You can turn it into a profitable activity, if you play it smart. So don't do things like spending all your money on it.
And you need to know when you have to stop. If you lose your money from your first deposit then you need to stop playing. Otherwise you will lose to much.
Playing smart isn't enough to make profit out of gambling since intelligence isn't the only factor that will make you win or loose , you can have all the stats and put the best strategy in order to win your bet , yet something unpredictable happens and everything goes south . Knowing when to stop is something most people don't do , but loosing from the 1st deposit isn't really an indicator that you should stop . You should also play a game that you are quite familiar with , but even with that , luck will always be the master .
i don't want to thinking about profitable activity or not because i know by playing gambling, we don't have many chance to win except we have a luck in our games. even for playing smart, we can not always win the game so in this case, i think its better to playing gambling for just fun and without any emotions. if we are loss then its fine and if we are win then we can consider that is bonus for us.
then don't expect to get profit , or at least don't put your expectation too high . it is indeed as i believe no way you can make it profitable in the long run, even when you feel lately you always get the profit and so confident to say that loud.
it is only works for the short term , once you continue to play , things could turned back around.