There’s no doubting that it’s always useful to have extra ways to make money. Whether it’s to treat yourself to something nice, build savings or for a cheeky night out (COVID permitting!). In this matched betting guide I’ll provide an introduction to getting started. I’ll also include some top tips, teach you how to maximise your returns and share how much money I’ve made.
I’ve personally found matched betting to be the most profitable way to gain extra funds. Hopefully after reading this post you’ll be well on your way to growing your bank balance too!
Be warned – this matched betting guide is the longest post I’ve written, so do feel free to skip around with the table of contents!
Is Matched Betting Real?
Trying to grow your savings through betting sounds like a terrible idea, with high risk and odds stacked against you. And it usually would be. But wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to push the odds in your favour, massively increasing the chances for you to walk away with a profit?
Well… it turns out there is! Thinking this sounds too good to be true? I thought so too, until I starting matched betting over four years ago. As a PhD student I ended up made more money matched betting than anything else besides my PhD stipend.
I can confirm that matched betting is 100% real. It also allows you to make money conveniently and flexibly from anywhere, including your bed! For these reasons matched betting is my top suggestion for making money as a student. You can check out my whole list of favourite ways to make money as a student in the separate post:
How Does Matched Betting Work?
Matched betting effectively boils down to combining clever betting techniques with promotional offers to increase the odds of you walking away with a profit.
All of the offers we complete are promotions which betting companies use to promote their platforms and entice both new and existing customers to spend their money. No matter how good a typical customer thinks they may be at picking a winning outcome, ultimately it comes down to chance and the odds are not on your side.
The difference with matched betting is that we don’t need to rely on luck and can calculate our expected returns no matter what the outcome of the event we’re betting on actually is.
How can we do this? Well, with matched betting you match your bet with a “lay” stake. Placing these opposite bets provides you with the same outcome no matter the result of the event. This massively reduces the risk and means that we can increase our chances to walk away with a profit. Don’t worry, this isn’t as complicated as it sounds and we’ll go into more detail throughout this matched betting guide!
In this matched betting guide we’ll cover matched betting for sports offers, as well as casino games and bingo. There are examples throughout to help explain how matched betting works: I appreciate that it’s a little confusing at first.
Personally, from the start I’ve always used a matched betting subscription service and have found them invaluable. They tell you which offers are good and how to complete, avoiding a lot of potential mistakes and saving lots of time. The two services I have experience with are ProfitSquad and Outplayed.com*. I’ve been happy with both but as of May 2021 ProfitSquad has stopped offering the same services so I suggest trying Outplayed.com (formerly called ProfitAccumulator) if you’re just starting out.
You certainly can go it alone, and in this matched betting guide I’ll cover the fundamentals to get you started. I do find though that the cost of one of these subscriptions is more than made up for in the value of the guidance, tutorials, support and eventual profit they allow me to make.
*This is an affiliate link, I only promote services I use and believe in. Please see my affiliate policy here.
If you choose to start matched betting, please do be careful. We’re not gambling but if you’re not mindful it’s possible to fall into it from matched betting. Gambling addiction is serious. You can find help on BeGambleAware.org or call the National Gambling Helpline 0808 8020 133.
Let’s dive into why I think matched betting is a great way to make money.
What’s Good About Earning Money Through Matched Betting?
- Completely flexible and non committal: Particularly great for students! You can do matched betting whichever hours suit your schedule. Too busy with assignments? No worries, don’t do any for a few months. You can pick up where you left off whenever you have a free half an hour.
- Immediate earning potential. Unlike other ways of money which require a lot of initial outlay, with matched betting you can start making money right away. If you started now you could make tangible money over the next hour!
- Tax free. You keep all the money you make from matched betting. This is useful both for students, and for if you transition to having a job.
- It’s easy once you’ve got the hang of it. There is a bit of a learning curve to matched betting. I’ve always subscribed to services which have walked me through the offers which helps tremendously to make it easy. Once you know what you’re doing it’s easy and can be done whenever is convenient.
