate customer onboarding, and create a new way of going to market with channel partners.
​
Palantir plans to partner with cloud-hosting channel partners, such as Amazon (AMZN), to drive commercial revenue growth. It was Amazon that helped facilitate the partnership between Palantir and the Colombian government. Palantir developed Visor COVID-19, a digital instrument built on top of Foundry hosted in the AWS infrastructure and offering a unified, near real-time view of the state of the pandemic using the largest integration of open data and depersonalized epidemiological data in Colombia.
​
International sales already account for fo 46% of the total revenue as of the 3Q2020. As part of its international growth plan, Palantir has set up subsidiaries in Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, and other countries in the last few years. In Japan, it took a different approach and chose to form a joint venture in partnership with Sompo Holdings, Inc., which subsequently invested $500 million in Palantir. The JV launched in June 2020 “the real data platform for security, health, and wellbeing”, powered by Foundry, to accelerate the digital transformation of Japanese governmental institutions and industries ranging from healthcare to automotive to manufacturing. The JV is also working on onboarding the Japanese government.
​
Risk abounds
Public relation disasters can damage its image in the eyes of the next generation of software engineers; this is an area that Palantir, now a public company, should allocate additional resources to. A Snowden-like incident can set Palantir back appreciably, impacting client relationships and employee morale alike.
​
Palantir must penetrate its chosen market swiftly to enlarge the switching cost, expand the network effect, and heighten barriers to entry, lest a resourceful competitor launches a dogged challenge in the government sector or its smaller imitators strike it lucky in the commercial market and steal potential customers. A well-intended acquisition can turn sour, contaminating the entire operation.
​
As far as I can see, the management team at Palantir is paranoid enough to allow any blind spots unaddressed in its business execution. However, Black swans do happen.
​
Investor takeaways
I believe Palantir has an inchoate durable competitive advantage, which acts as an economic moat to protect its business from invaders, which seems to be widening judging from new developments since the IPO.
​
In the self-created niche of supplying the operating systems for data for government agencies, Palantir clearly delivers a peerless customer experience with superior technology bundled with top-notch forward-deployed field service representatives.
Gotham has become the default operating system for data at some U.S. government agencies, where Palantir enjoys switching costs.
Palantir seems to have also built a brand that helps attract top-notch talents, which sustains its technological edge.
Now that it has kicked open the door of the U.S. government agencies by winning a critical lawsuit against the Army, Palantir is expected to achieve rapid penetration of that market. Gotham is increasingly being used for integrating siloed data sets across different government agencies, which in time will result in an enormous network effect, further heightening the barriers to entry for aspirant entrants.
​
The company is aggressively diversifying into adjacent commercial verticals and international markets for economies of scope. Revenue growth, both from the government and commercial sectors, will lead to economies of scale. Down the road, Palantir will have the pricing power at its disposal to drive profitability.
​
At this time, the share price of Palantir may seem to have gotten ahead of itself - a point to be further explored elsewhere. The shareholders are taking risks to bet that the company will succeed in digging the wide moat and that years of profitable growth will follow.
​
Less anticipatory investors may want to wait until Palantir has completed building such a wide moat. For these investors, the entry opportunity may come in the form of a major sell-off during a general market recession or in an idiosyncratic crisis down the road.

As a long-time contributor to this sub, I know we love nothing more than discussing our degeneracy. If nothing else, hearing such stories makes you realise there are other people out there who have lived similar experiences to you. Stories of epic failure provide a sense of comfort. Stories of unexpected triumphs provide a feeling of hope.
The following bets - and the circumstances surrounding each - were not necessarily story-worthy. However, there were a number of intricate details which I felt were worth highlighting. Aside from the statistical rollercoaster than one experiences throughout a game (i.e. going from "how can this lose?" to "this bet is over"), there are other factors which can have significant ramifications for one's betting endeavours.
This is where the factor of timing comes into play. How often have you bet on something purely due to the fact that the game was starting shortly? It could either be a straight wager on the game. Or, you might have decided to add the short-priced "lock" to boost your odds. How often has this then come back to bite you? Or conversely, this random event - where your betting urge coincided with the scheduled timing of this event taking place - results in a recuperation of losses from previous games that you "studied" prior to placing your losing wagers?
Without further ado, this is my story. It is but a speck in the ocean that is my entire betting career. But it was a Sunday night full of swings, sweats and... well I won't spoil the ending.
As you read this, I want you to keep the headline in mind. Specifically, the words timing, luck and degeneracy.
It's early on a Sunday evening in Melbourne, Australia. Approximately 6PM to be exact. We are currently under the world's strictest COVID lockdown. We have an 8PM curfew, and I was keen to get in a 1 hour walk before returning home to make dinner. Now typically - as I had already walked my dog several hours earlier - I would not go for another on my own. But for some reason, I just had an urge to get some fresh air. Here is the first element in play: timing. At 6:10PM, an AFL (Australian Football) was scheduled to begin. As I begin my walk, I inevitably flick through my preferred bookmaker's iPhone app and this game catches my eye. Part of me says "don't bet it". The other part of me curb-stomps that voice in my head and says "don't be a pussy". Now on another note, I placed a daily deposit limit of $3000 on my account. To some, that is insanely big. I generally bet $1000 or so, and so this stops me from stupidly chasing the day's losses. Here is where another element peaks it's head: luck. I had deposited $1750 that day. Had I reached my limit, the following events would only have existed in a parallel universe. But as luck would have it, I had $1250 to play with. So I said 'fuck it' and made the deposit. It's about 6:05PM now and I don't have much time. I sift through the markets on offer and decide it's best to play a Same Game Multi (parlaying multiple events from the same game). With not much time left to make a decision, I quickly check the weather forecast in Gold Coast (where this game is taking place) and note that there is meant to be rain in the second half. (Spoiler: there was no rain in the second half). As this sport is played outdoors, this would favour the unders. So I come up with a bet that looks like this:

• First quarter OVER 23.5
• First half OVER 48.5
• Full match UNDER 125.5
• West Coast +34.5 handicap
• Margin: either team by 1-39
• Bontempelli 15+ disposals
• Macrae 20+ disposals

ODDS: 4.10
A bet of $1250 would pay $5125.
​
I was ready to place the bet. The problem? The match was only seconds from beginning.
The time stamp on when the bet was accepted:
18:09:55
I made it by 5 measly seconds.
​
Ok, so game begins rather uneventfully. Now it's worth noting for those who aren't familiar with AFL that you can score by 1's and 6's. It's late in the first quarter and the total is sitting at 22 points. Needing over 23.5, I'm in desperate need of a goal. The whole bet is about to come crashing down without it. With only seconds remaining a player marks the ball from a score-able position. The siren sounds. Now in AFL, if a mark is taken before the siren ("buzzer"), the player may take their kick. As luck would have it, this legend kicks it right through the middle of the goal posts, and the first quarter score ends on 28. We live on!
Second quarter ends, and the combined total is 52 points. Again, we survive the over 48.5 by less than a full goal! (But this one cleared with a handful of minutes left to play, so there was no sweat involved).
I'l wrap up the remainder of the game fairly quickly, as it is rather uneventful. The final score is 47-49, so the total under 125.5 hits easily, the +34.5 and margin 1-39 hit comfortably, and both players rack up well over their required disposals. Fantastic. My account hits $5125.
By this stage, some would be satisfied. I wasn't. I was out for blood.
The smart move would have been to withdraw, say, $4000. Play with the remaining $1125 (house money), and lock in a profit. But what's the fun in that?
I scroll through the upcoming events and see that there is a Chinese Super League (soccer) match starting in a few hours. This isn't the first example of degeneracy in this story, but it's probably the biggest.
So what do I do? Another Same Game Multi of course. And how much do I bet on it? $5125 of course.
The bet:

• Beijing Guoan: win or draw
• Total corners: OVER 7.5
• Total goals: OVER 1.5
• BOTH teams to score in BOTH halves: No

ODDS: 1.95
A bet of $5125 would pay $9993.75
​
Here's where the rollercoaster of events begins.
5 minutes in, we have our first corner.
13 minutes in, we have our second.
Corners are looking good.
Fast forward to half time and Beijing are leading 2-0.

