Matched betting is a very profitable side hustle. The first question I answer when talking about it is this: How much can I realistically make matched betting?
TL;DR: You can make £500-600 per month doing matched betting for 4 hours per week. However, the profit you make depends on the time you spend doing it. Josh, who I interviewed in the past, makes £2,000 per month matched betting for a living.
Let the numbers do the talking
The table above shows my monthly profits since October 2016 and the total profits until March 2020. As you can see, I make an average of £540 per month doing matched betting. I spend about 3-4 hours per week, usually during the weekend and I find all the offers on OddsMonkey, the matched betting service I use.
Can I make more? Yes, I can. It’s worth noting that I don’t do ANY casino offers, acca offers or any extra place offers. All three of them are considered to be quite profitable.
I only stick to the high-value offers, like Betfred bet 3 x £10 get £10 or bet365 bet £50 get a £50 free bet in-play. By doing this, I am missing out on potential profit but I only want to spend up to 4 hours per week doing matched betting, or I won’t be writing to you anymore!
I have also stopped signing up to new bookmakers. About every month a new bookmaker joins offering lucrative free bets to attract customers. This is gold for matched bettors and perhaps I should spend more time on new bookmakers too!
How to increase your matched betting profits
Perhaps you’re stuck in making £100-200 per month and you want a way to increase your income. Or you want some confirmation that matched betting can last long and that you’ll be making a solid part-time income for many years to come.
Whatever your goal is, the rules to sustainably increase your matched betting profits are quite simple. Here are my 3 steps.
- Do all the standard offers
- Step outside your comfort zone
- Avoid gubbing – restricted accounts do not make money!
Tools used:
- OddsMonkey for finding offers
- Betfair (5% commission) or Smarkets (2% commission) for laying
And now let’s dive into each step.
1. Do all the standard offers
At a bare minimum, you should lock in a £115 fixed income every week. That’s £460 every month and it’s your base.
There is a long list of OddsMonkey daily offers. But I find some of them are quite tedious for the time you need to spend. The goal here is to maximize value for the time we spend. I don’t want to place five £10 in-play bets to get a £10. Always go for the highest value offers first. If you’re starting out I suggest you finish all the sign-up offers first, starting with the Easy ones.
Here is my standard list of ongoing offers. As you will see, not everything is clearly a loyalty offer but they all happen quite frequently.
My Favourite bookies / Ongoing offers
- Bet365 ITV 4/1: if your horse wins, get the same stake up to £50 for the next ITV race. In general, racing bets are very profitable and you can find a Racing Matcher on OddsMonkey for all offers. My horse usually wins one every 4-5 bets and I place one bet every few days.
Expected profit per week: £30
- Bet365 Risk-free in play: Another bet365 offer I do is the occasional football bet £50 get £50 bonus in-play. This is my favourite as it’s so easy to do and one of the most profitable offers. It happens once every month on big CL games, for a monthly profit of £35.
Expected profit per week £9
Dollar-eyed when I receive this e-mail! - Skybet Sat acca: They offer a boosted acca odds every Saturday on a special treble bet. An acca is simply an accumulator bet. Something like: Man Utd, City and Liverpool all to win 10/1! Betfair offers a hassle-free acca lay which you can lay immediately for a profit. Skybet limits my stake to around £25 and my arbitrage profit is around £6. Lay as Stake Returned.
Expected profit per week: £6 - Skybet Horses Money Back every Sat/Sun: Although the boosted acca is a sure win, Skybet list a great horse offer every Saturday and Sunday. Get your money back as a free bet (max £20) if your horse comes 2nd every Saturday/Sunday. I usually pick the favourite which finishes 2nd one every 3 times. Expected profit per week: £12
- Skybet weekly loyalty offer: Simply, stake £25 get £5 every Monday.
Expected profit per week: £3.50 - William Hill Sat acca: Similar to Skybet, W Hill offer a boosted acca every Saturday or an equivalent boost odds offer (Both teams to score high odds etc).
Expected profit per week: £5 - William Hill occasional e-mail: I get a bet £10 get £10 every month. This is invite-only so always check your e-mails for hidden gems. Most of them are not worth it but occasionally a good offer will show up.
Expected profit per week: £2 - Betfred Bet three £10 in-play get £10: Primarily in premier league matches, but often found in darts, and other sports.
Expected profit per week: £7 - Sportingbet Money back (£25) if horse 2nd every Saturday: Sportingbet do this for many races every Saturday. The Racing Matcher from OddsMonkey shows which races run this promo. Get on as many as you can and try to pick a low odds favourite.
