How I Make $8,000/Month Watching Sports
Note: This business is no longer running. It was started in 2019 and ended in 2024. Reason for closure: Shut down.
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
I am a 27 year old male from the South West United States. From an early age I was always fascinated with the idea of being an entrepreneur. My first business I remember making was creating a CD burning company in 2nd grade. Since then I was constantly brainstorming or thinking of ways to make a buck.
A huge passion of mine is sports, I grew up watching Sportscenter every night and love playing and watching sports. Another thing I love is numbers. They never lie. Statistics and numbers are so eloquent as they can convey so much information for those willing and able to find correlations within raw data.
The business I run is Moneypicks. (Instagram: @Money.picks). I use analytic models to determine the outcome of sporting events. I combine my love of sports and numbers to build proprietary systems that produce winners at a 60%+ rate.
I have a masters degree from a top 10 business school and have a high level knowledge of NHL, Soccer, NFL and MLB. My product is a membership to my site which gives you access to all my picks, and my clients are a wide range of people from different walks of life. My typical customer is a male from the age of 18-35 who loves watching sporting events.
I am currently making $200-$600 per day with almost zero overhead. I provide picks to World Series of Poker Champions, Plumbers, Doctors, Moms and everyone in between. I have been featured on the #1 Betting MMA podcast in the world and hoping to continue to have the opportunity to help teach people how to crush Vegas.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I started betting on sports during the World Cup South Africa in 2008. Like 99% of bettors I was completely over my head. I spent the next 10 years learning the hard way. I would not be writing this paragraph if I didn’t go through lots of losing. Humans only learn when we fail. Remember that.
I never went into this to make money. I was just helping people. Doing this gained the trust of my community before I ever asked for a dollar, so when I finally did start charging business flooded through the door.
Among my friends it got around that I had sharp picks. I started off by texting the picks to my friends for years. When the list of people getting picks got to be too much work a friend suggested I make an Instagram page to get them out.
This is where things get interesting. My page got very popular very fast. I went from 0 followers to 4000 in a little over 3 months doing absolutely nothing besides posting winning bets. A big part of this growth was during the last NHL season I was hitting at 67%. (this is confirmed on my Instagram page if you want to fact check)
Up until May of this year I was giving out all the information for free. I work a full-time sales job and to me, it was just a hobby and the love I got from giving out free winners was enough for me.
I then watched a documentary on Showtime about sports betting. They showed a guy named Vegas Dave (who I have spoken to at length on IG messages before ever watching the documentary) and he was making more money in a few hours than I make in a year at my 9-5. That’s when the lightbulb went off. Because I was providing the same service as him, at a higher level; and I already had an Instagram page with 4000 followers as potential customers.
I never went into this to make money. I was just helping people. Doing this gained the trust of my community before I ever asked for a dollar, so when I finally did start charging business flooded through the door.
Take us through the process of designing your product.
The interesting feature of this business is that there is no product. I sell information.
There are certain key metrics for various sports. In hockey some are goals for, GAA, day of the week, etc. In baseball its ERA, WHIP, Runs for and against, etc. My 10+ years of experience has allowed me to identify these key metrics. And then use the published data available to us, and reconstruct it into a formula that can accurately predict games down to the final score.
If you really want it, then put away the Xbox and Netflix when you get home from work. Spend your weekends grinding. Live like a prince now to live like a king forever.
These formulas are 100% proprietary information that I developed on my own through trial and error and meticulous back testing. It was not an easy process and the amount of time and energy I have poured into perfecting the formulas for each sport is in the thousands of hours.
Although i do have a formal education in the way of a Bachelors and a Masters degree, I never took any stats classes or even bothered to care about learning to use excel until i realized i could use it to gain an edge in Sports Betting. If I had realized this in college I would have 100% taken Statistics and Excel focused classes. Because i got a late start on this i had to turn to Youtube / Google to learn the concepts, then applied my own ideas and thoughts from years of pouring over sports analytics.
This is a super important point because every single person reading this has the power to learn something totally foreign to you right now. Never before in history have we had access to so much information. You can’t ever lose that thirst for learning new things. Some of the most successful people in the world all have that in common.
It’s very important to remember one thing, I am predicting the outcomes of events that will be played by humans. Humans are irrational. All the stats can point to one outcome and if the pitcher’s girlfriend cheated on him last night, or the starting goalie goes down with an injury, then you can throw all the numbers out the window. Stats are an important tool for your tool box but they are not everything.
Like any type of investing the most important quality you can possess is discipline. Financial discipline, to always bet the same amount on every game. Emotional discipline, to not chase your losses and to bet an amount that does not elicit an emotion response if you lose. This can be a slippery slope just like the stock market, and you have to be robotic with your decisions. I don't take a team because I like their jerseys, im taking that team because they have won 7 of the last 8 on Tuesday Nights, facing a left handed pitcher with an ERA of 5.00 or higher.
My startup costs have been minimal. I paid a lawyer to form an LLC, paid for a website to be designed and hosted for 3 years. Also working with a marketing agency to produce the content for my IG page. I would say my overhead is less than $750 per month. I also buy sports memorabilia to give away to my members on a monthly basis.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Launching the business was a fluid process. As mentioned previously I began the Instagram page in November of 2018. I was just stealing people’s memes and reposting them and then also posting results from my bets.
As this started to grow, I had marketing agencies reach out to me to try and work with me. I rebuffed most until one that really caught my eye contacted me. I have been working with them ever since. My page started to get much more professional after I began working with this agency:
BEFORE :
AFTER:
At the same time I started working with this agency, I began looking for a web developer on Fiverr.