- Can be done from the comfort of your bed. No need to elaborate on this. Clearly it’s useful to not have to commute or look smart when making money!
The Ethics of Matched Betting
I want to quickly address the idea of making money from matched betting.
Firstly I should make it clear that matched betting is not gambling. We’re largely not risking much money and when we are it’s because on average the offer is profitable and worth doing. My aim with this matched betting guide is certainly not to glamorise gambling: an activity you should stay away from. In any case, I want to make it clear again that addiction to gambling is very real and I’m promoting making money by exploiting matched betting offers, not gambling! Remember to always act cautiously and ensure you fully understand an offer before proceeding.
Nevertheless, making money from the same platforms that other people are using to gamble (and largely lose money) makes for an interesting ethical question. Personally I don’t actually support gambling companies and like to think that profiting from these offers is exploiting their ploys to get more people into gambling.
Another point to touch on are that there is potential to bet on certain contentious sports such as horse racing. I no longer bet on anything I don’t support, including horse racing. The handy thing with matched betting is that there are such a breadth of offers, beyond even sports, that you can avoid anything you don’t like the look of and still make lots of money!
Types of Matched Betting Offers
Strictly speaking, “matched betting” refers to betting on sports events which we’ll get into in a second. There are other types of offers which have a lot of crossover so in this matched betting guide I’ll really be talking about three different things all under the rough “matched betting” term:
- Sports betting
- Casino: slot machines and card games
- Bingo
Let’s dive straight in to each one.
Sports Betting
How Do Matched Betting Sports Offers Work?
Bookmakers (betting shops) run offers to entice both new and existing customers to join up and spend money with them. There is a way that you can take part in these offers, but without actually risking losing large sums of money. You do this by placing two bets: one “back” stake at the bookmakers and one “lay” stake at a betting exchange.
Here is how to take part in a matched betting, with an example.
An Example Offer for New Customers
You may have seen adverts like this one below which is a typical sign-up offer for new customers from Ladbrokes:
What it is saying is that if you sign up with them and place a sports bet over a certain minimum odds threshold, they’ll give you a free bet equal in value to your first bet: up to a maximum of £20.
This sounds pretty good, but usually there is always the chance that both your initial bet and your free bet would lose: you’d be out of pocket your initial £20 and wouldn’t have won anything with your free bet. This is the route a normal punter takes, you might win big but you also risk losing all of your initial money.
The Fundamentals of Matched Betting Sports Offers
The difference with matched betting is that as well as your “back” bet at Ladbrokes, you also use something called a betting exchange. This is somewhere that you can bet against something happening, called “laying”. By effectively making equal and opposite bets against whatever you bet on at Ladbrokes, you offset most of the risk. It is kind of like if you bet on every outcome but much less tedious and more profitable.
By both backing and laying a certain outcome of an event, you take away all the unknowns. How the sporting event plays out becomes irrelevant: thankfully to be good at matched betting you don’t need to know anything about sport! When taking part in offers, this technique of reducing the risk has the effect of allowing you to potentially securing yourself a profit no matter the sporting outcome!
The odds at the betting exchange often do not perfectly match the odds at Ladbrokes and sometimes there is a fee, therefore you’ll likely lose a little bit of money on this first set of bets, but much less than risking your whole £20.
This is how the offer could play out:
Qualifying Bet:
- You find something on Ladbrokes you want to bet on, above the minimum odds of 1/2 (decimal odds: 1.5)
- You find the odds for the same event on your betting exchange and calculate what size stake to make here
- Stake your £20 at Ladbrokes (called your back bet)
- Make your lay bet at the exchange: because the odds are slightly different (and there may be a fee depending on the exchange you use) it won’t necessarily be exactly a £20 lay bet you make. You’ll your overall position to be the same no matter the result of the sports match. We’ll come onto how to calculate the stake, for now let’s say it is £19.50.
