Following Tips of ANY sort is the way to the poor house.
The most popular tips such as pricewise and Huge Taylor (attheraces.com) probably show a profit in the long term IF you get on every selection at the advised prices (Impossible for many reasons), even if you do get on the bookies will restrict you to pennies in no time, even if you are not showing a profit, they will have you down as an arber.
Now if we are taking newspaper tips if you are cute and do some leg work (I am not going to do it for anyone

) There is a definite link between certain tipsters and price movement. This isn't rocket science honestly. As a footnote to this, it backs up what I was saying a while back regarding betting strategy and betting shop behaviour patterns. I suggest anyone that wanted to understand why the last 5 minutes of a market behaves as it does to spend the afternoon in a betting shop and just observe pinter behaviour. I believe this (broadly speaking) is mirrored to a certain extent on the exchanges, although there are other factors to take into account.
To the original poster. Please don't waste you money following tipsters in newspapers. They have to provide a selection in every race. many of them work on the TV racing channels as pundits too. If you listen to them they are reluctant to commit themselves to a confident selection on most races. Somedays Jonathan Neesom (he does spotlight in the RP some days) will not give a selection in any race. But he has done in the paper for the same card. That is his job, but his money stays in his pocket. There are all other manner of complexities too. The main one being ground change, Non runners, and VALUE. When the papers go to press none of these factors can be taken into account. Avoid please