So, you think you’re ready to make money by matched betting? Well, before you jump right in, it’s worth knowing a few key things to avoid making some massive mistakes. Worry not: we’ve got a list of 12 essential matched betting tips to seamlessly steer you away through the pitfalls that many beginners make.
Quickly, before we get into the tips, let us explain why we’re doing this. There are three of us who run this site, and we’ve been matched betting for over a year now. We started off as complete noobs – totally overwhelmed with matched betting – and progressed to the point where comfortably make several hundred pounds from it, each month.
The bottom line is that it IS a legit money-making method, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world, and there are some things we wished we knew when we started.
So, we put our heads together and compiled a list of all the tips that we think all matched betting beginners should understand. We hope it helps you! If you think you’ve got any others worth sharing, add them in the comments below.
1. Matched betting is not gambling! Don’t stray from the concept…
We’ve already covered what matched betting is in a different article so we won’t go into details here.
But, the important thing to realise when you’re matched betting is that you always place two bets. You place a bet for an event to happen (e.g. Tottenham winning) and then laying exactly the same bet. So, unlike with normal gambling, you really don’t care what the result of the bet is – you’re covered either way.
With matched betting, you’re really making money through harvesting all of the free bets and other offers that are given to you by the bookies.
The only reason the bookies give out free offers is to entice you into betting with them and giving them your hard earned cash.
The most important matched betting tip of all is: do not cross the line into actual gambling. Long term, the only winner from this will be the bookies – you’re not going to make anything.
2. Find somewhere solid to learn the ropes
Matched betting is actually fairly simple if you know what you’re doing but at first it’s pretty mind blowing.
Sure, you can get the hang of it without paying for a service that will teach you what you’re doing and help you find the best odds. But in our opinion, the little bit of knowledge that will get you started is well worth paying for.
The problem is, knowing where to look. There’s lots of free stuff on the internet, but the thing that helped us get our head round it the best was Oddsmonkey. It requires a monthly subscription fee (which can be cancelled any time) and we think it’s worth it for the better quality of information and the tools that are available (more on that below). You’ll make your money back on it very quickly, and save even more in possible expensive mistakes! We’ve done an independent review of Oddsmonkey if you want to check it out further.
We’ve also put together our own basic explanation of what matched betting is, if you’re after a taster of how it works.
3. Don’t look like you’re just in it for the free bets!
Like Godwin’s war on Twitter (or any message board for that matter), the longer you do this for, the shorter the odds of getting gubbed. Getting gubbed is the term that matched betters use for when a betting firm realises that you’re just in it for the freebies and they take action on your account.
Like counting cards in a casino, matched betting isn’t illegal but the bookies don’t like it and while they may not go all Sam Rothstein on you, they will make your life a little more difficult by placing restrictions on your account. This can take many different forms, but here was the mail I got about 2 weeks after signing up with one online bookmaker:
My first gubbing – hurt more than the first time I was dumped
How do you avoid getting dumped like this? You try to blend in with the normal punters, of course. It boils down to 3 things:
- Place mug bets – that’s where you place a normal-looking bet without expecting any free bets or offers in return. You’re just showing the bookie some love and throwing them off the matched betting scent. (You still lay the same bet on an exchange and take a small loss, but it’s worth it to maintain your cover as a regular punter).
- Don’t make your bets too obscure – if you’re placing bets on the Namibian premier league with two teams you’ve never heard of, you’re pretty much flagging yourself as either a problem gambler or a matched better. Avoid coming across as either.
- Think about making more than the minimum deposit when you fund your account. If you’re required to pay in £10 to unlock free bets, why not put in £20 to show you’re not just there for the offers.
4. Organisation is key!
Pretty quickly in your matched betting life you’re going to have accounts at multiple bookmakers, and in a single evening you might have 7 or 8 bets placed across them. It’s easy to lose track of what you’re doing.
Here at The Money Mountain we generated our own spreadsheet which keeps track of all our bets, how much we’ve got at each bookmaker and also our cumulative profit. It’s about as awesome as spreadsheets can be….
You might generate your own spreadsheet like we did, or you might use one of the free matched betting spreadsheets that are available online. But pick something that gets you organised – it helps in the long run.
5. Use an oddsmatcher to save lots of time
You don’t actually need to subscribe to a betting service like Oddsmonkey. With enough knowledge and organisation, you can manage to do matched betting all on your own.
The thing is though, you can make more money on some bets than others. You make the most where your bet and lay are at odds that are close to each other, and finding these combinations can be a little time consuming.