Now you have both bets placed, depending on how the sports match goes you’ll either make money at Ladbrokes (and lose some at the exchange) or make money at the exchange (and lose some at Ladbrokes. But importantly, we calculate the amount we lay at the exchange so that the net result is the same no matter the sporting result.
After placing your qualifying bet of £20, you’ll typically be down around 50p depending on the exact odds, but now you have a £20 free bet available!
Free Bet:
Ladbrokes should now credit you with a £20 voucher. In my experience they’re usually good about helping customers out if you have to contact them for help accessing it.
Now, you could just place the bet on anything you fancy at Ladbrokes, but of course there is a chance it could lose. Therefore we employ the same backing and laying techniques to profit from the free bet, no matter what the result is! Amazing!
- Follow exactly the same process as for the qualifying bet, adjusting your lay stake (at the exchange) to secure yourself a profit.
From your free bet you should be able to retain 70-80% of the value. Therefore for a £20 free bet your profit should be around £16.00.
Now including the 50p loss for your qualifying bet, you should end up with a total profit of around £15.50! Your first offer may take a little time to get your head around but you’ll get a lot faster. An offer like this will eventually take you under 10 minutes from start to finish.
Types of Matched Betting Sports Offers
The Ladbrokes example was pretty typical: bet a certain amount and you’ll qualify for a free bet of the same value. There are loads of other types of sport betting offers, including:
- Place a certain number of bets and get a free bet
- If your first bet loses, you’ll either get a free bet or refund up to the value of the bet
- Bet a certain amount on accumulator bets and get a free bet
Ongoing Sports Offers
Once you’ve completed the new-customer promotional offers, many of the most popular bookmakers will be keen to keep you as a regular customer by offering ongoing offers. These offers include ones of a similar nature to the sign-up offers but in addition there are a load of other types, such as:
- Getting paid out as a winner if you team goes a certain amount ahead during the match (even if they go on to lose)
- A free bet. Some bookies simply give out small free bets every so often to entice you back!
Some of offers don’t require you to wager any of your own money, meaning that no matter the outcome you won’t be worse off than you started. You can certainly stick to just doing these types of offers and still make a good amount of money. Other types of offers do require wagering your own money but offer big incentives for little risk. For example Bet365 regularly runs a promotion where you make a qualifying bet of £50 and you’ll get a free in-play bet (on a popular football match) for the same amount: meaning potentially you can regularly make an easy £35 or more!
There are some offers though which instead are positive EV (expected value) meaning that although profit is not guaranteed, on average you can expect to finish with a certain amount of profit. If you’re comfortable doing these, you can earn even more money.
There are other ways to make money, such as with price boosts, but I think you get the idea: there are lots of ways to make money!
Betting Exchanges
As mentioned to be able to match the bets, you need to be able to stake money against an event happening, which is known as laying. Your money is staked against people who are backing a bet for an outcome to win. This may sound confusing at first but you’ll quickly get the hang of it, trust me!
Several of these betting exchanges exist to be able to lay bets. I have used:
On each exchange you’ll find all of the most popular sports with odds displayed for each match. Here for example are the odds for an upcoming match compared between Ladbrokes and the three exchanges I have used:
If we wanted to place bets for Leicester in this match, notice how each of the lay odds are slightly different to the odds displayed at Ladbrokes. For this match we’d be best choosing Smarkets since these odds are closest to Ladbrokes.
Choosing a Betting Exchange
When choosing which exchange to use there are a few factors to consider:
- Odds. As we’ve just seen, the laying odds vary a bit between bookmakers. You want the odds to be as close to the back odds as possible: higher odds are not better.
- Fees. Betting exchange usually have fees which you should be aware of, usually 2-5%. Fees vary between platforms and how often you use the platform. Often if you pay for a matched betting subscription there are offers, for example currently with Outplayed.com I’ve got a 0% fee offer with Matchbook.