• BOTH teams to score in BOTH halves: No = WINNER
• Total goals: OVER 1.5 = WINNER
• Beijing or draw = TBD, but looking good!
• Corners OVER 7.5 = ONLY 2 FUCKING CORNERS IN THE FIRST HALF!

Remember, they had already accumulated 2 corners 13 minutes into the match. 32 minutes without a single corner!
The live odds for over 7.5 were now over 3.00, and I was losing hope.
The second half begins and approximately 10 minutes passes without a corner. I'm fucked.
The next 15 minutes feels like God (aka Bob from NBA Daily Discussion) had blessed me. A flurry of corners results in an 8th corner before the 70th minute mark!
What looked like a total sweat, turned into the easiest of victories. Or so I thought...
The final leg: Beijing or draw - who by the way, were 1.50 favourites to win the match - were still up 2-0. One book had the opposing team at 81.00 odds to win from here. But you guys can guess what happened next.
Wuhan goal!
I'm still leading 2-1. My brain: "it's all good man, you still have a 1 goal buffer".
Barely a few minutes later...
Wuhan goal!
It's now 2-2. My brain: "it's cool, you just need a draw, you're still likely to win this".
Including the 6 minutes of added time, I have to sit through approximately 20 excruciating minutes of soccer, with just under $10k on the line.
Luckily, Beijing did 75% of the attacking. Wuhan did have a few minor chances, but nothing that made the heart sink.
The referee blew the full-time whistle, and I slowly unclenched my ass cheeks.
I waited to see my account balance, just to make sure all was kosher. (You know, we've all been there, when we thought we bet on a certain team, but because their names are all Chinese, you actually bet on the wrong Beijing or something like that).
My balance appeared at $9,993.75.
It was time to call it a night.
I reflected on the past 6 or so hours that I had just been through, and the 3 things that kept popping up in my mind again were timing, luck and degeneracy.
P.S.
Sorry to all the Djokovic and Heat backers. Brutal. Especially Djokovic. I'd say that's a once-in-a-career circumstance, but I think that would be understating how unlikely it is that the best player in the world get's DQ'd because he inadvertently hit a ball into an official's neck out of frustration.

This is an example of fundamental DD that takes place at ‘smart’ money institutions based on my professional experience in IBD, Private Equity & most recently at a HF (mods can message me for proof). Not thoroughly fleshed out b/c you autists have limited attention spans, but a summary. Figured I’d take the time to give back to this community that has provided many lolz, & should be a good measuring stick when evaluating other forms of fundamental DD posted here.
NFA.
DKNG - DraftKings, Inc.: vertically integrated US mobile betting operator that also provides retail sports betting & back-end betting solutions through SBTech. Think of SBTech as the tech ‘market-maker’ for traditional sports betting, they do all the funny math to set the betting odds & seem to be working on back-end solutions for DKNG Casino
The Big Picture

• Total annual US Gambling Revenue: ~$90Bn [1]
  • Casinos: ~$75Bn
  • Illegal Sports Betting: ~$13Bn
  • Horse Racing: ~$0.8Bn
  • Daily Fantasy Sports: ~$0.4Bn

Only ~2% of the ~$90Bn gambling revenues were placed online which is the lowest in the world where betting online is legal. For example, in other countries online gaming activity represents ~6% - ~52% of total gambling revenues, with ~12% being the average.
Wall Street expects online gaming revenue to be $20Bn-$40Bn within the next 10 years. For this to be achieved, the online gambling market will have to achieve a ~30% penetration rate on total country gaming revenues. There is an expectation that this is could be easily achievable given penetration trends overseas - see page 11 of this: https://s1.rationalcdn.com/vendors/stars-group/documents/presentations/TSG-Investor-Day_March-27-2019.pdf
Other catalysts include increasing adaptation of sports betting in more states. States that have both legal sports betting + online sports betting permitted: NV, NJ, WV, PA, IA. Sports betting permitted but no online: DE, MS, RI, MO, AR. Prior to COVID there was ongoing discussions across many States, especially ones with growing deficits to explore how permitting sports betting could create a fresh avenue of tax dollars. Post COVID there is an expectation that these discussions will be given extra focus as many States will be hungry for incremental tax dollars. Important to note that currently 43/50 States allow DFS, but given the small share DFS has on total Gaming Revenues, it increasingly looks like DKNG is banking on traditional sports betting for a variety of reasons, more later. There are entire articles on Google arguing this catalyst so I’ll end this here.
Digging Deeper
DKNG’s main offerings are Daily Fantasy Sports (“DFS”) products & traditional sports book products to its clients. Long story short, a metric to look for in my opinion (that is curiously not reported by management or remarked on) is the hold % in traditional gaming sector parlance or the ‘rake’ & compare it to the ‘traditional’ gaming products like sports betting & Blackjack.
For DFS: DKNG takes ~15% of the prize pool (note: used to be ~6-11% [2]). Curiously, their main competitor FanDuel also has moved up to a ~15% rake recently. Google searches show the smaller competitors have a rake in the ~13% range.
This ‘rake’ has grown ~2x in 6 years, but it has been a delicate move on behalf of management. Why? B/c the more ‘sophisticated’ DFS players (equal to autistic day traders on Robinhood) have noted this increase & based on some Googling, some have moved down market to the smaller players. As a side note, many live casino games have their rules altered to grow the Hold %. For example, Blackjack games with 6:5 payouts on 21 have materially higher Hold % than the traditional BJ rules that pay out 3:2. Given the findings so far, DKNG may not have much room to materially increase its hold % in DFS games in the near-term from current of 15%. More on this later.
Now why the fuck is this important? This is important b/c the typical sports book (ex-Parlays) have a ~5% hold %/rake. Parlays have up to a ~30% hold (which is why it’s commonly known as the sucker’s bet), & just for reference, the average Blackjack table clocks in 14.5%. What this means: Every dollar put into these games, the “House” or DKNG, will take 15% of your money for DFS games, for sports bets they will be pocketing ~5%, up to ~30% if you’re into parlays, & we’ll just use the standard 14.5% BJ hold for the DraftKings Casino platform.
So why the acquisition of SBTech & a foray into the traditional sports gambling market? As you can see previously, the illegal sports betting market is >30x the size of the current daily fantasy sports market. So it’s clear that the DFS providers including DKNG are foraying into the space to capture this user base & hopefully convert them into games that have a higher hold %, such as DFS/DKNG Casino.
As of May 2020, DKNG has achieved a 30% penetration rate on its ~4mm ‘monetized’ DFS clientele to its Online Sports Book (OSB), from the OSB+DFS clientele, DKNG has converted 50% into its DraftKings Casino platform.
Including non-monetized users, user base totals at 12mm. Based on these unit economics: every 1mm of additional users -> 333k monetized users for DFS -> 100k users for OSB -> 50k users for DraftKings Casino.
Some Numbers – Italicized/Bolded the important

• In total, DKNG has DFS paying clientele of ~4mm, the metric management focuses on is “Monthly Unique Payers (MUP)” which spans across DFS & online sports betting***. As of Q1’20 they reported 720,000*** MUPs, representing +16% YoY growth [3]
  • Average revenue per monthly user (ARPU) of ~$41, +11% YoY
    • Based on previous observation of Hold %, looks like ARPU growth will be limited
  • Since ’17, MUP has grown at a ~11% CAGR & ARPU has grown at a ~19% CAGR
  • As a side note: the ~4mm monetized user base was acquired at ~$122/user over 3 years. Total users cost them $41/user over the last 3 years [3].
• They are currently EBITDA negative & Wall St expects them to be positive by 2023
  • I took a dive into the math driving this, here is a summary:
    • Based on their current cost structure they will need to have ~1.7mm MUPs at an ARPU of ~$46 to break-even. This implies total monetized users of ~10mm from ~4mm currently