Expected profit per week: £20 - Coral Double winnings (£50) if your team wins both halves: I love and hate this offer. It’s because they try and pick those matches that your team will not win both halves. Coral runs this promo every week, sometimes multiples times. There is a trick explained on OddsMonkey on how to lock in a profit if your team leads at half-time. Expected profit per week: £10
- Coral easy weekly: Bet £25 Mon to Thursday get £5 for the weekend.
Expected profit per week: £4 - Betway money back if 2nd (£20): They do occasional bonuses but my favourite one is the “money back if your horse comes 2nd” for £20. Again, go for the favourite and you should be getting a £20 free bet once every 3 bets.
Expected profit per week: £4 - Red bet £2 per goal on selected matches: This may sound silly but it’s a weekly offer for selected matches every Fri-Sun. Can totally make £10-£15 every week.
Expected profit per week: £10 - Betstars weekly challenges: Happening about once every 2 weeks, BetStars offer £15 if you bet £15 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Expected profit per week: £5
Total weekly profit: £115
Some people say “Oh, I don’t want to bother with horse racing if my profits are not guaranteed”. Or “My luck is bad!”. That’s totally the wrong way to look at it. Horse racing is extremely profitable and this is how you should think:
Odds of 2.00 means that you will win 1 out of 2 times. So if you bet on a 2.00 horse to come 2nd, half the times it will come 2nd. So 5 out of 10 times you will get £20. Therefore, every time you make a bet, it’s as if you get a £10 free bet. This is the world of probabilities and this is how the bookmakers, casinos and every house makes money.
2. Step outside your comfort zone
That applies to really everything in life, but in matched betting, it is so true! It totally defines how much you can make matched betting. Knowledge is power here.
Ok, don’t be like that fish, but you know what I mean. I found the greatest profits by looking around on the OddsMonkey forum, doing offers I’m NOT comfortable with.
Casino offers are very profitable. There are people on OddsMonkey that make their monthly chunk doing only casino offers. As long as the expected value is positive, you should complete the offer.
See my post on how to make money with casino offers and my guide to slots.
To begin with, you can start with the safest ones. Skybet usually offers Bet £10 on roulette get your money back if you lose. That’s fairly easy and 100% risk-free.
Slots are the #1 money maker in casino offers. The bookmakers know that slots are very addictive. So they make sure to offer enough “free spins” for people to continue playing. Be disciplined and just take the free spins. Don’t fool yourself by continue playing without offers (hi Kostas!).
Then there’s Accas – accumulator bets. Almost all bookmakers offer acca insurance. Place a 4-fold bet and get your money back if one leg lets you down. OddsMonkey has a dedicated section on how to make money from accas.
Have you heard of the extra place matcher? Bookmakers offer winnings on place bets if your horse finishes on the extra place. If the place bet offers to pay the first 3 positions, in plenty of races Skybet, Betfred, to name a few, will pay 4 or even 5 positions. So if your horse finishes 4th or 5th you win both at the bookmaker and at the exchange!
An advanced matched betting strategy you can use is the no lay each way betting. You can use OddsMonkey’s Each way Matcher tool to find profitable opportunities. This strategy alone can make more than £300 a month on top of your current profits and the best thing is that it works on gubbed accounts! Read my each way matched betting guide (4,000 words!) to learn more.
And last but not least, sign up to more bookmakers! Guaranteed sign-up profits, more accounts ready for future offers and invite-only e-mails bonuses to name a few advantages.
As you can see, exploring other options can hugely boost your monthly matched betting profits. Not everything is a Bet £X Get £X free bet. Just try!
3. Avoid getting gubbed – restricted accounts do not make money!
To stay under the radar and make consistent profit from matched betting you need to follow the below advice:
- Bet on high-profile events. Russian 2nd league is easy to spot and won’t help you despite the good odds you found.
- Always stay inside your profile zone. For example, if 9 out of your 10 bets are on football, betting high stakes on cricket may raise a flag.
- Bet around your average stake. This is an important one. If most of your bets are between £30-50 then you’ll want to keep the average stake as consistent as possible. You may discover a £200 offer but don’t be tempted to bet the full amount. A little discipline goes a long way here. Tip: If you know there’s a big offer coming, try to increase your stakes leading up to the event. That’s what I did for Cheltenham horse festival where there are usually plenty of high-stake offers.
- Place occasional bets without taking any offers (lay them first!). I know this is a boring one and some people believe mug betting doesn’t help but it does. If someone reviews your account and see that you only bet when there’s an offer then you immediately take value out of them and risk getting gubbed.
- Don’t bet on arbitrage! Perhaps this should be first because it will definitely get you gubbed. Stay away from those red 105% odds on the OddsMonkey Odds Matcher. Just take a small qualifying loss instead (95-99%).