- Liquidity. Exchanges depend upon back bets being placed which your lay bet can be matched to. The amount of available money is displayed on each betting exchange right below the odds.
The different exchanges receive varying amounts of traffic and therefore sometimes you’ll have an easier time finding a good match between odds at another exchange. This can be a big factor if you’re trying to make a large bet: notice for example that in the above screenshot there is only £25 available at betfair exchange if you wanted to lay a bet on Aston Villa.
- Sister companies. Betfair for example is owned by a larger company which also operates several bookmakers, namely Sky Bet and Paddy Power. It would not be a good idea to lay your bets on the Betfair Exchange if you’re making use of an offer at one of these bookmakers
I personally use Matchbook and Smarkets the most because they’re not affiliated with bookmakers and the fees are lower or in the case of Matchbook free if you’ve got a subscription with Outplayed.com. Again this is an affiliate link, my policy is here.
Casino Offers
Along with sports offers, the second main type of offers come from casinos. Just like bookmakers, casinos offer promotions both for new and returning users. In fact, a lot of bookmakers also run casinos, including our previous example of Ladbrokes.
Casino offers include slot machines and table games like blackjack. I actually prefer casino offers to sports offers, in part because you can progress with them easily at any hour of the day (without waiting for physical sporting events to play out) but also because the rewards can be higher.
How Do Casino Offers Work?
Just like sports matched betting offers, there are many types of casino offers.
I’ll stick to giving examples of some of the common offers which are either no or low-risk, though it is worth mentioning that there are also many “positive expected value” (+EV) casino offers: where you are not guaranteed a risk-free profit, but you are very much stacking the odds in your favour.
Later in the article you’ll see examples of my winnings from these types of offers but for now let’s stick to risk-free offers.
Common Casino Matched Betting Offers
Get a Certain Number of Free Slot Machine Spins – No Deposit Required
This offer is pretty easy to understand and doesn’t require much of an explanation. All you have to do is register and you’ll get a certain number, 50 in this instance, of free spins on a slot machine. Most of the time you might not make any money but every so often you’ll hit a big win. Earlier this year I did exactly one of these offers with 30 free spins and won £180 so don’t dismiss these offers, they can actually be really profitable every so often.
Be aware that there may be a limit on the maximum withdrawal winnings, but free cash is free cash!
Other common signup offers are like this one from Ladbrokes Casino for new customers:
Stake a Certain Amount and Get a Certain Amount of Bonus Cash
Offers such as this one are not necessarily risk-free because you first have to stake some of your own money. There are other offers which instead require you to deposit your own money but not actually risk it. The point is, you need to know what you’re doing! We’ll shortly cover how you can gain this knowledge.
Typical offers involve you depositing a certain amount and then you’ll get given a bonus. The really important thing to look out for are the wagering requirements.
Wagering Requirements
These offers involve “wagering requirements” which means spending through your bonus a certain number of times, such as 40x, before you can withdraw any winnings.
Therefore if you took full advantage of an offer, deposited £10 and got a £50 bonus you would have to wager £50×40 = £2000 before you can withdraw your winnings. And before you think it, no this does not mean you have to have £2000 in your account. You can keep on using the same £50 (on lots of small wagers) but to be able to withdraw you’ll basically have to have spent £2000 with the casino. Which yes, is a lot of money and potentially also a lot of time, so it’s important to figure out how profitable the offer may be.
For this offer you can play table games such as blackjack which has a really high return to player (RTP) rate, more on that in a second, and so the expected profit from this offer is around £42. We do a walkthrough of how to determine profitability of this offer shortly. It’s up to you whether or not this money is worth that potential time. If the offer were for slot machines you can usually set it to spin automatically so you get the game going and leave it to it.
How would you know whether or not this offer is worth doing? There are two factors which we’ll now discuss.