Numbers that represent Risks to Long Thesis

• DKNG’s user base of ~12mm is on the low end of the sector vs. its ‘brick & mortar’ competitor's user bases (online betting platforms with physical casino presence)
  • CZR with 55mm, MGM with 33mm, ERI with 10mm (in pending merger with CZR, could have a lot of overlap), FanDuel with 8.5mm
  • Is there a concern for increased marketing costs to increase user base? Let’s look at a case study of NJ, the first state to open both mobile & retail sports betting:
    • FanDuel + DraftKings have held 80%+ of the OSB market share since 12/2018 which is estimated to be driven by the conversion opportunity from DFS that is unique to both companies [4]
    • On the flipside, a case study to examine going forward is how DKNG can get OSB customers in a State that does not allow DFS. Nevada. Home to Las fucking Vegas. Prior to NV pushing FanDuel/DKNG out (highly likely due to casino lobbying), NV was a top-15 State in terms of revenue for them. NV is home to the fattest sports book in the US, & recently the gaming commission started to parse the data on sportsbook wagers done online vs. in-person, & it came out to roughly 50/50. It will be interesting to see how they try to capture market share in a state with no DFS
• Long-term EBITDA margin target of 35% requires huge growth in MUPs
  • Based on their estimated '22 cost structure: Holding ARPU of ~$46, MUPs will have to be ~5.2mm, a 7x increase from current to achieve a EBITDA margin of 35%
    • A focus on future earnings will be management's ability to shift to a more fixed-cost structure which would effectively lower the MUP requirement for profitability

Things to look for when going Long
- Progress of additional States legalizing sports betting – specifically, States with DFS already legalized
- Cost structure evolving to a more fixed mix vs. the mostly variable mix currently as this will be the forward figure that determines profitability
- Increasing User Base (Curr.: 12mm) -> Monetized Base (Curr.: 4mm) -> MUP (1Q’20: 0.7mm)

• Management seems to be focused more on the first step, but one thing to note is that the 33% monetization rate is very high when compared to something like League of Legends which isn’t entirely comparable but in 2013 had a ~4% monetization rate [5]. This, combined with the below implies that this conversion rate may be the ceiling for now
• As a side note, ~6 years ago FanDuel had ~300k monetized on an ~800k user base for a monetization rate of ~37% [6]

Share Price Target
Given the cost structure of the company, I’m going to base the price targets around Enterprise Value / Revenues (driven by MUPs & ARPUs).

• MUP sensitivity of 5mm - 6mm
• ARPU sensitivity from $41 - $47 for an average of $44, just a $3 increase from current of $41.
• Share Price targets based on 2.0x - 4.5x EV / Sales.
  • Note: Flutter Entertainment (FanDuel ParentCo) trades at ~3.6x EV/Sales

Bear Case MUP: 5mm -> $20.32 - $45.73
Base Case MUP: 5.5mm -> $22.27 - $50.10
Bull Case MUP: 6mm -> $24.21 - $54.47
These MUPs imply a monetized customer base of 28mm – 33mm. At the high-end, this implies that DKNG monetized customer base will equal MGM’s current total user base.
At yesterday’s close of $43.70, DKNG is trading at 3.5x – 4.5x forward Revenues on an expected >5,000 MUPs.
Share Price drivers / considerations:
- Continued multiple expansion

• Consideration: A 1x premium to FanDuel's 3.6x, implies a ~15% upside to current. They're bigger than FanDuel, do they deserve the premium?

- MUP Growth exceeding beyond targets

• Consideration: Stock currently implies that they should on average be growing at 40% QoQ – during 2018 they had on average +30% growth QoQ in MUPs, marking their best year

Management Team
Jason Robins, 39 – Co-Founder & CEO. Duke BA, started DraftKings from day 1 in 2011. The 2 other buddies he started the Company with are still at DKNG. Dude navigated the Company through the scandal that rocked them in ’15 & ’16, and was the trailblazer in getting DFS labeled as a non-gambling product that enabled it to open in States without a gaming designation. This shit is the stuff that gets people in history books. His accomplishments make him seem like a very competent guy. Has 3 kids now, and only ~3% economic ownership in DKNG but has 90% of the voting power through his Class B share ownership. Also he actively participates in venture investments, sitting on 10 boards.
His comp plan performance bonus target is pretty murky, but main drivers are EPS growth, revenue growth, then a bunch of margin & return metrics, along with share price returns. Overall, very open-ended & it’s safe to say as long as shit doesn’t hit the fan, he will be eligible for his max payouts year over year. I’m assuming the lawyers tried to encompass everything possible for maximum flexibility to justify him earning his max comp as long as DKNG is still around.
Since he’s got voting control of 90%, I’ll end the specific-person overview here, but want to note that they have a very bloated C-suite. 12 folks at DKNG, 8 folks at SBTech, all with C-suite designations. Whereas their main competitor FanDuel, has 3 guys with a C-suite designations & 1 EVP, but is a sub under a larger ParentCo that has its own management team of ~5 guys.
Looking through glassdoor you can see the biggest complaint among employees giving bad reviews is based on management, all of the specific issues they point out IMO are a result of a top-heavy company. Seems like a good starting point to optimize their cost structure, but given Robins' history of sticking this entire thing through with his co-founders since '11 stuff like this doesn't seem to be a part of his playbook. They’re a public company now though, so it’s going to be interesting to see going forward.
TL;DR:
If I were to initiate a position in DKNG, the stock would have to fall to the $35-$37 range for me to be a buyer of the stock, and based on this rough intro analysis I'll be considering Put options if it breaches $50. I would not touch Calls at this level.
​
[1] Wall Street Research - 6/27/19
[2] https://rotogrinders.com/articles/bang-for-your-buck-a-look-at-dfs-industry-rake-153302
[3] https://draftkings.gcs-web.com/static-files/8f3a5c5a-7228-45bf-aab2-63604111c48d
[4] Wall Street Research - 5/19/20
[5]https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/223071/Dont_monetize_like_League_of_Legends_consultant_says.php
[6] https://rotogrinders.com/threads/how-many-people-actually-play-dfs-regularly-252044

Honestly this isn't too deep but with the launch of the Barstool Sportsbook I have thought more about how Barstool personalities have become questionable in their character. Big Cat put out his can't lose parlay on the podcast today that is going to be boosted in their app so more people bet on it and whether you think his can't lose parlay is stupid or smart week to week this one is very questionable. It won last week when it was boosted and that was probably a loss for Penn National/Barstool so this week he puts the Seahawks on it who actually have a toss up game against a rather desperate Cowboys team and the Steelers who have a game against a desperate Texans team. Obviously they are questionable gamblers to begin with and you should never follow them blindly but I think they are on purposely putting out bets that could lose because it helps their profit margins. If you are gonna bet on the can't lose parlay then do it through another sportsbook.
Like look at the Sunday slate people, there is a way more obvious and winnable can't lose parlay: Bucs, Colts, 49ers, Cardinals and Titans all have much easier matchups...

Hey all, I'm urgently in need of help/advice/support. I don't ever want to feel the emptiness that comes after a big loss ever again. I don't ever want to let that anger of being so painfully close to a big win devour me again. I want to live an honest life and admire all I've achieved through hard work, but I can't exactly do that until I pay off my debts.
To give you all some context - sure, it was a very disappointing way to lose a bet, but I just didn't think it would affect me in such a way and lead me to lose all common sense and abandon my moral compass. I had placed a 15-bet parlay on the opening round of the US Open. I'd followed tennis for several years so I felt I knew what I was doing. Sure enough, 14/15 of the results went my way and I was ready to celebrate. Unfortunately, in the 15th match, the player I had backed (I won't say who) had won the first 2 sets and seemed well on his way to victory. Even after he lost the next two sets, I still felt confident because he was serving for the match at 5-3 and even had two match points, before he lost 5-7 in that final set after losing the next 4 games. I can't even describe how I felt at that moment. I was supposed to win $1300 off of a bet of $165, but I felt like I had lost $1300 and then some, including any and all self-control.
I ended up "borrowing" $1000 from my dad's saving account, telling myself that surely I could win $1000 back through some smart, low-risk bets. It didn't end up that way, I lost it all, my dad naturally found out, and it's been a very rough time since then. Thankfully after a very tumultuous few days, my parents have supported me in getting the psychological help I've so desperately needed, I've disabled all my accounts, use a gambling blocker through my sister's email/password to keep me accountable, and don't have any urges. The problem is I that after I need to repay my dad a significant amount of money ($1000 to be precise) because I simply can't forgive myself for this and am not able to proceed with my normal everyday life as long as this debt still exists. Obviously the proper way to do this would be to find a job and tirelessly work my ass off until my debts have all been repaid, but unfortunately that's not an option. I am starting another year of college in 2 weeks (that my parents are paying for), and must focus solely on that. I simply won't have time to work full since I am studying full-time. I would appreciate any advice on how to earn this money back, obviously without gambling.
One idea I have is to hopefully bring some joy into people's lives by recording and "selling" (asking for donations through GoFundMe?) my piano music because that has always been a huge passion of mine ever since I was a kid. On the other hand, I am very ashamed of starting a GoFundMe in my own name because everyone would find out about this issue, and the very nature/details of the fundraiser would surely turn people away. I just don't know what to do, so I would appreciate any/all suggestions and advice. Thank you so, so much for reading this and for any ideas or words of encouragment.