Apparently, I didn’t follow the rules and 100% of my PP bets were on their horse 2 3 4 offer You saw the outcome!
Final Thoughts
So, how much can you make matched betting?
The numbers don’t lie. £460 is the absolute minimum if you just follow the standard sports betting offers. Then, you can add different tilts such as casino, accumulators, horse extra places, Betfred double goalscorer winnings etc. These tools should add another £500 to your monthly profits.
This brings us up to £960. If you become more advanced, then you can definitely explore Dutching and more advanced techniques to boost your matched betting income even higher.
If all of the above sounds crazy, then have a look at Ben's diary where he shows how he makes £600 every month doing daily MB offers.
Of course, matched betting takes time. I know that if I want to make more, I have to spend more time doing it. On one hand you need to explore more options and on the other hand actually do them consistently!
Maybe show this article to your partner and double your income too 😉
I also offer matched betting consulting over Skype for £70 per hour if you’re struggling.
Related:
28 thoughts on “How much can you make Matched Betting?”
Interesting!
I signed up with oddsmonkey a few months ago and made about £400 on the opening offers but am now stuck.
I did a few of the weekly football offers but it seemed very time consuming.
Do you really sit down on a Saturday /Sunday and spend 4 hours placing £125 with of bets? I can’t see how it’s possible but am only new to this!
Thanks
Thanks for your comment, Joe! I was like you when I started. I thought there’s not much after the sign-up offers but I was wrong. There are plenty of ongoing offers, try the ones I list in this article.
I personally spend about 2 hours every Saturday, mostly on horses and some price boosts. Then 1 hour on Sunday to reap some rewards and about an hour during the week if there’s an offer worth doing.
Thanks for your reply Michael.
I think I will start with the Sportingbet Money back (£25) offer you list above.
Do you think that is a good way to try and get into more regular matched betting?
“Sportingbet Money back (£25) if horse 2nd every Saturday: Sportingbet do this for many races every Saturday. The Racing Matcher from OddsMonkey shows which races run this promo. Get on as many as you can and try to pick a low odds favourite.”
How did you get on during Cheltenham? I think I made about £10 🙁 😉
Thanks
Joe
Ahhh… Cheltenham! My all-time favourite… £365 in 4 days although last year I was on £420 🙂
I may write a post about it. I’d start with the weekly offers if I were you Joe. Once you have a guaranteed base profit you can then add horses (Skybet, Sportingbet etc). Just follow the daily OddsMonkey calendar, there are new offers that come up every now and then!
Thanks for article but I have to say I am surprised you can make £500 per month at 4 hours per week.
For me, some of the figures are rather optimistic and do not tally with personal experience e.g. WH odds boost does not give £5 per week, some weeks it’s barely a quid, Skybet restrict stakes on their accas after a while (I was restricted to £2.29 stakes after 4 months though normal betting is unaffected – other Oddsmonkey customers report this is entirely normal).
The article also makes the assumption all accounts are intact and some of the high value offers come regularly – several of the accounts you list are hard to keep long term based on evidence from Oddsmonkey e.g. Betway, Coral (they gubbed stacks of Oddsmonkey customers in Autumn last year from sports offers…)
Bet365 are notorious for gubbing people doing 4-1 horses so not sure how you are using their offer long-term and keeping your account intact for 2UP and getting the juicy £50 in-play offers. I speak from personal experience, having lost that account after 5 weeks. I would not recommend anyone touch the horse racing offer.
I’ve made a reasonable £6.5k in 7 months and had to work hard to get profits after a while – High5/2Clear and 2UP are the usual offers people quote as being the long-term earners. If you are without Bet365 – as I am – you are limited with 2UP because Paddy Power’s version offers poor odds and limited markets.
Just my thoughts. More power to your elbow.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Mark!
I think the key takeaway here is: Do not get gubbed. Getting gubbed after a few weeks is the exception, not the norm for me. Sure, Ladbrokes gubbed me but I keep Bet365 for 3 years, Coral for 2 and continuously do all the offers with them. Maybe it’s because I have built a bet365 profile by occasionally punting a pound or two on tennis in-play matches. Betting lower than the max amount is also something worth considering. Speaking of the 4/1 bet365 horse offer, £20-30 in the week and £40 in the weekend is what I do.
If your accounts are new, betting lower stakes and skipping an offer or two goes a long way.
I believe £500 a month is certainly doable. Sure some of the offers here are not present every week. But I have not added the one-off offers that come up. Every now and then you see different freebies: 10 free spins (Matchbook), £25 Money back if horse not wins (coral), £10 loyalty bet (bet365), refund after 80th minute (betstars), sportnation price boosts and so on.
