You know there’s money to be made, but is matched betting worth it in 2022? Could you make more money elsewhere for the same amount of time?
We certainly think matched betting is still worth your time in 2022. Especially if you follow our matched betting tips.
Keep in mind, the revenue generated from matched betting is tax free and can be done from the comfort of your own home.
That means no transport costs, and no commute time.
In this article we’ll go in detail on how much time you’re likely to spend on the different matched betting offers.
Not all matched betting offers are created equally
Online bookmakers and casinos are becoming increasingly creative with their offers, enticing new and customers to spend their money.
On the surface they can look fantastic, but if they take all day to complete and only make you £10 then they’re not worth your time.
Let’s have a look at the different offers available, and estimate the hourly rate for each.
We’re going to assume you have average experience and using matched betting software like Oddsmonkey or profit accumulator. Without this software matched betting will take you a lot more time than it needs to.
Are Matched Betting Welcome Offers Worth it?
The easiest and most popular way to make money with matched betting is with the welcome offers.
With welcome offers alone, you can make £800 in your first month.
There are well over £1,000 worth of free bets on the market in 2022.
With basic matched betting strategy, extracting 80% cash from these bets gets you to this £800 target with minimal effort.
Right now, welcome offers in the online gambling sector are more generous than ever. With the majority of bookmakers, you can make £15 to £20 profit per welcome offer.
Assuming you have an Oddsmonkey premium account, the welcome offer itself can be complete in less than 10 minutes.
The signing up process takes the most amount of time, when cashing in on these welcome offers.
To stay organised and save time, make sure to check out the getting started check list .
Once you’re organised, including the sign-up process, making £15+ with a basic welcome offer will take around 30 minutes of your time.
That’s a return of around £30 per hour.
One time Profit: £800+
Hourly Rate: £30+
Worth it: Yes
Are existing customer offers worth your time?
You’ll be pleased to know, matched betting doesn’t stop once the welcome offers are complete.
In fact quite the opposite. Consistent weekly promotions, available to existing customers is where the long term matched betting profits are made.
So how much can you make matched betting now that the welcome offers are finished, and are they worth your time?
Are “Bet and Get” offers worth it?
These types of offers are the bread and butter to matched betting. Easy, simple quick profits.
However, these promotions are often seasonal, around sporting events that have a lot of media attention and customer interest.
Months with big sporting events like Cheltenham horse racing festival or the FIFA World Cup will see a huge up lift in these types of offers as bookies jump on the media bandwagon.
Example of these bet and get offers are:
“Bet £10 on the England game and receive a £5 free bet”
“Bet £10 on the first race and receive a £10 free bet on the next race”
These offers are so simple, and take no more than 10 minutes to complete.
Make the most of these simple and effective offers.
Over the calendar year the amount of profit you can make each month will fluctuate. An average over the year will probably look something like this:
Average monthly profit: £200
Hourly Rate: £25+
Worth it: Yes
Bet and Get – “If”
These types of offers have seen a rise in popularity over the past months.
Whilst they are not as good as the standard “Bet & Get”, there is still a significant amount of money to be made completing them, making them worth your time.
These offers are not always guaranteed profit. This is because to receive the free bet a particular outcome has to occur.
Examples of “Bet & Get If” offers:
“Bet £10 and get a £10 free bet IF your horse finishes second”
or
“Bet £10 and get a £10 free bet IF Player X scores”
For this reason we’ll be relying on a little bit of luck.
I would advise that you’re a bit more selective when it comes to “Bet and Get – IF” offers.
Not all of them will return good profits, and some of them will not result in any profit at all.
This is where some sporting knowledge will come in handy.
“Money back if a goal is scored in the 90th minute” is less likely to happen than Money back if Ronaldo scores at any time”.
Knowing the likelihood of the offer landing you a free bet will help you decide “is matched betting worth it” on this particular offer.
You may find yourself constantly qualifying for these types of promotions but receiving no free bets.
If that’s the case, pause and revaluate if these offers are still worth your time.
The oddsmonkey daily offer calendar is a brilliant resource that helps show the expected profit per offer.
Guarantee a profit with “Bet & Get IF” offers
Whilst some matched betters might avoid these offers, because there is an element of luck involved. In some instances we can remove the need for luck and lock in a profit each and every time.
Here’s a great example of a “Bet & Get IF” offer, that can be used to guarantee profit:
“Bet £10 on Liverpool against Arsenal, and receive a £5 free bet for every goal scored in the game”
With this offer, how much money you can make depends on the number of goals scored in match. If there are no goals scored, then we receive no free bets and therefore make no money, right?
That’s right, the offer itself will not make us any money, but we can still guarantee a profit and ensure it’s worth our time.
For us to receive no free bets, there needs to be no goals, meaning that the final score would have to be 0-0.
The odds for the final score to be 0-0 in any game is normally at least 10/1
We can therefore place just a £1 bet on the final score to be 0-0 and find ourselves in profit.