Hoping one of the smart dudes here can set my bookmaker straight. (Or set me straight) When placing a baseball wager you are almost always offered the option of specifying the pitcher or action. If the pitcher is specified and he does not go, there is no bet. However, if action is selected the bet stands no matter how late the pitcher is changed.
Recently, I won several parlays when the pitcher was changed 10 minutes prior to the game. They paid me but, changed the price based on the different pitcher. (I would never have made the bet based on the crazy price paid. They reduced the payoff when based on the new pitcher, it should have been higher. . My guy said it has been like this for 25 years but, IMO both of us were taking a risk on a substitute pitcher. That’s what action means!! Setting a different price secretly should not be allowed. My contention is the original price stands. He says it was never like that. Can anyone weigh in? Thanks

We continue with the divisional rundown of the 2020 NFL Draft with the intriguing AFC South. Catch up on the other installments of this 2020 NFL Draft review series with the NFC South, AFC East, NFC East, AFC North, and NFC North.
Every year after the draft, I write a way-too-long review of each team’s draft. The purpose of this draft review is to give predictions for the careers of each team’s drafted players. I’ve watched film of each player I’m commenting on. Draft grades are overly optimistic and unrealistic. Unlike the majority of post-draft coverage out there, I will pick busts. Keep in mind that 23.4% of all first-round picks bust.
Let me preface this by saying: predicting the career of an NFL draft pick is a ridiculous exercise. There is so much unknown that goes into whether a player succeeds or fails at the next level. I can make educated guesses based on team situation, supporting cast, and research about the prospect’s character and work ethic, but there’s a reason teams make so many mistakes every year. You simply don’t know for sure how a player will react to being a pro. Injuries are also a huge factor in the fate of a player and impossible to predict accurately. Nevertheless, this is a fun exercise and gives us a chance to review how each team approached the draft.

Overview

Before we start, here are some of my general thoughts on the 2020 NFL Draft.
Quickly on the broadcast - they did a great job given the circumstances. The production quality was great and they did more actual analysis than usual. My main gripe with draft coverage every year is that they don’t show incredible highlights (they somehow didn’t show the Aaron Dobson catch in 2013). This year, they showed more footage of actual football and I appreciated that. The only two negatives for me were the constant tragic stories and Booger McFarland.
Oh, and if any poor soul bet on Justin Jefferson Under 21.5 draft position, ESPN should apologize to you. They showed him on the phone celebrating right before cutting to Goodell announcing the 21st pick - Jalen Reagor to the Eagles. Jefferson was of course on the phone with the Vikings, who took him at 22. Brutal beat.
As for the draft, remember this tweet about mock drafts being “wronger” than ever? Funny, this was probably the chalkiest first-round ever in the internet age. Nothing was truly shocking to me, including the Packers trading up for Jordan Love (more on that here). I had Damon Arnette in the first round in my first mock draft this draft season. I wrote an article lauding Jordyn Brooks as an undervalued commodity. Noah Ibinoghene going in the first was surprising, I suppose. But there was no Clelin Ferrell at No. 4 or Tyson Alualu at No. 10. It speaks to how the media and internet scouts might be catching up to, or God forbid actually influencing the teams.
So here is another installment of my annual draft review. Each player will receive their career prediction in parentheses following their name. For example: Joe Burrow (5). Here's how the picks break down:
5 – All-Pro: Starter who has performed at an elite level at his position. 4 – Above-Average: Starter who has been among the best at his position. 3 – Solid: Starter or valuable back-up with significant positive production. 2 – Replacement Level: Below-average starter or back-up who made minor contributions. 1 – Bust: Player who didn’t amount to anything positive.
Next up, the AFC South.

Jacksonville Jaguars

The Jaguars had one of the best drafts in the league. They came in needing to re-tool the defense and added two of my top-15 players. In the second they took a high-upside playmaker, and capped their day-two haul with one of my favorite run-stuffers in the entire draft.
C.J. Henderson (4) has shutdown corner talent. He has the innate ability to cover people in man, showing good technique in press, off, trail, and motor. His coverage instincts and breaks on the ball are on par with Jeff Okudah. Henderson’s weakness defending the run is partially due to a lack of ideal strength. If the Jaguars play enough man coverage, it won’t be exposed much. Henderson’s blazing speed was on display on an unreal hustle play to force a touchback (gif below). He has very pretty feet. I’m not Rex Ryan, I swear.
📷
With the 20th-overall pick, the Jaguars selected one of my favorite players in the entire draft in LSU’s K’Lavon Chaisson (5). Chaisson was the 9th-ranked player on my board and epitomizes the traits vs. performance misconception. In 2015 I endorsed Danielle Hunter as a big-time pass rusher despite tallying just 4.5 sacks at LSU. It’s coincidental that any critique of Chaisson begins with “lack of production.” On film, there are instances of being this-close due to technique deficiencies. He likely did not always great out amazingly with his position coach. But as far as evaluating translatable traits, and projecting him to the completely different NFL game, Chaisson is oozing with upside at just 20 years old.
Everyone agrees that Chaisson's physical traits are outstanding. He’s an exceptional athlete, somehow both smooth and twitchy with great balance. He’s a raw speed rusher who can bend, and has ideal ankle flexion for an edge player. Against older and more experienced tackles like Andrew Thomas and Alex Leatherwood, Chaisson didn’t always produce or perform well in an NCAA context. However, he had reps where he won and/or displayed ideal translatable traits in terms of pass-rushing technique, power, speed, handwork, and moves he can develop. My notes are overwhelmingly positive. He destroyed a guard on a stunt, stunted over two gaps to explode inside for a sack, showed big hits in space, beat Leatherwood twice off the ball, and showed power against the Oklahoma left tackle. I was right on Hunter. Chaisson has even more upside.
In the second round, the Jaguars selected one of the most enigmatic players in the draft in Colorado’s Laviska Shenault Jr (3). Shenault was flat-out dominant for the majority of his college career, standing out as the best player on the field in most games. His power is uncommon for a wide receiver. As a run-after-catch threat, he’s in the Cordarrelle Patterson mold. And while he’s undoubtedly a better natural receiver than Patterson, he’s still too raw to start at Z right away. His stop-start ability is terrific and he’s a threat to take it to the house on hitch routes. His coaching staff gave him a 4th-and-2 end-around.
As a vertical receiver, his film leaves a lot to be desired, with multiple bad offensive pass interference, lack of separation and ball tracking, and route-running issues. Simply put, he’s raw. There’s a lot of projection here, and if he puts it all together, he can be a star. His lack of timed speed (4.58 40) actually did show on tape. On the Cordarrelle Patterson-Anquan Boldin spectrum, I predict he’ll land closer to Boldin. The draft slot disparity between he and Henry Ruggs shows how much NFL teams value speed over college production. Perhaps they shouldn’t.
I wrote extensively about Davon Hamilton (4) here. He’ll develop into one of the best run-stuffers in the league and a top interior force. I also liked Ben Bartch (3) and even Josiah Scott (2) a bit, while the rest of the draft community thought the enormous Collin Johnson (2) was a steal. The Jaguars made 12 picks. If six of them are still on the roster in three years, this rookie class will spark a successful re-build.

