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I’m an accountant and accountants are not known for being risk-taking creatures! Maybe that’s why until recently I haven’t ever done much betting except for a little punt on the Grand National or the Melbourne Cup when we lived in Australia.

Since I’ve started my blog though I’ve been introduced to matched betting and now am doing a number of daily bets. I love my new side hustle as its totally RISK FREE, and I’m making a decent amount of income – also known as my shoe fund 😊

I think the term betting is a bit misleading and may put some people off who are against gambling. Matched betting IS NOT gambling however; it’s just a method of placing bets in a risk free way to guarantee a profit. It’s totally legal and the income you make is tax-free too.

What is matched betting?

You will have seen adverts encouraging you to sign up with a bookmaker to get free bets – ‘Sign up to Coral and bet £5, receive £20 free bets’. Pretty much every bookie promotes offers to get new customers to sign up and to retain existing customers.

Matched betting exploits these freebie offers given out by online bookies. The idea is that you use these offers to place initial risk free bets in order to then take advantage of those free bets and offers. It is from the free bets and offers which you can then make some serious money.

Key to ‘matched’ betting is in the name. You bet on both a certain result occurring as well as that same result not occurring, with different bookmakers. Eg. You bet with one bookmaker that West Ham will win their football match, and you bet that they will NOT win their match with another (note: you don’t bet that they will lose, you need to capture the draw by betting ‘not win’).

You will win on one of these bets and you will lose on the other. The two bookies will have slightly different odds, so you end up with a very small difference between your winning bet and your corresponding losing bet initially. But then you are given the free bets in your accounts to play with. From these, you can make guaranteed and significant profit!

Do I need to understand sport or betting?

You don’t need to understand anything about sport or betting! If at this point of reading you are thinking this all sounds quite complicated for a novice, or time-consuming, I can assure you it isn’t. I have been using a great website – Profit Accumulator –  which calculates the best matches or races between different bookmakers and talks you through step by step all the information you need to place your bets. I can’t rate it highly enough. The guidance is so thorough and I managed to make just under £400 in my first few weeks using a handful of the 60 odd initial sign-up offers which are available to people starting up with bookies for the first time. This is before any of the casino or reload offers!

Using Profit Accumulator

Profit Accumulator is a great website which aggregates the huge range of profitable offers available in to one place for you to choose which you want to take advantage of. It talks you through how to place the bets to make your profit.

For each available offer, Profit Accumulator has a video and written tutorial so you can follow the instructions step by step.

The odds-matching software used by Profit Accumulator and the calculators do all the brain work for you; hence why matched betting is risk free if you follow the easy guided instructions.

There is a free trial available which talks you through two very simple offers. This includes an introductory video which explains matched betting and how it works. From there, you are talked through by video and written instructions how to use the two offers to make yourself £45. Risk free! You are guaranteed to walk away with this profit.

After the free trial, you can trial the full site for a £1 fee for a limited period and thereafter there is a monthly or annual option for subscription. I used my £45 winnings to pay for the subscription and from now on, the subscription just comes out of my monthly winnings so it hasn’t actually cost me anything to be a member as it was free money to start with!

How much time do I need?

I spent a bit of time upfront – probably an hour – watching the tutorials so I understood how to do it properly and then placing my first bets carefully. I think it is important to be realistic that you do need to understand what you are placing bets on and how, in order to ensure that you aren’t risking any money. Done properly, there is no risk with matched betting but if you are new to online betting, you will have to get used to the websites.

A month in, I can find the best bets through the Profit Accumulator software and place the bets for one offer in about 15-30 minutes.

How much money can I make?

How long is a piece of string? How much money you can make from matched betting depends on a couple of factors:

• The time you can dedicate to it. The more time you can spend, the more offers you will complete and therefore the more money can be made.
• How much money you can put in to get started. If you have a pot of say £50 to get started, you will need to wait for your first bets to settle and pay out before you can reinvest them in additional offers. If you have a larger pot to start with, you can utilise more offers at the same time and also place larger bets, which will make you more money.

I’ve not been very dedicated to this in the past month (and still made a decent amount) but with the football season now in full swing and the Champions League, I am aiming to make £600-£1,000 a month.

One thing I need to mention if you are worried that this only makes you money initially on new sign up offers is that experienced match betters are still able to make decent money even though they can’t benefit from the new sign up offers. Bookmakers offer reload offers to existing customers to encourage them to place further bets with them. Major sporting events e.g. Cheltenham Festival, Football World Cups, 6 Nations Rugby, Major Golf Tournaments etc will always have lots of promotional offers trying to entice your money too.

New sign ups – extra money to be made

In addition to the money which you can make from matched betting, remember to open your new bookmaker accounts via TopCashBack or Quidco to benefit from some sizeable cashback deals too. I didn’t do this for my first couple and I am kicking myself as Coral offer £15 and Betfair offer £20 cashback for new accounts.

I see so many ‘get rich quick’ schemes and multi-level marketing opportunities offered to people who want to earn money from home. Most of these require a sizeable upfront investment though, and this investment can take some time to pay back before you start actually making money. With matched betting, you can use an entirely free trial of Profit Accumulator to see if it’s for you. If it isn’t, you just walk away with your initial winnings.

(If you are going to be buying a house soon, you may want to check out my post on matched betting and mortgages.)