£6.5k in 7 months is incredible. Tell us how! I want to start doing casinos which are equally profitable. People are usually fooled by the (positive!) variance.
Someone linked me to this on my blog as I’ve been gubbed ALOT! I have only been doing arbing though and I see from your list its a no no! I notice you dont go crazy on the bet clubs. Will that get your gubbed? I’m currently feeling like that fish as It does seem really complicated to me. Hopefully I’dd get better as I go along right!
Little Miss Fire
Hey Miss Fire (awesome name by the way!). Arbing will surely get you gubbed as you probably already know so stop doing it 🙂
By bet clubs you mean loyalty weekly bets I assume, like the Skybet one? They used to be a lot more profitable but now need more time so I started focusing elsewhere.
In general, it’s good to build a betting profile as the average Joe who bets every Saturday on Chelsea (or horses etc). If you find any good offers I missed above please let me know!
Good article but I would agree with @Mark that you do need certain ungubbed accounts to consistently hit £500 a month. I think I probably spend the same amount of time as you do (4-5 hours a week) and I was getting an average just under £400. Like you, I don’t do any casino offers but I do do accas. However, I’ve started doing no-lay accas (after previously only doing lock-in profit ones) and these are having an effect on my profits so I’m happy just getting >£100 to be honest! Still, I’ll keep at it a while to see how it goes in the long term.
Hey Weenie, absolutely, gubbings lower the returns. No lay accas? I never had the guts to try them… It’s a profitable matched betting strategy, but you also need to place a lot of them in order to smooth out the volatility that comes with the no-lay I guess.
Hi Micheal,
Great post! its actually motivated me to get back into matched betting after a month or so out of the game!
Quick question on the boosted acca’s how do you lay them? Lay all at start? Lay sequential? or Lay sequential lock in? I’m assuming you do lay all at start ?
Hi flex, glad I motivated you! That’s what I want! My motivation comes and goes too when it comes to matched betting 🙂
I don’t do many accas these days mainly because they are time-consuming but when I do I try to lay sequential. Why? Because I don’t place many accas, therefore a few losses can take me to the red territory.
However, I’m looking into the option of no lay accas. That’s because if you trust the expected value of your acca, in the long term, you will end up winning. Of course, for this to happen you’ll have to place a lot of bets to smooth out the profitable ride.
That was an interesting read and so was the interview. I have been looking at this for some time as I currently spread bet forex with the current change in legislation which comes in on 1st August it’s going to make it a little harder, it will either mean leaving more money with the broker or reducing the stake. So I could be ‘working’ the same hours for less money.
Match betting looks as if it could be another revenue source without sitting in front of my computer for 10+ hours a day. But I’m not willing to risk a large bank on this did that with forex and lost a few thousand simply because I didn’t learn and understand the concept, the turnaround took 4+ years. I don’t want to spend the same learning curve on matched betting, but the more I read about it there is a lot too understand and a lot to be aware of…..being ‘gubbed’ is one of them.
Something that Josh said in the interview….mug betting, giving something back to keep them happy, it’s an interesting point and one that would take time and discipline and withdrawing small amounts. No point in using a free bet, winning, then withdrawing the winnings.
So here’s a dumb question (this is me trying to get my head around something) I take it there is nothing stopping you backing and laying the same position on an exchange should the odds be favourable.
Geoff, there is no such thing as risking the whole bank in matched betting, simply because the concept is about making risk-free returns from abusing the bonuses.
The only problem I see when starting out is the human errors when calculating stakes or not reading terms and conditions properly. This takes some time to master and can be costly. That’s why I like to read the strategies filtered out by OddsMonkey even when I see some offer straight from the bookie.
To answer your question, there’s nothing stopping you from backing and laying the same event. That can create nice arbitrage opportunities on the exchange but don’t do it using the bookies odds as that will get you gubbed.
Indeed, gubbing is the biggest hit one can take in matched betting. I’ve laid out some strategies on how to avoid getting gubbed here, like betting on high profile events and around your average stake.
Oh, and another important note. Matched betting makes you think about gambling subconsciously. It takes discipline to not fall into the trap of betting your winnings or “taking an extra spin” when wagering your slot winnings. Speaking from experience, I’ve once lost £600 in 5 minutes on live tennis (shame!) in 2016 which was when I took matched betting seriously and made £10,000 since then.
Out of curiosity, what strategies did you employ in Forex to make your winnings back? I’m doing some technical analysis in crypto based on momentum indicators only.
