Lots of services offer horse racing tips.
You can get them via email, in your newspaper, from a phone line or by SMS text message.
But is it possible to get profitable horse racing tips? After all, if the tips really did make a profit, why would someone sell them to you when they could be reducing the odds and cutting their own winnings.
For starters, much depends on the service.
Newspaper tipsters are paid by the publication they write for.
They may bet on some of the races but it's unlikely they'll place a bet on every single race, even though the paper they write for will probably expect them to suggest a possible winner for all races being run.
Their favourite tip of the day is usually called the "nap".
The next category of service are the phone and text lines that can be found on the racing pages of most newspapers.
These charge a premium rate for the call (full details of the price have to be stated in the advert) and then send you to a recording which tells you the latest tips.
If you've ever dialled one of these numbers, you'll know that they are designed to keep you on the call as long as possible.
After all, if they gave you their best tips in the first few seconds they wouldn't earn much money.
The call revenue is split between the telephone companies and the person providing the tips.
You'll be able to tell how well these telephone tipsters have been doing by the recency of the results in their advert.
If their tips won yesterday, you'll see those results in the advert.
If the horses failed to win then you'll see older results or generic claims such as "big gamble planned".
Of course, recent results are no guide to future results - each race is unique - but consistent form over several weeks or months shows the tipster is good at their job.
Another option is to subscribe to a horse racing tipping service that sends out tips by email or makes them accessible via a password protected website.
These range in price from a few pounds a day upwards to as much as the service thinks it can get.
Higher prices are often justified by scarcity - only a limited number of people will be getting the tips.
As with the phone lines, results will vary but higher prices don't necessarily mean better tips.
The thing to remember with all tipping services is that they will go through ebbs and flows.
Horses are complex creatures and we can't fully understand them.
Think how difficult it is to get an answer from an athlete and then take that difficulty up a level! One of the main reasons that horse racing tipsters sell their tips on is because the bookmakers will often limit the amount that can be placed as a bet.
Each bookmaker has their own limis and these can vary from race to race - a small evening meeting at, say, Wolverhampton will likely have lower limits than the Grand National where lots of money is being staked.
Selling on their tips is one way that tipsters can boost their income without being subject to the vagaries of the bookies.
Ultimately, the only way to find out if a tipping service is profitable or not is to use it.
Keep records so that you know how well you're doing.
But don't despair if there are a few days when you only have a handful of winners - it's the longer term results that are important.