Determining if a Casino Offer is Profitable
1. Return to Player (RTP)
Casino games, on average, return a certain proportion of winnings to players. Under normal circumstances without any offers, you’d expect to leave a casino with less money than you started with. This is the house edge and is exactly why you should stay away from gambling!
Handily, you can find out what proportion of wagered cash the slot machine on average returns to players (RTP). Many games will list it if you click the info button, others you can find elsewhere online if you run a search. You’ll always want to be using the games with the highest RTP. Check the terms and conditions to see what is acceptable for the offer.
For slot machines the best games have an RTP of 95-98%. Good slot machine games include Blood Suckers and Starburst. To put it simply, even for the best slot machines, for every £100 wagered, you can expect to lose £2-£5.
For table games, blackjack is particularly good with a typical RTP of 99.6%. This means that for every £100 wagered, you’d on average only lose 40p. Games like blackjack can be really handy for offers with lots of wagering as we’ll see shortly.
Using our new knowledge of wagering we can now calculate the expected value of an offer.
2. Expected Value (EV)
The expected value is the average amount of profit (or loss) to be expected for a given offer. Importantly this is averaged over many attempts. There is variation so you often won’t reach the expected profit of an offer. Then every so often you’ll hit a big win. Doing a large number of these offers can really help even out variation and boost your profits.
We can calculated EV simply:
Expected Value = Bonus Value – Wagering Losses
Wagering Losses = Wagering Amount (£) * (1 – RTP)
Where RTP = % Return to Player. Combined this gives us:
Expected Value = Bonus Value – (Wagering Amount * (1 – RTP))
Using the RTP of a game, it’s quick to calculate if an offer is worth doing given the wagering requirements.
Example Casino Offer EV Walkthrough
Let’s imagine we’re considering doing the Ladbrokes casino new-customer offer where we have to wager £2000. For this one we actually have a choice of slots or table games, always make sure to know which games are eligible for the offer. You’ll find them on the subscription service website or casino’s terms and conditions.
Slot Machines
Playing a slot machine with an RTP of 97.5% and wagering £2000, we can expect wagering losses of:
£2000 * (1 – 0.975) = £50
Therefore the expected value is £50 – £50 = £0
So we deposit £10, get £50 free but would expect on average to lose all the bonus: the offer isn’t worth doing with this slot machine.
And Using Table Games
But, we can try this offer with table games such as blackjack with an RTP of 99.58%. Not all offers will allow you to use table games hence why slots are still an important consideration.
Wagering, on blackjack, we can expect to wagering losses of:
£2000 * (1 – 0.9958) = £8.4 <- Much better!
There the EV with blackjack is actually £50 – £8.40 = £41.60
Suddenly the offer is worth doing! Therefore, as you can see, it’s really important to know which offers are good and how to best tackle them.
The good news is that there are services you can subscribe to which do all the maths for you and simply find you the profitable offers and display the EV. More on those in a bit.
Ongoing Casino Offers
Just like sporting bookmakers, casinos are keen to keep their customers active and offer loads of offers for existing customers. There are loads of types of ongoing offers for you to get involved with so look out for them in your emails. Though be aware to either check they’re actually profitable or only use ones which are posted on your subscription service if you subscribe.
Sometimes they’ll even just put free (withdrawal) cash in your account! One casino, Mr Green, currently is adding money to my account every week:
Bingo Offers
The final category of offers are for bingo. These aren’t as common now as they used to be but are still certainly worth doing, in July this year I made £130 on one of these!
Bingo offers are usually +EV (see above) rather than being risk-free so I wouldn’t advise starting on them. Even so, the offers are so good that you’ll usually quickly make a profit. An example offer is this one from Foxy Bingo:
You deposit and wager £10 on anything (expecting to lose about 4p if wagered on something like Blackjack) and get £40 to spend on bingo. Do make sure to read the instructions clearly and watch out for wagering, even so these offers make sense to do.
