1.5 Million, and Counting

At the current 2017 hit rate of 770 a day, this blog will reach one and a half million hits in less than five days time, and next month it will celebrate its ninth anniversary. There may be other sports investment themed blogs out there with greater longevity, in which case please enlighten me and I shall add them to the blog roll, but I'm not aware of any.

I certainly wasn't the first. John The Gambler, aka John Tuohy, was one of the first, starting in January 2006, and I was surprised to see he is still active, although he appears to be confusing his blog for Twitter with posts these days that are usually 140 characters or less:

He's now looking for work as an actor or model, which is a little different from trading.

Mark Iverson was blogging before me too, starting in December 2006, and still active on Twitter today, even though his blog has been retired and he seems to have lost the plot as a trader by heading into... horse racing! 

Scott Ferguson just beat me to it, starting his blog Sport is made for betting in January of 2008 and still going strong although with a horse racing bent which isn't to everyone's taste. But great that he has blogged steadily for so long.

One more blog has fallen by the wayside this week, that of Winners Win on Sports, with Flash explaining that:

I don’t enjoy writing any more and I’m not making any money out of it, not that I’ve tried to make money from it. So if the enjoyment’s gone then it’s time to call it a day.

Indeed. The almost two years that Flash managed to keep blogging was longer than most. 

The Full Time Betting Blog started in September 2010, but has lain dormant for five months now, although still registering around 1,500 hits a day. I used to be quite envious of this enormous hit rate, but a look at the numbers shows an interesting pattern:

The hits per day is consistently almost exactly 1,500. Now I'm not an expert in Forensic Data Analysis, but that hit consistency could look a little suspicious to me were I that way inclined. 

If a dormant blog is getting 1,500 hits a day, then well done, but the pattern of hits for a blog isn't usually so flat. Here's this blog's chart over the past twelve weeks, with a daily average of 658 hits, as an example of how choppy the daily totals can be:

All very harmless, and I'll just have to content myself with falling farther and farther behind despite continuing to produce top quality posts. It's not a race or a destination though, it's a journey. No doubt the day will arrive when like Flash, I don't enjoy writing any more, or at least don't enjoy writing about sports and betting any more. I've always enjoyed writing, so that is unlikely to ever change. 

I suspect that most readers stumble on this blog whilst looking for the usual "it can be done, all you need is desire, all you need is my book, all you need is my software, all you need are my tips, all you need is to attend my training course" etc., but while it can still be done ("it" being making a long-term profit from betting or trading) it is not easy, it's not as easy as it once was, and it can't be done by any one. 

"You need a very particular set of skills; skills you have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make you a nightmare for other traders..."

I'm quite Taken with that quote. The journey this blog has detailed should be in part inspirational, in part cautionary, but never dull. For sure, some humourless people, and readers with Asperger Syndrome, miss the jokes, the subtlety, and take everything literally, but I think most people understand my dry British sense of humour and don't take me too seriously.  

This post is number 2,259 and, as I have joked before, while not all of them have been hugely interesting admittedly, the other 2,258 have been...