What is the best matched betting strategy? With a solid matched betting strategy, you can reduce your time spent matched betting while at the same time making more money. Sounds like a good deal, does it not?
As a matched bettor, whether new or experienced, it is easy to get distracted by all the offers around you and waste time. Some offers are best done on certain times of the day, some need more regular attention. With my matched betting strategy, you will always know what you need to do at what time.
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Table of Contents
What is matched betting?
Matched betting is an easy way to earn extra money from home. It provides a tax-free income and only takes a few hours’ work per week. Matched betting is not gambling and totally legal in any country that allows sports betting. If you are new to matched betting, read my simple matched betting guide first.
With matched betting, it is possible to earn a full-time income with part-time work. From my income report, you can see that I earned ~£1,000 per month while working in a regular full-time job. And I was not pushing the limits at all. Profit Accumulator is the tool that makes earning this much easy. You can grab your free trial here:
You can make up to £45 for free. The free trial will not
automatically progress to a paid membership.
With a Profit Accumulator membership you get access to training guides and tutorials, daily reload offers, as well as an oddsmatcher. This will enable you to learn matched betting and save time and make more money.
Matched betting strategy: How to spend less time making more money
Make full-time income with part-time work
It is often stated that with matched betting, people can make a full-time income while only working part-time hours. And this is true. As a new matched bettor, you can make around £1,000 to £1,500 per month depending on how fast you progress.
As a complete beginner, you can expect to spend 20 hours per week on matched betting to make £1,000 profit. Once you are more experienced, you can make the same amount of profit in approximately 10 hours per week. These hours will vary slightly between matched bettors because everyone has their own methods and level of caution.
Factors influencing your income
Your matched betting profit will likely be different each month because it depends on a range of factors:
- The money you have available (bankroll)
- Time
- Experience
- Seasonal variation in offers
- Variance
- Real-life commitments and mistakes
Your bankroll
When starting your matched betting journey, you do not need a lot of money. In fact, I started with just £10 (and turned it into over £10,000). You will quickly make more money and can use your initial profit to build up your bankroll.
How much you should keep in your matched betting bank depends on how much money you want to make per month. These are the rough amounts you will need:
| Target profit per month | Recommended bankroll | Minimum bankroll |
| £200 | £200 | £150 |
| £500 | £500 | £300 |
| £1,000 | £800 | £500 |
| £2,000 | £1,200 | £1,000 |
The more money you want to make, the more money you should keep in your bank. Note that you do not have to spend any money to do matched betting, bankroll just means the money you use to complete offers. Basically, this money will keep cycling around between your bank account, the exchange and the bookmakers.
Seasonal variation in offers
When trying to improve your matched betting strategy, you have to take into account that offers vary throughout the year. For example, during the Premier League season, there are generally more easy offers that take little time and provide guaranteed profit.
There are also special matched betting events such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot (both horse racing) which can hugely add to your profits. With the right matched betting strategy, you can make a killing in just a few days. December tends to be the month of low-risk casino with plenty of offers available.
Variance
Another factor impacting your matched betting time commitment is variance. For example, when completing a low-risk casino offer, you may win a large amount of money or lose money in any given month. However, over time, variance will balance itself so that you should be in profit on average.
Sport betting offers have lower variance so if you are not doing casino offers, your profit will be more stable. Of course, with low-risk casino being part of your matched betting strategy, you can make more money overall.
Real-life commitments
While matched betting does not require much time, at some point you need to place your bets. I often hear from parents who lost money because they were distracted by their children when placing a bet.
For me, I am usually abroad over the Christmas holidays to see my family. This means it is more difficult to do matched betting as I am busy visiting relatives. Therefore, I am missing out on a good amount of money every year. But of course I value my family more than my matched betting profits.
Mistakes
Mistakes can also impact your matched betting income. For example, you may forget to lay or lay the wrong amount. Or you could back and lay the wrong event. In each of these cases, you would need to spend additional time on matched betting to recover the losses.
Usually, mistakes can easily be made up for, so do not worry if this happens to you. Making mistakes at the beginning is actually good because your stakes are still small and your losses will be lower. Some mistakes can even be fixed before you lose too much. Mistakes can also end up being lucky and increase your profit (but let us not bet on that).
Your matched betting time will depend on a variety of factors. However, in general, it is possible to earn a full-time income with part-time work.
How to improve your matched betting strategy
As you can see there are a lot of factors influencing your profit. The trick is modifying the factors that are under your control to make up for those that are out of your hands. Your matched betting strategy plays a big part in this.
There are few matched betting hacks that you can use to increase your profit:
1. Use an oddsmatcher
Searching for close odds manually takes a lot of time. If you do not have access to an oddsmatcher, your matched betting journey will be painfully slow. Furthermore, when searching manually, you are unlikely to find the closest odds and thus, will have a lower profit per bet. Therefore, an oddsmatcher is absolutely essential.
You can make up to £45 for free. The free trial will not
automatically progress to a paid membership.
With Profit Accumulator, you can find close odds within seconds. The oddsmatcher and various other matchers will speed up your matched betting experience. Plus, you will also get access to profitable reload offers.
2. Link your oddsmatcher to your exchange account
Linking your oddsmatcher to Smarkets and Betfair will further save you time. This allows you to lay your bets directly from the oddsmatcher, and can easily be done at Profit Accumulator.
By liking your accounts, you will also be eligible for the 0%-commission offer at Smarkets. Usually, Smarkets take 2% of your winnings as their fee for letting you use their platform. However, with a linked Profit Accumulator account, you do not have this fee.