That’s where a service like oddsmonkey’s ‘oddsmatcher’ tool can save you a lot of time. It will find you the best bets to place which will make you more money in the long term, paying off the monthly fee.
The oddsmatcher will also find the occasional anomaly such as a bet with odds in your favour and as such you can make money without even needing a free offer from a bookmaker. Winner winner chicken dinner, etc.
We use OddsMonkey, and we’ve reviewed it in this post here.
5. It helps to have a decent-sized initial investment
You can start with just £100, but in reality you’ll need much more than that to make money with matched betting.
Firstly, you’ll need to place money at bookmakers, and you’ll also need to have a sizeable float at the betting exchanges to place your ‘lay’ bets. When you’re laying at high odds you’ll need to put quite a lot of money on the line. And if you don’t have that kind of money, you might miss out on some profit making opportunities.
Sure, it won’t completely hold you back, but you won’t make as much money as quickly.
6. Use a good calculator – and understand it properly
In order to make sure that you’ve not taken any risk on your bets, you need to use a calculator. And you’ll need to use this religiously for every single trade. Get a calculation wrong, and it could prove an expensive mistake.
A free matched betting calculator that we like is available here: https://www.profitaccumulator.co.uk/calculator/
But it’s one thing knowing where one of these calculators is, it’s another knowing how to use it. Make sure you’re using it in the right mode (‘normal’) for your qualifying bets, and in ‘SNR’ mode for your free bets.
If you don’t know the difference between the two modes, you’re not ready to matched bet yet. Make sure you look up a tutorial, such as the ones available on OddsMonkey.
7. Set up a new email account
Unless you want dozens of emails from betting companies landing in your main inbox every day, you want to get yourself a separate email address just for your matched betting activity.
Sadly, when you sign up to the betting companies, it’s best to subscribe to their email updates so you can find out about any offers. And when you do that, you’re taking one big step into spam city…
8. Think about how you may need to explain what you’re doing
What will your response be when your significant other sees you, for the first time, staring at a dozen different bookmakers on your laptop and tearfully questions you on whether you need help.
It may be worth running this particular venture past them first. At least so they know what you’re doing, and that you’ve not suddenly become a gambling addict.
9. Double-check and then triple-check your bets
When you’re straying off the beaten track with your matched betting, things can get a little complicated. It’s essential therefore that you check your bets thoroughly, especially when you’re working with high odds.
We nearly came a cropper big time, by backing and laying a slightly different bet, which fortunately worked out for us, but could have left us nearly £100 down! Since then, each bet gets double checked, and if we’re not sure about something, we leave it alone.
In fairness, another big shout out goes to oddsmonkey’s oddsmatcher tool, which will keep you right with your bets. It’s only when you go it alone that you’re likely to start doing crazy things. If in doubt with a bet, leave it.
10. Lower your commission
You’ll place many bets across dozens of bookmakers, but you’ll need to offset them on only 3 or 4 betting exchanges.
Sadly, these exchanges all charge commission and this can really cut into your overall profits. Betfair take 5% of winnings. So it’s worth trying to use Smarkets which charges a much more reasonable 2%. If you sign up using that link you’ll get a risk free £10 bonus (and we’ll get one too – so we’re all winners).
11. Read the sign up offers very carefully
The sign up offer is the noob’s early breadwinner. You’ll feast yourself silly on ‘deposit £10 get £30 free bet’ offers. But most of them have subtly different terms and conditions and, along the way we’ve managed to screw things up through the following methods:
- Not realising you need to put an offer code in when you sign up for a new account. Some sites require this and don’t automatically give you the offer.
- Placing a qualifying bet below the minimum odds. Some sites want odds as high as 2.0 for your qualifying bets.
- Failing to take the free bets within a specified time period.
The point is, read the terms and conditions of these offers carefully!
12. Matched Betting is not an infinitely scale-able business – you’re not going to make mega money this way!
There will be wild claims out there of people making £50k a year and other ridiculous amounts from matched betting.
The reality is that, over the course of a year, three of us managed to make about £1,000 each. That’s excellent money, but it’s not going to make you rich. Beware of anyone trying to sell you wild fantasies about matched betting.
More worryingly, there are a lot of us doing this matched betting stuff these days. So much so that the bookmakers are on to us all and increasingly trying to shut us down since we’re all unprofitable customers for them.
This video explains things nicely and shares the same view us as. Matched betting is still a good method of making some spare money, but it’s becoming more and more difficult. So act fast and get involved.