Tennessee Titans

When the Titans drafted Marcus Mariota, the vast majority of people thought he'd become a franchise quarterback. I predicted he would max out as an Alex Smith-level player. The Mariota era is over in Tennessee, as Ryan Tannehill parlayed his late-season surge into a huge contract. The Titans came into this draft without any glaring holes. Their first two picks suggest they went with the best player available on their board.
Unfortunately, Isaiah Wilson (1) was nowhere near the best player on my board at No. 29. I had him ranked 67th-overall despite rumors he would be a first-round pick. Clearly something was off with the perception of Wilson, as the draft community was much lower on him than NFL teams. One reason for the disparity is how much the NFL values pure size in the trenches. At 6-6, 350, Wilson surely looks the part. I think NFL decision-makers still put a value on “first-guy-off-the-bus” type bodies, which Wilson definitely has.
The actual film shows arguably more pure strength than Mekhi Becton, but not nearly the same athleticism. He’s a raw right tackle who is good on double teams and shows awesome power when he gets his hands inside. The issue I can’t get over is his tendency to bend at the waist and miss initial hand placements. He wasn’t even in the top 100 players on PFF’s big board, which suggests he may not have graded out well. They’ll need to coach bad posture habits out of him and hope he keeps his weight in check.
I was also not a huge fan of Kristian Fulton (2). Fulton was productive in terms of pass break-ups and one of the top performers at DBU. But again, projecting to the NFL is not about college performance, it’s about translatable NFL traits. There’s a reason such a productive college player with ideal speed and measurables fell to 61. Fulton generally struggled to get his head around defending verticals along the boundary, showing a lack of ideal balance and some clumsiness. He made a couple of big plays against Virginia, but was “weirdly beat in the red zone.” I had Fulton ranked 48th overall, but if I could re-do my board after the draft, I’d put guys like Arnette and Robertson over him.
📷
While I didn’t have Darrynton Evans (3) in my top-100 due to positional value, I am always a fan of selecting running backs on day two. Evans’ speed (4.41), production, and ultimate draft slot all point to future fantasy success. If he can learn pass protection, he can replace Dion Lewis quite easily. His film against South Carolina wasn’t great, but that speed plays, and is a great complement to Derrick Henry.
Remember that last year’s first-rounder Jeffrey Simmons started his rookie year fresh off a serious injury. It is fair to expect him to grow as a player, perhaps developing into an All-Pro. It will be fascinating to see if Tannehill can repeat his 2019 magic. If he plays at a high level again, Tennessee has the offensive supporting cast to contend in the AFC.

Indianapolis Colts

The Colts came into the draft with needs at wide receiver and defensive back. After trading for DeForest Buckner, they didn't have a first-round pick. The biggest Colts storyline going into the draft was the possibility of selecting a quarterback early. They chose not to, and I agree with that decision.
Michael Pittman Jr. (3) seemingly has it all. He plays fast (4.52) with great size (6-4, 223) and excellent hands. He dominated certain games, including Utah, which featured multiple pros in their defensive backfield. In terms of physical traits, there is no question he has what it takes to be an outstanding pro. However, a deeper look into his film has me questioning his transition a little. He's not particularly strong for his size and doesn't possess great balance. His shoulder pads flop when he runs - it sounds odd but he plays a bit high. It's understandable for someone his size, but I have to be fair to my notes.
He blocked a punt and has a lot of "college" highlights, mossing poor 5-10 corners and blowing by 2-star recruits. When I went back for a second look I kind of loved his fluidity. He could be an outstanding pro or just-a-guy. The sweet spot for wideouts is typically the second round so I'll bet on him.
So where should an incredibly talented and productive Big Ten running back be selected in the NFL Draft? A few years ago Saquon Barkley parlayed an ideal frame, 4.4 speed, and tremendous statistical production into being selected second overall. Jonathan Taylor (3) was routinely thought of as a late-first to earl-second-round pick throughout the draft process, with a similar size/speed/production mix. The main on-paper differences were receiving production and fumbling. Are those differences worth such a disparity in draft stock? The point here is to pre-emptively defend my evaluation of Jonathan Taylor. He was an elite college back, but I do not believe he profiles as a special back in the NFL. His film is more solid than amazing.
Taylor's positives on film are obvious. He's smooth with home run speed and tremendous vision. He understands blocking schemes and is difficult to get down to the ground. However, his film, specifically against Illinois, is more solid than spectacular. I do not know if his not-going-down skills translate to the pro game where everyone is bigger, faster, and stronger. He gets knocked back and doesn't drive the pile way too much. Perhaps he's picking his spots, which leads to the first of the three frequent arguments against him - tread on tires (probably overrated), too many drops, and fumbling issues. Going to Indianapolis, he will have the best offensive line in football blocking for him and less pass-game responsibility. I do not expect him to be an All-Pro back, but I will likely target him early and often in fantasy leagues due to situation.
Julian Blackmon (3) has injury question marks but shows a spirited playstyle and tackling ability that translates. He has all the football traits, but deep speed is a question mark. His short-area burst is great, but he had a poor game against USC, displaying some bad angles. He should be a solid specials contributor and third safety at absolute worst.
I had Jacob Eason (2) ranked in the top-30 on my first big board. I liked his film a lot. Against Oregon, he looked like a first-round pick. The best trait Eason shows on film is his ability to make quick decisions. He loves slants, will get to his check-downs, and was good against pressure in the games I saw. Obviously he has the arm, but I noted his deep ball placement as "meh." Washington had arguably the best offensive line in the country, but Eason didn't have great weapons, as I noted multiple drops by receivers. Another underrated trait is his ball-handling, as his footwork on play-action shot plays was excellent. I would have picked Eason to be a good player if I did not read concerning insight into his character in Bob McGinn's Athletic article with quotes from scouts. That's why he fell so far. I'll give a good coaching staff a chance to develop him, but playing quarterback is so hard, you can't have question marks surrounding your intangibles for anyone to feel confident in your transition.
The Colts will take a stab at contending this year with Philip Rivers at quarterback, a great offensive line, and excellent coaching staff. They decided to build on a strength, adding Jonathan Taylor to an already talented running back room. Analytics folks may not love it, but the 49ers just had a successful year with a run-heavy attack. With how much nickel and dime teams play, it might be smart to zig when everyone else zags.

Houston Texans

The Texans essentially used their first-round pick on stud left tackle Laremy Tunsil, then extended him. One of the main reasons first-round picks are so valuable is because of how cheap rookie contracts are. So while Tunsil is clearly worth a first-round pick in a vacuum, it’s not as much of a no-brainer considering the difference in salaries. They came into the draft needing help on defense.
With the 40th overall pick they selected TCU defensive lineman Ross Blacklock (3), the 59th-ranked player on my board. While watching Blacklock’s film, I noted he would fit in best as a true nose tackle. He played his gap well, shooting out of his low four-point stance. He showed strength at the point of attack and made me think of him as a potential impact run-stuffer. Then I looked at his measurables. At just 290 pounds, Blacklock simply does not have the size to be a premier run-stuffer at the pro level. Blacklock showed a good rip move for a sack against Purdue but showed almost no juice as a pass rusher against Texas.
My Reverse Planet Theory states that the relative worst offensive linemen in college football play inside. There are only so many quality offensive linemen in the world, and in the NCAA most play tackle. When lovable penetrating defensive tackles transition to the NFL, they are now matched up against amazing interior talents and converted tackles. No other position has a jump up in competition like interior defensive linemen. Blacklock is a potential victim of the Reverse Planet Theory, but his understanding of leverage is what will make him a decent pro.
With their next pick, the Texans took Jonathan Greenard (1) of Florida. Greenard moves like he has cement in his cleats, and has substandard change of direction ability. He has some competitiveness and physicality, but not enough juice as a pass rusher to be a true edge dude. His production was nice at the college level, but I’m not even sure if his traits will allow him to be a rotational asset or special teams contributor. He wasn’t in my top 100.
Bill O’Brien received a lot of deserved hate after dealing away DeAndre Hopkins. Personal issues probably played a role, but there is no excuse for only receiving essentially a second-round pick and veteran running back for one of the best receivers in football. The next few drafts are vital for Houston, as they won’t have much cap space after inevitably extending Deshaun Watson.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for the NFC West and AFC West in the coming days.
AFC South Article with Gifs: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-and-team-grades-afc-south/736898
NFC South: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-and-team-grades-nfc-south/736460
AFC East: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-and-team-grades-afc-east/736202
NFC East: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-and-team-grades-nfc-east/735919
AFC North: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-afc-north/735564?src=cat_feat_9954
NFC North: https://www.rotoballer.com/2020-nfl-draft-review-and-team-grades-nfc-north/734932