Two percent does not sound like much but as a matched bettor, you betting volume can easily exceed £2,000 per month. Note that the value of bets you place are much higher than your monthly profits because your bets are all laid.
If you place £2,000 worth of bets, which is a low number for most matched bettors, you will save £40 in commission. A Profit Accumulator only costs £19.99 at most so you will £20 in profit just from linking your Profit Accumulator account to Smarkets.
3. Join the matched betting community
Doing everything by yourself can be boring and time consuming. You can drastically reduce your matched betting time commitment by letting others do some of the work for you. For example, in the Profit Accumulator forum, you will find others posting price boosts or exchanging tips on how to best complete an offer.
In return, you can post offers that you come across to make other people’s life easier. People will appreciate it when you help them out and return the favour. Joining the community is part of a good matched betting strategy but also a quick way to make new friends.
4. Follow a matched betting schedule
I am working full-time alongside doing matched betting and having an efficient routine is the key to my success. A good matched betting schedule is the key to every matched betting strategy. You can find a sample matched betting schedule below:
Matched betting schedule explanation
Price boosts
Start your matched betting day by opening a tab for the Profit Accumulator price boost thread. Alternatively, you can receive notifications for price boosts on your phone. Price boosts come in throughout the day and are not on for a long time, so it is crucial to be quick.
Price boosts are not a major earner, perhaps you can expect making around £5-£10 per day from them. However, they are quick to do so you should not neglect them, especially on quieter days.
Free bets
Once the price boosts are done, place all free bets you have from previously completed offers. Some bookmakers credit free bets within 24 hours, others may take a few days. Additionally, when you get your free bet also depends on the specific offers.
In any case, you should not wait too long to place your free bet. They can expire or the bookmaker could change their mind (they should not really but you never know). Having a set time of the day to place free bets ensures that you cash them in in good time.
E-mails
When you sign-up to new bookmakers, always opt-in to receive marketing communication. This will send good offers your way! E-mail offers will also come in throughout the day so it is worth keeping an eye on your inbox all day.
Over time, you will notice that some bookmakers will send you rubbish offers. With these, it is safe to opt-out receiving marketing communication to keep your email influx more manageable. This is a matter of experience so in the beginning, keep being opted-in.
Another way to save time is to only skim the subject line. You will quickly develop a feeling for which email contents are profitable and which are not based on the subject line.
Horse racing offers
Every day, there are a horse races going on all afternoon and evening in the UK. Usually, they earliest races start shortly before 1pm and the latest finish just after 8pm. Most races are associated with bookmaker offers, usually even more than one.
However, there are only few offers that are really good. Most are sort of medium in quality. You can make money from them but you need to find close matches to make these offers worthwhile. As such, it is important to keep an eye on horse odds throughout the day and strike when they are close.
Horse odds are very volatile and change quickly. This means you have numerous chances to get a close match but you need to pay attention and be quick. Profit Accumulator‘s racing matcher makes it easy to keep an eye on the odds throughout the day while you are completing other offers.
You can make up to £45 for free. The free trial will not
automatically progress to a paid membership.
Usually, the best time to place horse racing bets is late morning but even if you start your matched day later during the day, you should check the odds before going on to other offers.
Sports offers
I recommend completing sports offers after checking the horse racing odds and before completing low-risk casino offers. This is because other sports events are usually later in the day than horse racing and more importantly, their odds do not shift as dramatically. However, sports do have a deadline (the event start), whereas low-risk casino offers can usually be completed throughout the day.
Firstly, take note of any bets that need to be placed at a specific time (e.g. in play) and set an alarm. After this, complete any sports offers marked as “guaranteed profit” in Profit Accumulator’s daily offer list. This means that you know before placing the bet that you will make a profit.
Then, move on to offers that are marked as “expected profit”. This means that you may not make any profit from these offers right now, but should be over time. Examples of these offers are 2ups, first goalscorer offers, etc.
Low-risk casino offers
Low-risk casino offers are less time dependent than other offers so you should complete them after everything else. Look through your emails first, then check online. For casino offers, whether low or high risk, you may want to consider a membership with Bonus Accumulator.
Bonus Accumulator offers a wealth of tutorials and guides to help get you up to speed with casino offers. Furthermore, they have the most comprehensive list of daily reload offers that you will find online.
Ideally, you want to start with the low-risk casino offers that have the highest expected profit. However, these may also be riskier than other, less profitable offers. Thus, as part of a good matched betting strategy, you need to find a balance in what you are comfortable doing.
Community offers
Sometimes you can find useful offers in the Profit Accumulator forum or in matched betting Facebook groups. It is always worth having a look if you have the time. Mostly, you will find sign-up offers for new or less well-known bookmakers.
When attempting offers you found in community groups, it is important to keep in mind that these are not vetted by the Profit Accumulator team. Therefore, they may have high hidden wagering requirements or other unrealistic conditions. At worst, the bookmaker is a scam and you will have a hard time withdrawing your money.
Thus, you should always be careful with community offers. However, this does not mean all of these offers are bad. You just have to read the terms and conditions carefully and do your own research on the bookmaker.
Matched betting strategy summary
With matched betting, you can earn a full-time salary with part-time work. Your matched betting profit will mainly depend on the amount of time you have, your experience and your bankroll. There are other factors that can influence your matched betting time commitment such as the season, the type of offers you complete and mistakes.
By following a good and efficient schedule you can drastically cut down the amount of time you spend on matched betting. It is also important that you have access to an oddsmatcher that should be linked to your betting exchange account.
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