Once I find someone good to work with, I paid him $500 to make my website. If you are thinking about starting your own business, Fiverr can be a great place to turn to for various things. I paid for everything with money from my day job.
I am very lucky to have an amazing day job, but no matter if you have the best job in the world or the worst. We ALL have time to make things happen outside the 9-5. I think that too many people get wrapped up in the idea that they are too busy.
I wake up at 6am to work an hour on Moneypicks every day, and then work from 5pm until I go to sleep. Believe it or not I actually have a third and fourth business that I make time for. If you really want it then put away the xbox and Netflix when you get home from work. Spend your weekends grinding. My mantra: Live like a prince now to live like a king forever.
In May, I officially launched as a paid service. The reaction was insane. I made $3000.00 in the first week and $8000.00 the first month. I got to 100 clients in only 36 days. It blew my mind. It was like a dream.
I offer 3 different packages as of today. Daily for $12.50, Weekly for $50.00 and Monthly for $150.00. What you get in this package is access to the members area of my website and a betting school within that members area. The packages only differ in the length of time you can access the members area. I do not have it setup on a recurring basis simply because the amount of time I would spend dealing with customer service issues is not worth the headache or extra few bucks I might make.
My prices are on the low end in the industry, the opposite end of the spectrum people pay $500 per pick or $15,000 per month. The two guys that charge this amount are much older and from a different era, I don't believe they utilize the technology that my generation wields and they don't connect to their community.
My biggest learning lesson was just trying to go too fast once I got it in my head I wanted to start charging for my information. I had lots of issues with the website. I blame myself for not spending enough time testing the site as much as I should have. Luckily I have lots of communication channels with my customers and an awesome relationship with them, so they understood about any issues that did arise.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
My biggest recommendation for growth is to just stick with it. I posted on my Instagram page every single day. Bad days and good days. I engaged with people. I posted memes. Tried to stay relevant with any and all sports news. But really the biggest thing that attracted customers was that they were making lots of money taking my picks.
The steps I took to increase traffic and sales was just to say yes to opportunities. I had a lot of different sports accounts reach out to partner on different projects. I would usually say yes just to gain exposure. I partnered with the #1 MMA betting podcast in the world @fistfulofcashpodcast and that was a great move.
I also have been buying sports memorabilia and giving it away as a free gift to one random member each month. I do random discount codes and email old clients that left the service just to check in with them. I post a lot of DMs from clients, when I’m doing well or they are showing love.
Sometimes i will post a random charity link and i'll put it out there on my IG that if you send me a screenshot of you donating to them then i'll give free picks for that day. But one of my main focuses is to just teach people how to bet properly. Las Vegas makes billions of dollars fleecing money off of the average joe, I want to show people how to turn the tables.
The number one way I retain clients is by being honest and truthful. This industry is 95% con artists and scams. So when I post my results, or try and teach people how to be better at this then it really reinforces why the clients are working with me.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
The business today is thriving. I am excited about the direction it is heading and think that the growth of the industry will do good things for Moneypicks.
I have had 69,000+ website views and sold 275+ memberships. I am working to grow my facebook presence and am looking to do some SEO on my website. My instagram following is nearing 5000 followers and I am excited about the prospect of breaking that number.
The day to day operations start with waking up early at 6am to answer DMs and work on a morning post of my results. I will then post that to generate some sales and input data to analyze that days slate of games.
I will post my picks a few hours before games then let everyone know picks are up via a story post on my instagram and letting the telegram group known to login to the website. During the evening I post story posts that show the results of the bets and respond to DMs again in the evening.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I have learned a ton during this process. Balancing multiple ideas, jobs, businesses can be fun but you can also make mistakes and miss opportunities if you have your eggs in too many baskets.
One opportunity I missed recently was a client who is a World Series of Poker Champion and Gold Bracelet winner had made a final table in a tournament in Vegas this summer. He texted me to get him some Moneypicks gear ASAP so he could wear it on a nationally viewed event. I missed him by a day! I didn’t move quick enough.
A lot of times you need to act quickly. Opportunity does not wear a wristwatch. Good decisions I have made were working with a marketing agency that can help manage my social media and create content for the company so that I could focus on other tasks.
A major trend that has helped me immensely is the huge popularity of sports and the proliferation of sports betting. It is becoming legal across the country and the industry will grow immensely over the next 5 years.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
- Google Sheets
- Wordpress
- Telegram
- Fiverr
- Excel
- Paypal
- ESPN
- baseball-reference
- teamrankings
- Gmail
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
“Your wish is your command” by Kevin Trudeu. I went from making $0 per month from moneypicks to making $8000 per month literally weeks after listening to this podcast.
The law of attraction is something I have been practicing in my life without realizing it, and this podcast showed me how to harness it.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Make it about something more than money. Care about the people. Build a community. Build a brand! Money is great, but knowing that you are impacting hundreds maybe thousands of people in a positive way is really great. In an ideal world i would love to have a way to get in front of even more people to teach them how to properly invest but also some of the information I have learned along the way. I think building a platform is a greater opportunity than creating a business that simply makes money. Money is a means to an end, but true fulfillment comes from reaching for something greater.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I am looking for someone who can create content on illustrator/PS, IG marketing, growth marketing, SEO. I am also looking for someone who can scrape data from the web into google sheets/excel. Anyone with connections that you might think can grow the company.
Where can we go to learn more?
- www.Betmoneypicks.com
- Instagram: @money.picks
- money.picks.team
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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