Matched betting strategy: How to spend less time making more money

Updated in April 2020

What is the best matched betting strategy? Here are four ways to make more profit while reducing your time spent on matched betting.

With matched betting, it is possible to earn a full-time income with part-time work. From my previous profit reports, 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.

This article will show you how much time you can expect to spend on matched betting and how you can improve your matched betting strategy through simple tricks.

To ensure Monethalia stays free of charge, this post contains affiliate links. This means I will receive a commission should you make a purchase through my links at no extra cost to you.

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 couple of hours’ work.

If you are new to matched betting, read my simple matched betting guide first. My matched betting tips will help you if you are a beginner or intermediate matched bettor.

Matched betting strategy – How to spend less time making more money

How much money can I make with matched betting?

For now, let us assume you would like to make £1,000 per month with matched betting. This is reasonable and you can achieve this level of profit even as a beginner.

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.

Making a full-time income with part-time work with matched betting

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. If you can make £1,000 in 10 hours, then you can also make £2,000 in 20 hours.

However, note that as a beginner, you may have difficulties reaching these levels of profit as your bankroll will likely be too small. You would probably need £1,000 in your bank to start off with in order to make £2,000 profit every month.

Factors influencing your income

Your matched betting income depends on a range of factors:

• The money you have available
• Time
• Experience
• Seasonal variation in offers
• Variance
• Real-life commitments and mistakes

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.

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.

Real-life commitments and mistakes

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.

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.

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

What if you do not have the 10 hours per week but still want the £1k profit? By maximising your matched betting strategy, it is possible to reduce your matched betting time commitment further. There are a number of matched betting hacks:

1. Use an oddsmatcher

Searching for close odds manually takes a lot of time. If you do not have access to an oddsmatcher, it may take you closer to 30 hours to make £1,000. 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.

With Profit Accumulator, you can find close odds within seconds. You can sign-up for a free trial here. Then, you can upgrade to premium membership for £1 in your first week.

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.

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.

In return, you can post offers that you come across to make other people’s life easier. There are a number of matched betting Facebook groups and Profit Accumulator has a well-visited forum.

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. 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.

Free bets

Once the price boosts are done, place all free bets you have from previously completed offers.

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.

Horse racing offers

Horse odds are very volatile and change quickly. Profit Accumulator‘s racing matcher makes it easy to keep an eye on the odds throughout the day.

Note: For horse racing offers, you may find OddsMonkey more useful than Profit Accumulator. Read more in my OddsMonkey vs. Profit Accumulator comparison.

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”. 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 Profit Accumulator‘s Daily Offer list.

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.

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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Jennifer