If you’re starting from scratch with no traffic or influential friends, it’s easy to wonder…
Is it reasonable for you to believe you can make money blogging?
For that matter, how do blogs even make money? Ads? Or something else?
Well, let’s take a look at exactly how I did it at Smart Blogger. Here’s my complete step-by-step process for how to make money blogging:

1. Choose a Profitable Blogging Niche


Let’s start with a little brutal truth, shall we?
Passion does not equal profit.
Neither does expertise.
Hard work doesn’t guarantee anything either.
For example:
You can be the world’s foremost expert on square-shaped tomatoes, wake up every morning with a burning passion to educate the public on their vast superiority to normal-shaped tomatoes, and work until your fingers bleed and your eyes fall out of your head, following all the right tactics for growing a popular blog, and…
You’ll never have a chance in hell at making any money.
Here’s why:
Nobody but you gives a damn about square tomatoes
Even if they did care, they wouldn’t spend any money
In other words, you need a large audience who buys things. Without that, nothing else matters. It’s a prerequisite for everything else.
In the case of Smart Blogger, I noticed early on that bloggers buy lots of different things:

In fact, there are companies with $10 million+ per year of revenue in most of those categories. It’s also a growing space with millions of people:

The only pVery to to Sherryroblem?
Loads of competition. Whether it be my previous employers Brian Clark or Neil Patel, my good friends over at Problogger, or the gazillion other “blogging about blogging” peeps infesting the social media space, everyone was intent on snagging a piece of the pie. They also had a several year head start on me.
So, how did I compete? The honest answer:

2. Level up Your Content Skills


Embed This Infographic On Your Site
You’ve probably heard that “Content is king,” and it’s true… to an extent. A more accurate statement would be…
The Best Content Is King
If that’s hard to understand, think about it this way:
Lots of bloggers sit down and think, “What will I write today?” They jot down some thoughts, doing their best to be helpful, original, and entertaining. If they’re disciplined, they might even stick with it for a few months.
But it almost never works. Here are a few reasons why:
What you want to say isn’t what other people want to read
You weren’t using a proven content framework
It’s not the best post ever published on the topic
Granted, it’s not your fault. Until today, chances are no one ever told you about any of those requirements. You thought you just had to write interesting stuff and publish it.
No, grasshopper. No.
The truth is, having good ideas and powerful words isn’t enough. you have to create the best content ever published on topics lots of people are interested in learning more about. And that brings us to the three levels of content creation:
You know what content is popular in your niche, and you write exclusively about those topics
You’ve mastered frameworks proven to make your content more popular (list post, how to post, etc.)
Your content delivers more value to the reader than any other post published on that topic
You’re probably thinking, “Geez. That sounds hard.” And you’re right, it is.
I personally spent about three years honing my skills by writing for other sites before I started my own blog. It doesn’t have to take that long — I’m just a perfectionist, so I wanted to learn from the best people in my space.

It worked, though. Nowadays, my posts get millions and millions of visitors, not because I know some special “secret,” but because I’m really good at what I do. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say it…
Blogging is really no different than anything else. The more of a bad ass you are, the easier it is for you to make money.
So you want to know how to make some money blogging?
Become a badass writer.
Then the next step is to…

3. Figure out Which Traffic Sport to Play


When you’re a beginner, getting traffic is confusing.
Should you focus on optimizing your keywords? Growing your Facebook page? Leaving comments on blogs? Answering questions on Quora? Creating videos for YouTube?
And so on.
There are a gazillion traffic tactics out there. Everybody says theirs is the best.
But here’s the data:

Source: Facebook and Google dominate web traffic, but not the same kind
Pretty much all the traffic for written content comes from either Google or Facebook. The rest of traffic sources combined don’t even come close to competing with those two Goliaths.
So, how do you get them to send you a bunch of traffic?
One option is you can pay for it. They like that.
But chances are, you’re reading about how to make money blogging because you don’t want to pay for traffic. You want it for free, right?
Well, imagine this:
There’s an arena where all the bloggers in your space go to compete for traffic. The number of other challengers you defeat determines the amount of traffic you receive.
In other words, getting traffic is a sport.
There are winners, and there are losers
To be good, you have to train
You need to study your opponents
There are actually two sports, and I’d bet you’ve heard of both of them: search engine optimization (SEO) and going viral on Facebook. Both take years (yes, I said years) of study to master, but you can start getting pretty decent traffic after just a few months of study and practice.
Which one should you focus on?
Well, here are two questions to guide you:
Is your topic something your friends and family regularly talk about on Facebook? Examples: pets, parenting, self-improvement, and health. If so, focus on playing the viral traffic sport.
Is your topic something people actively search for information about on Google? Examples: product reviews, specific questions they would ask an expert, how-to information. If so, focus on SEO.
For most topics, you can do both, but one or the other will be dominant. In that case, focus on whichever one is dominant.
In the blogging space, for example, stuff about writing and grammar occasionally goes viral on Facebook, because we love criticizing our relatives about their terrible English. On the other hand, you rarely talk with your family about blogging platforms, WordPress plugins, affiliate marketing, or any other blogging topics.
You will, however, search for them on Google. Just as you would guess then, the blogging niche is heavily dominated by search. Here’s a breakdown of Smart Blogger’s traffic by source:

The truth is, we pretty much ignore Facebook. The volume of traffic available there comes nowhere close to the volume of traffic available from Google. So, we focus on Google.
I also spend WAY more time keeping up to date on SEO stuff than I do on social stuff. I’m a geek about it. Throw me in a room full of Google engineers, and I’d probably know more than half of them.
Not to imply I’m the best, though. I’m also competing against people like Darren Rowse, Amy Lynn Andrews, and Neil Patel. They’re pretty freaking good too.
In time, I think I can be better, but who knows? That’s why sports are fun. You never know who is going to win.
If you’re good though, you’ll always be in the “playoffs,” for your space, and you’ll get lots of traffic. Maybe not the most, but still plenty.
And then you can focus on how to…

4. Grow Your Email List with Pop Ups


Chances are, you see pop ups as an annoyance.
They get in the way when you’re trying to read. They ask you to hand over sensitive information like your name, email address, and phone number. Sometimes you have to deal with multiple pop ups on the same site, and it makes you feel hassled and uncared for.
And all that sucks. In my opinion, you have every right to be annoyed.
But here’s the thing…
That’s where the money comes from. The best predictor of the revenue for a blog is the size of their email list. Here’s a breakdown of our revenue at Smart Blogger comparing revenue device from email to other sources.
The rule of thumb is you can expect to make $1 per subscriber per month. So, if you have 10,000 email subscribers, you should be able to make about $10,000 per month.
So obviously, growing your email list is a top priority. You might, however, feel conflicted about using pop ups. What are you supposed to do?
Here’s a different way of looking at it:
If a visitor comes to your site and doesn’t give you their email address, the chances of them returning are nearly zero. You’ll never have another opportunity to help them.
If you believe your content is the best, and you believe you can help them over time, I believe you owe it to them to be as pushy as possible about staying in contact. In other words, not using a pop up is unethical. A little annoyance is a small price to pay for change.
And remember, that doesn’t mean you have to be extremely pushy or spammy. You can absolutely use pop ups in authentic ways.
But you absolutely must use them. Assuming you want to make money, anyway.