How to Get Started Matched Betting
Now that we’ve covered how matched betting works, you’re probably eager to get started! To make money you have to do three main things:
- Find potential offers to complete
- Check the offers are profitable
- Have a strategy and calculate stake sizes (mostly for sports offers)
Since starting matched betting I’ve personally always used a subscription service (Outplayed.com: an affiliate link) since they help with the whole process. Further down this matched betting guide are all the reasons I subscribe.
Now to be clear, you absolutely can do matched betting on your own. You do though have to be very aware both of what you’re doing and which offers are actually any good. It can be very costly to make serious mistakes! Some offers turn out to not be worth doing so you need to know which ones are actually profitable. Always make sure to read the terms and conditions, especially if you go it alone.
In case you want to go it alone, here is a quick summary:
Finding Profitable Offers
Almost all bookmakers and casinos you can imagine have sign-up offers but in all instances be sure to read the terms and conditions and work out if they’re actually worth doing! Watch out for wagering requirements. For casino offers it’s easy to calculate the expected value, as explained further up this matched betting guide, but sports and bingo offers can be a bit more difficult to do.
After sign-up offers there are offers on a daily basis that bookmakers advertise, so it remains profitable! When signing up make sure to tick yes to receive future promotions. Then check your emails and text messages for ongoing offers.
Importantly, not all offers are profitable. Things like wagering requirements, maximum withdrawable winnings etc can completely destroy the value in taking part in certain offers so be careful.
Having a Strategy and Calculating Stake Size
A really important part of the process is making stakes of the right size. You want to maximise your long term profits and don’t want to take any more risks than necessary. Before starting an offer make sure you have a clear strategy and stay organised: write the offer down and know the steps to proceed.
For sports betting it is important to calculate which size stakes to make both for backing and laying your qualifying bet, but also your free bets. There seem to be free calculators you can use, though I can’t attest to their quality.
Assistance for all of these topics are provided by matched betting subscription services which are covered in the next section.
Using a Matched Betting Subscription Service
Several services exist which can help you through the whole matched betting process. I’ve used ProfitSquad and Outplayed.com* for years and find them invaluable. I simply wouldn’t have known where to start without using one and even now I pay an annual subscription because I can make far more money using them than they cost. Both have short trial periods in case you wanted to give it a go.
Why Use a Matched Betting Subscription Service?
The service I use, Outplayed.com*, has the perks of:
- Teaching you the fundamentals through matched betting guides
- Telling you which offers are worth doing – saving so much time!
- Walking you through each offer step by step – invaluable!
- Calculators for stake sizes, expected value and more advanced techniques
- A calendar of upcoming offers for existing customers to keep
- Weekly emails with the most profitable offers
- A customer service team to answer any questions
- Discussion forums to chat with other members, discuss offers and see motivational posts of recent winnings
I’ve used subscription services since day one of matched betting and don’t think I’d have ever been comfortable starting without using one. Especially as a student, going through busy and stressful periods, it is so handy to get spoon fed profitable offers. It’s amazing.
Which Matched Betting Service Do I Recommend?
I started matched betting seriously with ProfitSquad and used it for several years with great success. Sadly as of May 2021 it has ceased offering much functionality including its calendar and guides for offers.
Midway through 2020 I decided to go back and try Outplayed.com: the original matched betting subscription platform and one I used way back in 2016. I’ve been very impressed. There are a huge number of high quality guides for every level of matched betting experience, plus it has a useful forum to ask questions and learn from other users.
Outplayed.com* has a free trial:
As a beginner, you can’t really go far wrong with Outplayed.com, especially since the trial is free! This may all sound like a sales pitch, but I really do believe it offers fantastic value for money.
If you don’t like matched betting, you can just not carry on a subscription!
*Again, these are affiliate links!
How Much Money Can You Make Matched Betting?
The amount of money you can make from matched betting correlates reasonably directly to the amount of time you spend doing it. The good news for students looking to get started with matched betting is that you can easily fit it around your studies.
