#smarkets

[floral-sabbatical-blog]

The best matched betting exchange

Matched betting would simply not be possible without a betting exchange. You couldn’t make a profit every time you bet because you wouldn’t be able to cover all outcomes which would leave you wide open to taking huge risks associated with gambling. Thankfully, betting exchanges are around and do exist on the internet which makes matched betting possible and giving many people in the UK a very good income in their spare time. It allows 40,000 Brits to make £1,000 a month tax-free in their spare time and this wouldn’t be at all possible without a betting exchange. You may be Okay thinking, what is a betting exchange? A betting exchange simply enables people with differing opinions to come and bet against each other with the betting exchange operator charging a small commission on winning bets.

The easiest way to describe a betting exchange would be imagine if you think Man Utd will win and your friend thinks Man Utd will not win. To make it more exciting, you place a bet on a betting exchange on Man Utd to win. Meanwhile your friend places a lay bet on Man Utd to win so you have matched your bets. If Man Utd win, you will earn your friend’s money. If Man Utd lose or draw, your friend will win your money. Because you can lay selections on the betting exchange, this is what makes matched betting possible and it simply would be impossible without one.

Matched betting works because you can place a back bet at the bookmakers and then place a lay bet on the Smarkets betting exchange. This means that you have created a risk-free position. Yes, so whatever happens you will either make a small qualifying loss across all selections or make a profit across all selections no matter what happens. As the industry of betting is now even more competitive than ever, you can take advantage of the free bet signup offers they all offer you upon signing up to them and using a betting exchange you are able to profit from them. Some of the offers out there are big and can see you walking away with £100 a time. On a betting exchange there is a term called liability which is the amount of money you will need to ensure you have in a betting exchange account to lay a bet of successfully. A matched betting calculator will tell you how much you need to have laid off along with the liability figure so you can double check the figures to ensure you are doing the lay bet correctly.

A betting exchange has made betting a lot more enjoyable for millions of people in the world and has allowed people to make a living from trading the exchanges. It has also enabled people to risk free money from matched betting along with providing entertainment for mug gamblers as they can now bet against each other which makes the whole betting experience a lot more enjoyable. My personal view is the Smarkets is the best betting exchange, read this Smarkets review for my information.

[hangingfromachandelier-blog]

All about betting exchanges

A betting exchange allows you to both place a back bet on a selection and a lay bet on a selection. All bookmakers will only accept bets where you back a selection with them so the bookmaker is essentially laying a bet and you are backing with them. Since the turn of millennium, betting exchanges have been brought to life thanks to the internet and it has totally revolutionised the way people place bets. Normal everyday people can now take the role of the bookmaker by laying bets and this has enabled people to trade on the betting exchanges and earn very good money by buying and selling risk. There are many different ways to profit from the betting exchanges too which is great for those who like taking different levels of risk. So if you like taking lower risks you can use a low risk strategy and if you like taking high risks, you can do this also on a betting exchange using more risky methods.

Imagine buying a bag of oranges for £1.00 and then selling them on a few moments later for £3.00. This is what a betting exchange enables you to do. Buy low and sell higher than your buy price to make a profit. A betting exchange has also brought to life a new method of betting where all the risk is removed. This method is called matched betting. Matched betting involves placing a back bet at the bookmaker and then placing a lay bet at a betting exchange so that all possible outcomes are covered and no matter what happens you will make the same amount of profit across all particular outcomes. Imagine watching your favourite sports team knowing that you will make money no matter what happens. Instead of shouting at the television and praying for your bet to come in, all these stresses are not known in the world of matched betting. You simply back Team A at the bookmaker and then place a lay bet on Team A on the betting exchange.

Matched betting is a process that has to be learned before you can dive deep and begin to make money from it. If you do not take the time to learn how to do matched betting, you could find yourself looking down the barrel of a loss and you will more than likely be gambling with your hard earned money rather than matched betting with it. The truth is once you have taken the time to learn how matched betting works and how a betting exchange works; you can find yourself making a very lucrative income in your spare time alongside your current commitments. That’s right, there is no need to leave the house and it can be done all at home provided you have access to an internet connection as well as a laptop or mobile phone. Matched betting really is the easiest way to make money from the internet and thanks to betting exchanges and the rise of them, it is now totally possible to make a living from home doing this. One of the best betting exchanges is Smarkets, have a read of this Smarkets review for my in depth reading.

[intranation]

Posterous's idea of customer service, and where I differ

I've been dabbling with Posterous as a potential way of mitigating Tumblr's recent downtime issues.

The tl;dr version is that I didn't like their service, and suggest some improvements.

My experience with Posterous

After importing my Tumblr blog into their system (which was all very smooth), I tried to edit a post and remove it, using one of their combo buttons:

Unfortunately, in both Safari and Chrome (so WebKit, basically), their Javascript is broken. It fails, and then fails to clobber the event propagation, so the page reloads (as obviously, not being progressively enhanced, all their links are empty).

A cursory look in my console shows really basic errors like:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'addClassName' of null

or:

Uncaught TypeError: Property '$' of object [object DOMWindow] is not a function

Now, being the responsible developer I am, I write into them with a bug report (this is on January 29, almost 2 months ago):

Every time I click the "Edit | [down arrow]" button (the down arrow specifically), the page goes to a blank page. I assume this is because the JS is broken so you're not cancelling the click event on the link. I'm using Safari 5.0.3 on Snow Leopard.

Not the most gracious email, I'm sure we can all agree, but then again this also seems like the kind of basic error that shouldn't happen in the first place.

Yesterday, on March 20th (almost 2 months after submitting the error report), I get the following response from Posterous:

Hello Brad,

Should you still be experience the issue you emailed us about, try clearing safari's cache and cookies and trying again, or using another browser.

Sorry for the delayed response,

Theodore

I mean, what? This is a fundamentally broken part of the site, and the best they can tell is is:

They haven't tried verifying that the bug still exists (or even existed in the first place);

They certainly haven't tried to fix it; and

Their solution is to clear everything or use another browser.

And I waited two months for that? As a professional developer it's my educated opinion that the errors I describe above are easy to notice and probably easy to fix. And they can't even be bothered checking them.

No thanks Posterous, I'll be sticking where I am for now.

What I would have done

At Smarkets customer service is a part of our business that we take very seriously. I would have responded roughly as follows:

Reply within a day, telling the customer we'll look into it, and apologise for the inconvenience they're experiencing (note that this is mostly a form letter, and thus is very easy to reply with);

Work out if there's actually a bug:

If there is, file it, and schedule a fix; or

If not, work out why the user is experiencing it anyway.

Reply to the user with either your explanation for what they might be doing wrong, and find out if they can give you more information; or

Tell them when they can expect a fix, as you've found the bug. Give them some kudos in the email for finding the bug for them.

At a startup, every customer is valuable and should be treated like they're important and that their opinion matters. These are trivial things to get right, and prevent long-winded disgruntled blog posts like this.