5. Begin Monetizing with Affiliate Offers


So, you’re operating in a profitable niche, and you have traffic and an email list. What next?
Lots of bloggers jump into creating a course or book or community of some sort, but that’s a mistake, in my opinion. Before you start selling things, you need concrete evidence those things are what people want to buy. Otherwise, you’re risking wasting months or even years of your life trying to push a product no one wants.
The simplest way to obtain that evidence:
Affiliate offers.
By seeing what your audience buys from other people, you can get a much better sense of what they might want to buy from you. If you promote a product and it converts well, you should think about creating a similar product. If it doesn’t convert well, you should probably move on.
In other words, affiliate offers are a form of market research. As a bonus, you just so happen to get paid commissions on the products your customers buy in the process. So not only are you learning what your audience wants to buy, but you’re making money from your blog at the same time. Pretty sweet deal.
At Smart Blogger, I’ve tried lots of different offers. WordPress hosting, landing page tools, email marketing software, WordPress themes, and half a dozen different types of courses. Since we sell courses, I pay the most attention to the results from those programs, and here are a couple of lessons:
End to end solutions sell best. Courses promising to take someone from knowing nothing to making money far outperformed the others. For instance, here’s a screenshot showing us as the #1 affiliate for Danny Iny’s Course Builder’s Laboratory:
Tools with a clear connection to making money also sell better than the others. For instance, landing page builders. As proof, here’s a screenshot of our earnings from promoting LeadPages:
By themselves, neither of those promotions really moved the needle on our revenue, but they did teach us useful lessons that went into creating Freedom Machine, which brings us to…

6. Develop a Unique Mechanism


Before you think about launching your own products or services, there’s one essential point about human nature you need to understand:
Whenever anyone purchases anything, they expect to transition from where they are now (Point A) to where they want to be (Point B). For example…
When you buy pizza, you want to transition from being hungry and craving pizza (Point A) to tasting delicious pizza and feeling full (Point B).
When you hire a plumber, you want to transition from having a clogged, overflowing toilet (Point A) to having a normally functioning toilet (Point B).
When you buy a course on SEO, you want to transition from feeling bewildered and getting ignored by Google (Point A) to ranking for competitive terms and getting traffic.
The success of a product ultimately depends on helping customers make those transitions. If the customer doesn’t get to Point B, they typically view the experience as a failure.
So, here’s the magic question:
What makes you better equipped to deliver that transition than your competitors?
The answer to that question is what marketing expert Todd Brown calls your “unique mechanism.” It’s a little different from a “unique selling proposition,” because it’s not just something about you that’s different. It’s something about you or your method that makes you better able to help customers than anyone else.
For Freedom Machine, we have multiple unique mechanisms:
Get published on Medium — a platform with more than 60 million active readers looking for content
You don’t have to struggle with setting up your blog. We do it for you.
A research concierge who will do your research for you instead of having to pay for expensive tools
Content frameworks developed behind the scenes at Smart Blogger to produce popular content
A monetization methodology proven by our success with Smart Blogger
Advice on how to automate everything, so you eventually get more freedom
Weekly calls with me where I will help you set up your Freedom Machine
Combined, those unique mechanisms are EXTREMELY convincing at setting us up as the superior solution. Therefore, the product sells like hot cakes.
To be clear… it’s not necessary to have 7 different unique mechanisms. Sometimes just one is all you need (i.e. fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less). The core idea though is to make sure you are obviously far more capable than your competitors at delivering results.
Then all you have to do is…

7. Launch the Minimum Viable Funnel


Look around at successful entrepreneurs of any type, and you’ll find a surprising trend:
They tend to sell their products before the product is created.
To most people, this sounds like insanity at best or a disturbing lack of ethics at worst. How could you possibly ask people to buy something that doesn’t exist?
The answer:
It’s the same principle as Kickstarter.

You create a fancy minimal sales funnel of some sort (in this case, just a simple sales page), tell people the product is coming soon, and then wait to see if enough people sign up to justify making the product. If they don’t, you refund everyone’s money and start over.
In other words, it’s the final step in validating you have a viable product. The steps go like this:
Identify demand by promoting affiliate products
Find a unique mechanism that makes you clearly superior
Test the demand for that unique mechanism with a quick and dirty launch before you create the product
In my case, the minimum viable funnel was a 90 minute webinar. The first time I did it, there was no product, no follow-up sequence, nothing. It was just a bare-bones test.
And it resulted in $126,000 in sales live on the webinar.
Seeing that $30,000 sales was my minimum for success, we went ahead and created the first version of the product live with students. About a year later, it’s now approaching $1 million in sales.
That’s also just one product. We have others, and we have still more in the research pipeline.
And guess what I would do if I had to start over again?
The exact same thing. It’s not easy, it’s not fast, it’s not even that sexy, but it works.
Go to top
7 Ways to Make Money Blogging (with Examples!)
Now that you have a general framework to use, let’s jump into the specifics of how to make money blogging, including real-world examples you can study and learn from.
Here are the top 7 ways to make money blogging:

1. Online Courses and Workshops

Here at Smart Blogger, we make most of our income from online courses and workshops — over $1 million per year — but we are far from the only ones. Most of the people making serious money from their blogs are doing it through courses
Ramit Sethi reportedly crossed $10 million dollars in annual revenue with his suite of premium courses:

And it’s not only business or wealth focused topics that are doing well. You can find blogs on just about any topic monetizing with online courses. For instance, the popular interior designer Maria Killam has quite a few courses and workshops in her catalog:


2. Books and Ebooks

Quite a few writers have parlayed their blogging success into a major publishing deal. Mark Manson, for instance, published a post called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck in 2015. Millions of readers later, he got a book deal with Harper Collins and went on to sell over 3,000,000 copies in the US alone.

Self-published books have also been successful. The most notable success story among bloggers is probably James Altucher’s Choose Yourself, which is now sold over 500,000 copies:


3. Affiliate Marketing

If you’d like to earn some passive income from your blog, one of the best choices is affiliate marketing — recommending the products and services of other companies in exchange for a commission.
Here at Smart Blogger, we make more than $100,000 per year promoting affiliate products, most of that coming from casually recommending products we love like Siteground (affiliate link) and Ahrefs (affiliate link).
But there are lots of other examples too. For instance, Digital Photography School has reportedly made over $500,000 in Amazon commissions from promoting photography equipment:


4. Advertising

Normally, we’re not big fans of selling ads on your site. You need roughly a million visitors per year for the large advertising networks to take you seriously, and affiliate marketing is almost always more profitable and just as passive.
That being said, some niches like recipes, fashion, and news are hard to monetize through many of the other methods mentioned here, and they get LOTS of traffic. In that case, putting a few ads on your site can make sense as a supplementary income source.
For example, here’s a screenshot of a 2016 income report from Share the Yummy:

Normally, you make money by joining a network. Nearly anyone can join Google AdSense, for example, and you can later grow into more selective networks like Mediavine and AdThrive.

5. Speaking Gigs

If your blog takes off, and you start being recognized as an authority in your space, you might be surprised by how many invitations you get to speak at conferences. And it’s amazingly profitable. I typically make a minimum of $10,000 per speech and it can go as high as $100,000 when you count product sales resulting from the speech.
Not bad for a 60-90 minute talk.


6. Consulting/Coaching

While this certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, doing a bit of coaching or consulting over the phone can earn you a surprisingly nice living, even when your audience is small. I don’t do consulting anymore, but the last time I did, I charged $1,000 an hour with a six-month waiting list.
But I’m not the only one. Going back to Maria, again, she’s been quite innovative coming up with ways to do design consultations by photo and email, currently charging $1,275 per room:

You can make this work in almost any space. You just need to know what you’re doing and be confident in the value you are providing to clients.

7. Selling Freelance Services

The next step up from consulting is to actually do it for them.
Typically, you’ll make more money with this than anything else, but it’s also the most draining and time intensive. That being said, I’ve seen bloggers make six-figure incomes with no more than a few thousand readers on their blog, essentially using their blog as a lead mechanism to get clients.
It’s so profitable, even if successful bloggers continue to do it. For example, Elna Cain continues to sell her freelance writing services:

If you’re a writer, designer, photographer, programmer, or other service provider where your skills can be sold digitally instead of you having to be there in person, you might want to consider it from day one. All you really need to get started is a contact form for clients to reach out to you.
Let’s close with some questions and answers, shall we?
Go to top
FAQ about How to Make Money Blogging
So, we’ve covered the basic process. Now let’s step back for a moment and answer some of the questions I hear the most often:
Do bloggers make money?
I certainly do, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. I think you’re asking…
“Is it reasonable for me to learn how to make money blogging?”
The no BS answer:
It depends on how patient and persistent you are.
Starting a blog from scratch is just as difficult as starting any business. For example, it requires the same time and effort as starting your own restaurant, software company, or accounting service. Yes, those businesses are wildly different, but the first few years are usually the same story: low income, lots of stress, big learning curve.
If you want a more concrete answer than that, we’ve found it takes even our smartest, most dedicated students 3-6 years to make enough money from blogging to quit their jobs. And that sounds like a long time, but so what? 3-6 years to be able to work from anywhere in the world, take a vacation whenever you want, and probably have passive income until the day you die?
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
How much money can you make from blogging?
The fact is, most bloggers make as much money as any other type of entrepreneur:
Nothing.
And it’s not because there’s no money in it. This blog makes more than $1 million per year, for God sakes, and it’s nowhere close to the most profitable blog out there. Blogs like The Penny Hoarder, Moz, and Lifehacker power businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