Most offers aren’t really time sensitive, you could fit them in whichever time of the day suits you best. Certain offers, like Bet365’s very nice £50 in-play free bet offer (so roughly £35 profit) on certain football matches are always on evenings and appear roughly every month.
For certain offers luck may have an effect on the amount of money you’ll make but the key is doing lots of profitable offers. If you get stuck in and do lots of offers you’ll quickly begin making decent profits. How much is decent? Well if you do lots of new customer offers you should be able to make at least £1000 and beyond that you could potentially make hundreds of pounds a month depending on how much you get involved and the availability of offers.
How Much Money I’ve Made Matched Betting
I started matched betting the year before starting my PhD and in two years I had made £5000 profit:
You can see that I did a fair amount of matched betting in the first year of my PhD. During my second year of being a PhD student, I eased off matched betting for a while. I had already made a fair amount of money and wanted to prioritise making the most of my student experience. It’s worth pointing out that I could have tried to make my first £5000 over a much shorter period, but making money isn’t always my first priority.
Clearly it is possible to make money matched betting as a student! Since 2018 I’ve continued matched betting here and there (see the section below). But now that I have some savings it isn’t really my priority: but I’m keen to help other people reach this position!
Here is how the three different offer types contributed to my first £5000 profit from matched betting:
Most of the money came from sports offers, but I also mostly did sports offers:
When we work out the average profit per offer, you actually see that sports offers have proven the least profitable for me. Even so, they’re certainly worth doing!
My Most Profitable Hour
Almost all of my profit from that £5000 of winnings came from either very low risk offers. In 2017 I started to try out some more advanced techniques including a more risky (but still of course positive expected-value) set of “advanced casino offers”.
These techniques are absolutely not for beginners!
Anyway, you may have noticed the steep bit on my cumulative profit graph, here it is again:
One evening I decided to try do one of these advanced casino offers, where I was placing “high” stakes (£1 – 2) with a high chance of going bust but also high potential returns. This is definitely not the technique for typical offers where we’re aiming for consistent profits but that’s not to say you couldn’t hit big on free bet casino offers as we’ll see in the next section. Anyhow, luck was on my side that evening and I hit three big wins in quick succession:
By the end of the offer, which took under an hour to complete, I had made £994. By far the most profitable hour of my life!
Now, I want to reiterate that these kinds of big wins are rare. Though if you do join either of the subscription services I’ve used, you’ll often see people posting these types of wins or larger! These types of offers are not good to get started with, though the point still remains that there is a lot of potential money to be made.
Recent Winnings
After not matched betting whilst finishing up my PhD earlier this year, I started matched betting a bit again over the summer of 2020.
A few new bookmakers and casinos had opened up by the time I was last active so I signed up for a year of Outplayed.com* and got stuck in. In just a few days I’d made a profit of almost £400, easily making back my annual subscription. It included a nice casino win from a free-bet casino sign-up: you don’t need to do risky offers to potentially make big profits!
Common Matched Betting Questions
Is Matched Betting Legal?
Yes matched betting absolutely is legal, I wouldn’t be sharing it otherwise! You’re not exploiting a loophole which the bookmakers don’t know about: they’re actively promoting these offers to try and encourage new (and returning) customers to their companies. The difference is that using matched betting we’re being sensible with our use of offers to lock-in profits and stabilise our winnings.
Is Matched Betting Risk-Free?
For all offers there is a chance you’ll make a mistake!
I’ve made mistakes such as:
- Putting an incorrect lay stake amount. Solution: always double check before placing any bets!
- Staking money for an offer which no longer exists. Solution: always check the offer is still active!
- Forgetting to come back and use a free bet, doh! Solution: stay organised with a spreadsheet!
There are certain offers, mostly with casinos, where they’ll give you free money to wager, without requiring a deposit. This means you get a chance to win without staking any of your own money.
