What is Matched Betting? A beginner’s guide

It can be! Try matched betting for free with an OddsMonkey Free Trial. Make your first matched betting profits as soon as you sign up. No payment details required. The money you make from matched betting is 100% tax free and yours to keep.

We do have a paid membership option known as OddsMonkey Premium, which you can upgrade to at any point. There you’ll find guides for lots of new customer offers, as well as ongoing and daily offers. You’ll also have access to all of our matched betting tools.

Over the years, we have helped thousands of people earn a second income with matched betting.

The amount of money you can make from matched betting ultimately depends on a number of factors, including:

• the amount of time you are willing and able to spend,
• the amount of money you are willing and able to stake (your “float”),
• the deals and back odds offered by bookmakers,
• the lay odds offered by betting exchanges,
• your matched betting knowledge and skills,
  and your access to tools and resources.

Initially though, you should be able to make around £1,000 from matched betting by taking advantage of sign up/welcome offers.

However, matched betting is sustainable and profitable for the long-term. Once you’ve opened all of your bookie accounts, you can make around £500–£700 a month by taking advantage of offers for existing customers. That’ll take around 40 minutes per day, so equates to around £25–35 per hour. However, members in our forum regularly report making £900+ per month, so it is possible to make a living from matched betting.

All of the money you make from matched betting is 100% tax-free, and you do not have to declare your earnings to HMRC.

While you can start matched betting with any amount, we’d recommend a minimum of £50-£100. You need to have enough available in your starting pot (also known as your “float” or “bankroll”) to cover this in your first matched bet:

• The stake for your qualifying bet
• The liability for your first lay bet
• The liability for your second lay bet

You can then put the profit you’ve made towards your next matched bet, and so on. It won’t be long until you have enough matched betting profits to form your float, meaning that you don’t have to stake any of your regular income.

To minimise the amount of money you need to start matched betting, you can take advantage of a no-risk matched betting offer that doesn’t require a qualifying stake. You can also place your second matched bet at lower odds to reduce your liability (although this also reduces profits).

The more money you have available for matched betting, the more money you can make. A larger bankroll means you can do more offers at once without having to wait for your money to transfer between bank, bookmaker and betting exchange accounts. However, you should make a decision based on your own financial circumstances, as you should not place bets that you can’t afford.

Matched betting is completely legal in the UK but you do have to be aged 18 or over. That’s because you will be opening up accounts with bookmakers. It is not a scam and it is not a con. It may seem too good to be true at first, but it’s totally legit!

Bookmakers aren’t huge fans of matched betting, purely because they’re not making money off you. However, it’s a completely legal way to use the bonus offers given out.

Matched betting is safe and risk-free in principle. Mathematically, it is guaranteed to generate profits. However, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) considers the claim of matched betting being 100% risk-free “misleading because, although theoretically sound, the process [is] open to human error”.

In other words, the potential for mistakes does exist. Therefore, matched betting is not 100% without risk. There is also a small chance that the odds will change in the time between you placing your back bet and lay bet, meaning that the bet is no longer properly matched.

But that’s exactly what OddsMonkey is here for: to offer tools and advice that dramatically reduce the chance of you making a mistake and give you a plan B if the odds do change at the last second. Our tools and training are here to make matched betting as low-risk as possible.

Matched betting is still one of the best ways to make money online from home. For as long as bookmakers offer free bet deals, back and lay betting can continue to deliver profits.

Bookmakers have been aware of matched betting for years and they’re showing no signs of stopping these special offers. So, matched betting still works in 2022 and it’s extremely unlikely that it will die any time soon.

We estimate that tens of thousands of people in the UK will use matched betting to supplement their income this year.

Thousands of people across the UK believe that matched betting is worth it. Check out our customer reviews and matched betting success stories prove. Of course, whether it’s worth it to you depends on your personal circumstances.

All of the money that you make from matched betting is 100% tax-free and, with the right tools and resources at your disposal, the process is quick and easy. This, combined with the high profits on offer, means that you can make a relatively high hourly rate.

Over the years, OddsMonkey has helped thousands of people earn a second income with matched betting.

It is extremely unlikely that matched betting will go wrong, but it is possible for you to make a mistake during the process. It is also possible, but unlikely, that the odds will change in-between you placing your back bet and lay bet in a way that causes an overall loss.

If you place your matched bets correctly and the odds used to calculate them do not dramatically change for the worse in the middle of the process, the maths means that you are guaranteed to make a profit.

Plus, if you are unfortunate enough to lose money on a matched bet, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to make it back quickly. Always double check bets before confirming them.

Matched betting can be easy if you have the right tools and resources to help you. Luckily, we have everything you need here at OddsMonkey. We’re dedicated to helping our members get to grips with matched betting, get the best offers, and maximise their profits.

When you start your Free Trial, we’ll take you through matched betting, step-by-step. Our tutorials will walk you through the process, introduce you to betting exchanges, and show you how our OddsMatcher tool works. We’ll then guide you through your first matched bets. This is the first step towards making £1000 from bookmaker sign up offers.

You do not need a separate bank account for matched betting, but it can be helpful. The main argument for having a bank account especially for matched betting is so everyday spending doesn’t get in the way. It’s as simple as that. With a separate bank account, you can keep track of your incomings and outgoings more easily. Without having to trawl through all those Just Eat orders and bills…

Joking aside though, most of us have direct debits set up for things, so we need money in the bank on a certain date. Withdrawal times differ between bookmakers and sometimes there’ll be extra delays that are out of your control. It can be a bit of a waiting game. And this all means that you won’t always be able to guarantee when you have the amount of money you were expecting.

Because OddsMonkey is located in the UK, most of the offers we find and post on the site are UK-based. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that if you live outside the UK you can’t matched bet, it just means that you’ll need to check the terms and conditions of individual bookmakers and offers to see if you’re still eligible.

The availability of offers depends on the bookie. Some of the larger bookmakers operate in countries across the world and may have similar offers available in your country. It’s a slightly more manual process, finding these offers. But there’s still money to be made.

You should also check bookmakers’ terms if you’re a UK resident on holiday, as betting restrictions may still apply while you’re temporarily abroad.

While deposits and withdrawals to multiple gambling sites is not seen in a favourable manner, there is no direct correlation between a worsening credit score and matched betting. Experian has stated that matched betting deposits and withdrawals will not appear on credit reference radars, so your credit score will not be affected.

To answer simply, yes, existing users can still receive matched betting offers from specific bookmakers. Many bookmakers offer something called “reload offers” to existing customers, which include things like free bet clubs and price boosts which are available after you used the initial sign-up offer.

The key idea with matched betting is to register more than one account on varying bookmakers. This is mainly to provide yourself with more options for sign-up offers, and you can sign yourself up to as many bookmakers as you like, although we would recommend using the ones that we know provide opportunity for matched betting.

We do not recommend trying to open more than one account with the same bookmaker, as this generally goes against their terms of service and could result in your account being closed or suspended if you are caught.

Regular matched betting comes with something known as a Qualifying Loss (QL), which is a specified value that you are risking to lose in order to qualify for a sign up offer. Thanks to modern advancements in technology and matched betting calculators, it is possible to complete matched betting without these QL values; this is known as no risk matched betting.

To explain simply, the liability is the amount you are risking – typically on the Lay side of the bet – and will be deducted from that side of the bet if that side loses. With a matched bet, only one side of the bet will win, so you are either placing with a back bet value, or with the lay bet liability.