So why aren’t more bloggers rich?
The truth is, most people quit. They start a blog, realize it’s hard work, and walk away.
But if you’re patient and persistent?
You can make millions. I have. So have lots of other smart, dedicated entrepreneurs.
You just have to do the work. Consistently. For years.
Can you do that?
Then yeah, I think you can make six figures at least. Maybe more.
How do you make money blogging? (Or, How do bloggers make money?)
As I mentioned earlier, there 7 popular ways to make money blogging:
Offering online course and workshops
Writing books and eBooks
Affiliate marketing (recommending products and services in exchange for a commission)
Blog ads
Speaking at conferences
Offering your expertise as a consultant or coach
Selling freelance services such as writing, designing, and programming
Which is best for you will depend your blog, your expertise, and your situation.
How do you start your own blog for free?
Lots of people say you can’t. They tell you to buy a domain name and a hosting account and a premium WordPress theme.
But I think that’s nonsense.
You can get started for free within five minutes on Medium. They also have over 60 million monthly readers, so you can get a lot of exposure there if you get featured.

This article walks you through that strategy, step-by-step.
Alternatively, you can write on WordPress.com, Linkedin, or any of the other platforms out there. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, start writing and learning as soon as possible.
Once people start sharing your articles, and you begin to understand how everything works, then you can go through the trouble of setting up your own site, installing WordPress, and all that jazz. Until then though, it’s just a headache you don’t need.
What are the most popular blogging platforms?
WordPress is by far the most popular. No one else is even close.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best for everyone. There are several — and most of them are free.
As I mentioned earlier, I think Medium is a good place to start. You can also create your own blog with tools like Blogger, Squarespace, Wix, Joomla, and countless others.
What are the top blogs about how to make money blogging?
I’d like to think Smart Blogger is the best (and most comprehensive) site on the topic, but it’s by no means the only one. Not all of these talk about how to make money blogging, but together, they give you a solid foundation:— Brian Dean doesn’t talk much about how to make money blogging, but he’s one of the top experts and educators in the world on SEO. What I love about his content is how easy to understand it is, despite covering some incredibly complex topics. If you’re a beginner, prepare for a treat.
— In my opinion, my friends over at Digital Marketer are the best in the world at monetizing traffic. If you’d like to learn about marketing, list building, customer research, automation, or funnels, there’s no better source. If you’re interested in using your blog to build passive income, Pat Flynn is a master at showing you how to build a tiny little business that can support you and the lifestyle you want. Both his blog and podcast are excellent.
Want me to walk you through all of the steps?
​
Here's a free workshop where I'll walk you through the steps, so you can understand EXACTLY what you have to do to be successful.
The Bottom Line about How to Make Money Blogging
Is it possible?
Absolutely, but only if you treat it as a business.
Yes, you can start your blog as a side project. Yes, you can slowly grow it in the background. Yes, you can turn your blog into a source of passive income that eventually lets you quit your job, travel, spend more time with your family, whatever you want to do.
But like anything worthwhile, it’s hard work getting there.
You have to study. Practice. Master your craft.
If you love writing, I can’t imagine a better business, though. Not only is blogging a great way to get your writing noticed, but it’s a great way to connect with people around the world who need you, teach them what you know, and get paid pretty damn well in exchange.
There’s never a day I regret dedicating myself to blogging. Never.
It’s not just because of the money, either. It’s because I also get to do what I love and help people at the same time.
What could be better than that?

So a couple of things to say from the beginning. I am smart enough to use excel and do some math, which is to say I am not that smart, and I am stupid enough to think that I could somehow figure out a way to use parlays to get free money. Secondly, for some this is going to be super trivial stuff, and for other this isn't going to be worth anything. Regardless, I am putting it out there because you really never know when some random piece of math, or a random discovery/idea you had and threw away is the last piece of a puzzle for someone else.
I had never bet on sports using a book and I knew very little about sports betting before this summer. One of my best friends bets quite a bit and I would pick up tid-bits from him all the time. He talked to me about parlays and having no idea what it was I looked into it. After a quick search and him explaining it some more, I figured it would be worth it to see what would happen if you bet every "leg" of a combination of different parlays. ( That is what I have been calling it myself, what I mean by a leg is lets say you are betting on two moneylines for a basketball game, there are four possible parlays, or legs, win win, lose lose, win lose, and lose win, each parlay would be a leg as I am calling it in the overall system). This is probably already sounding stupid, which it is. I settled on combining soccer with any regular sport like basketball, because its not uncommon to find games where all the odds are positive for the two teams winning and a draw. This meant a total of 6 parlays.
What I did in Excel was pretty rudimentary. I calculated the decimal odds for each parlay. Then I chose an arbitrary amount of money I split between the 6 parlays, say 200$. 200$/6 was 33.3$. (33.33*the odds for the parlay)-200$=profit. Minus 200 because thats the total amount you have spent across the 6 bets. that profit number will always be negative because you will always lose money if you do this. Take that profit and divide by the odds of the parlay. That is how much money you need to add to the original 33.3$ to "maximize" your gain (what you will really be doing is minimizing your losses across the board). Once you do this for each leg, the actual amount that you bet will be different, the lower odds will require more and the higher odds will require less. using the new bet amount, multiply again by the odds, and subtract the total the new betting amounts, for your "profit". All of the profits should be the same number, and they will all be negative.
This number is something you can find just from looking at the odds, I called it the "Parlay Goodness" number. The Parlay Goodness number tells you the percentage of your principle you will lose if you bet all the legs of a parlay. The equation I made assumes that you are using soccer + a regular sport with no draws, and assumes all the soccer odds are positive. As I am looking at my spreadsheet it would take a little to long to describe, so I will link it somehow if you are interested.
The next obvious step on this path was to determine if I could remove a leg, or two legs, and have the operation still be profitable. Remove meaning not bet, this would lower the amount of overhead, but now leaves the hole open for you to lose because you did not bet a certain outcome. I tested 4 different situations. Two where I removed only one leg (5/6), and two where I removed two legs( 4/6).
In the first 5/6 I removed the favorite. I should say that for this part of the story, I converted each of the parlay decimal odds into percentage odds, or the odds it would hit/win. When I removed the "favorite" I removed the leg of the parlay with the highest percentage odds. I did a different scenario using the least likely parlay to happen. The give and take here is that the favorite requires the largest bet size, but is "favored", so while your taking out more overhead, your leaving yourself open to not having bet the most "likey" scenario. When you remove the least likely, you don't really remove much overhead, because it was the one that required the lowest bet size.
The same sort of thing was done for the 4/6, the two favorites were removed and the two least favorite removed.
In order to see if any of these would be profitable over the long term, meaning say if you bet 100 times. I said that (win $/loss$) > (% of the time you lost/ % of the time you won) then you would make money. Where win $ means how much you win if the parlay hits one of the legs you bet, and loss $ is how much you lose if the outcome is one of the leg(s) you didn't bet. The percentage of the time you won was found by adding up those percentages of each leg I talked about earlier, subtracting that from the total percentage of each leg added up, dividing by the total percentage. Then doing 1-that number so it was how often you won not how often you lost, then multiplying by 100 for a %. That is the % of the time you should win, and 100-that is the % of the time you should lose. Throwing all that information into the aforementioned equation should tell you if you have found something interesting or not.
If your actually interested I uploaded my spreadsheets into google. Its a mess, but you may find something you want. For most people this was a stupid post to read, sorry bro. For people who are actually good at excel, sorry bro. For everyone who is a real sports bettor, sorry bro.
​
TLDR; I did some math because I am stupid.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DMzSSiwLurQGHTV8XAgXOaeDbHUk-n-view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KyWPmfE90yszfrRanJNFbUWsQQVb-l54/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qJW9-Dox_62ytA8FBltO_2GHOHLol3WQ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QXO_FWEqUYgrPZ7ulShogJ5DID_pucm1/view?usp=sharing
​
EDIT: I would like to add that if you could ever "insure" your bet so to speak, or bet against your self, as in bet a friend or your book that you would lose money, then you be able to use all this to make money.