Hi Michael,
Let me answer your question about Forex, in a nutshell…..you don’t!! That was the mistake I made. You need to find a strategy that works for you, that you understand and you follow…start on demo account and use amounts that you going to use in a live account. Demo accounts give you a huge bank so the temptation is to place with higher stakes…waste of time start small and build, understand your strategy and understand market news.
I’ll try and compare say betting and forex….so you place £10 on a football match outcome, it either wins or loses, if you lose, you lose £10. In forex place a £10 position, then you have to place your stop x points away from your entry….so let’s say we go with 30 points (pips) that means you are allowing your position to move away from your entry by 30 pips before the position being closed….the cost £300, £10 per pip. People new to forex may try EA’s good luck with that one….I tested one recently because the original concept was sound, the EA was coded by someone else (but we’ll leave that) anyway you can back test an EA on MT4, prior to 2018 the drawdown was less than 20%, winner winner chicken dinner, until 2018 when the drawdown went to over 80%, unless you optimised the EA, but this mean’t committing to bigger stop, which would mean a larger bank/equity or drastically reducing the stake thereby reducing the equity requirement.
I had a call from one of my brokers and they explained how the new legislation will work for retail traders (that’s EU legislation) so for every 10p placed you’ll require approx. £38 minimum equity in your account!!
As yet I’m still on the fence regarding matched betting, but I understand the principle, but I also want to work on KIS…I’m looking at starting with a minimum £200 with a reserve, that’s because I need to understand it, once I can understand it then I hope to make some serious money. I’ve been over how to avoid getting gubbed….TBH all of what you have said in there to me common sense (if there is such a thing 🙂 ) similar ideas are relevant in Forex, but a lot of retail traders don’t see it.
Forex for me is time consuming because I use lower time frames, I’ve tried higher time frames but again you have to be prepared for the market to move against you. My own strategy uses indicators from about 4 of these ‘learn forex’ sellers, some of which are very good if you follow the strategy + some indi’s I found on forex factory.
I have found your match betting post interesting and helpful, perhaps I should take some time out and read some more of your site.
Hi Geoff, thanks for explaining how forex works, indeed it looks riskier than MB since you expose yourself to unhedged risk. Feel free to read all matched betting articles, I’m happy to answer any questions you may have. I also found the OM videos quite helpful in getting me up to speed with the concept.
Hi Michael,
Great post!
I would like to start match betting but not sure how…
I live in the US and I wonder if there are enough sites that will allow me to bet and to get to the £500 per month you are talking about.
Also I want to consider a private consulting with you
my email is [email protected] please contact me so we can talk more about the subject.
Thank you!
Hi Sean,
I believe US matched betting will start becoming more popular now that the gambling regulations have been relaxed.
Now I cannot know if there are enough bonuses to justify a decent income. I’m afraid you have to find out by trying.
But can definitely teach you the basics over Skype if you want. Will send you an email.
Cheers,
Michael
hello? i have read through your article and its very informative. my concern however is opening a legit account in Africa-Kenya. is it possible?
Thanks mate. Glad you found it useful. Cannot speak for Africa/Kenya matched betting I’m afraid. If there are enough bookmakers and offers then you can probably make it work. But I don’t know!
Interesting, I actually enjoy betting so this sounds fun. Are you still doing this?
Advanced matched betting is now more profitable than ever. I am indeed 🙂
Good post Michael. In terms of advanced matched betting I presume you’re doing casino offers, DDHH, 2Up, Refund if win offers etc
Thanks MB. Indeed, plus each way betting. The advanced matched betting is quite profitable but takes time to master.
Thanks for the tips on staying under the radar. I’ve only just started with this and I’ve heard of gubbing so I want to keep things going as long as possible !
You’re consulting for £70 an hour? Jesus, put more time into matched betting. I’ve taken 10.5k this month. The number of articles by people claiming to know matched betting are ridiculous. Good on you for trying and making a second income but there’s so much bad advice here.
If you think my consulting is not worth the money, then don’t take it. But if I can help someone make more than £70 per hour in that hour, then what’s your problem?
I could spend more time elsewhere and make more than £70 per hour but the goal is not to make as much money as possible. It’s to help people too as you have seen from the tons of free content on this blog.
I see your point about bad advice and I agree. Btw, I only started consulting because people kept asking for “an hour one-to-one” with me. What would you do?
Just to add i don’t mean this nastily. But people seem to be posting more blogs, videos etc trying to make more from what little they know. If you research and do matched betting properly you don’t need do it.
For everyone, the opportunities are out there. Making £10 a bet is great to start and build your bank. But once you’ve got money, increase, expand, think outside the box