Other than that, every time you’re staking your own money there is a chance you could lose it. Some offers allow you effectively eliminate most of the risk but even so there is always the chance that you’ll make a mistake as part of the process!
Even so, don’t let this put you off too much. After a few offers you’ll get the hang of it and lots of people stick to only the low-risk offers and make a lot of money!
I would say that a big part of the risk comes down to understanding the offer and knowing that not all offers are worth doing. This is why I’ve always used a subscription service to help track down the profitable offers and explain how to attempt them. Make sure you always check that the offer you’re attempting is still valid and that if necessary you’ve opted-in!
Is Matched Betting Difficult?
The fundamental ideas of matched betting are not complicated. There is some maths behind the calculations for how much to bet but you certainly don’t need a PhD to be able to profit from matched betting!
Once you’ve done a few offers, you’ll quickly get into the flow of how matched betting works.
It can still be easy to make mistakes if you’re not careful but you can minimise this by being organised, using matched betting guides and calculators, double checking the amounts you’re betting are correct and not rushing!
How Much Effort is Required?
Like most things, with practice you’ll get better at it which means you are more comfortable doing more profitable offers. Even so, the amount of money you make scales pretty linearly with the amount of effort you put in. If you’ve got a little bit of extra time on your hands one evening and you can make extra money!
I’d estimate that your first few offers may take you half an hour or longer to complete, unless you’re following a matched betting guide on one of the subscription websites, and then you’ll quickly speed up with experience.
Is Matched Betting Worth it as a Student?
It really depends on your priorities. If you already have enough money, perhaps prioritise making the most of opportunities which you can only take part in as a student. If you want to be earning some extra money, I really do think that matched betting is one of the best ways to make money because it is so flexible with rapid earning potential. Be sure to read my post here which includes other ways to make money as a student too.
My Top Tips to Make Money Matched Betting
Build Up Your Bank
What’s really important is that you don’t get tempted to spend all your winnings immediately. The more of a “bank” you can build up, the more quickly you can do multiple offers at once. By all means treat yourself, but if you keep spending your winnings it can be difficult to complete some of the bigger offers.
Some of the offers have really high earning potential. If you don’t have enough money available to make the most of this offer you’re letting go of free money. For this reason start with the smaller offers first, building up both your confidence and bank, then move on to the larger offers.
It can take a bit of time to complete offers and withdraw your winnings, so if you’re able to reinvest your winnings you can more easily use this cash to take part in more offers.
How to Avoid Getting Banned: Don’t Stand Out
There is a risk that at some point your bookmaker accounts will either be banned from promotions or that you’ll be limited to very small stakes. We want to try and keep our accounts healthy, and active, so that we can continue to take part in ongoing offers.
A good way to avoid getting banned is to not make unusual bets at the bookmakers. By this I mean:
- Avoid odd stake sizes: no regular punter would stake £8.73. Stick to round numbers in increments of £2.50. At the exchange don’t worry about betting weird amounts.
- Stick to popular events. As much as possible I avoid betting on niche events. There may be some people in the UK who care about Latvian horseracing, but it’s not the norm so it is best to avoid any suspicion and stick to only popular events like UK football.
Besides these tips, it is recommend to not take part in every single offer and to make “mug bets” every so often: popular bets which are not part of offers and will help blend your account in. Examples of mug bets include betting on a clear favourite (so odds close to 1) on a big football match.
Stay Organised
Often you’ll make a qualifying bet then have to return to the website a couple of days later to make use of your free bet. I have on several occasions forgotten to go back and use the free bet: throwing money away! It’s really important to have a system so that you know:
- The status of offers you’re working on
- What free bets you should be expecting shortly
- Where you’re money is
- How much money you’ve made overall
Keeping track is good practice to ensure you’re organised and don’t throw away free bets, plus it can be really motivating to see your winnings mounting up!
I’ve found matched betting a great way to make money as a student and so I hope this matched betting guide is useful in inspiring you to give it a go.
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