If the game finishes 0-0 we win £10+ from our bet. And if there are any goals in the game we will receive at least a £5 free bet, which we can then turn 80% into withdrawable cash.
The worst case scenario would be 1-0. We lose the £1 bet and only receive £5 free bet (£4 cash).
With experience you will quickly learn, which offers are worth your time, and which look good, but show no or little returns.
Average monthly profit: £75
Hourly Rate: £10+
Worth It: Sometimes
Loyalty Weekly Offers.
A great way to make a guaranteed income every week is with the bookmakers that offer weekly Loyalty promotions. These promotions are so simple and you can often unlock the bonuses without any additional effort.
Here’s a few variations of these type of offers:
“Bet £25 from Monday to Sunday, receive a £5 free bet the following week”
“Place 5 x £10 bets and receive a free £10 bet”
By completing regular matched betting promotions throughout the week you will often find yourself unlocking these additional bonus without even trying.
Keep an eye on your progress, at the end of the week you might need to complete 1 or 2 more bets to receive your bonus.
These weekly offers vary in difficulty from bookie to bookie, but are generally good income generators, especially considering the time spent.
At the time of writing (November 2022) there is a guaranteed £50 profit to be made every week completing these weekly loyalty offers.
Assuming you’re already completing offers and mug betting on these accounts you won’t have to do much to receive these additional bonuses. If there are extra bets you need to do, they’re often quick and easy mug bets that shouldn’t take more than 1 hour per week.
Monthly Profit: £200
Hourly rate: £50+
Worth it: Yes
Are Enhanced Odds Worth Your Time?
Taking advantage of enhanced odds is probably the quickest way to make some fast easy money whilst matched betting.
Unfortunately the bookmakers know this, and restrict the amount of money we are able to bet on them.
(Max Bet £10) is usually shown next to the enhanced odds.
When answering the question:
Is matched betting worth your time, Particularly with enhanced odds. This depends on your preference and risk tolerance.
There are 2 ways to complete these enhanced odds offers:
1. Guarantee small profits consistently each week.
2. Have a bit of fun and potentially make a medium to large sized profit. Risk-free of course.
What strategy should you use with enhance odds offers?
Here is an example of the same offer, but with the amount of profit to be made, considerably different.
A standard enhanced offer at the weekend from one of our favourite bookmakers. “The Price Boost”
Switching the matched betting calculator to advanced mode, we have 3 different options. All of which will make us profit.
Underlay, Standard and Overlay.
The Standard option is the same as easy mode. It has calculated the perfect amount to lay, so that you make the same amount of profit no matter the outcome of the event. This is Matched betting 101. The ability to make a profit, regardless of the outcome is what attracts the masses to start matched betting in the first place.
But sometimes, there is a better way. And certainly a more interesting way to make money with these types of offers.
There’s no advantages in Overlaying. The maximum profit to be made is only slightly higher than the guaranteed profit using the standard method. And there’s a chance of making no money at all.
However using the Underlaying option can be attractive
Underlaying, is a technique I myself like to use. It’s my way of gambling, without risking any money.
It’s a very simple concept.
Rather than guaranteeing a small profit, the calculator highlights an alternative method, so that if the back bet does win, then I win considerably more money.
This method is not for everybody, but it is a risk free way of potentially making a sizeable profit.
A word of warning, and some advice that you should not ignore, especially when it comes to making money from enhanced odds:
Make sure that you mug bet.
What I mean by this, is don’t just use a bookmaker for their enhanced odds promotions.
If you log in every weekend and put £10 on the enhanced odds and nothing else, you will have your account restricted in no time at all.
The amount of money you make will fluctuate using the Underlaying method, whilst consistent using the standard method.
Personally, making a guaranteed profit of 80p is not worth my time.
Using the underlay method and having a risk free chance of winning £10+ is worth 5 minutes of my time.
Average monthly profit: £50
Hourly Rate: £50+
Worth it: Yes (It’s fun)
To stay competitive, bookmakers will regularly run promotions offering “Extra places” on selected races.
Instead of paying 4 places they might pay 5, 6 or even 7 places.
If you are unsure how each way bets works, and how places are paid then check out the article here.
Its important to note that these extra place offers are not a guaranteed way to make money. But on occasions the risk to reward ratio can be huge.
On the surface, making money from extra places is relatively simple.
If our horse finishes in the extra place, then we’re in the money.
With regular matched betting offers, the basic principle is to pay out less on the exchange than the bookmaker pays us.
Extra place offers, offer us an opportunity where we can get paid by the bookmaker, without paying any money on the exchange.
If our horse finishes in the extra place we can win a lot of money. There is a good amount of luck involved with this strategy.
Please be selective when completing these offers. Not every race offering extra places is worth completing.
If there isn’t a horse that doesn’t fit your criteria, and doesn’t return a worth while profit then don’t try to force it. Wait for a race that is more suitable.
The Oddsmonkey Extra Place Matcher tool is an absolute must have if you would like to try this advanced matched betting strategy.
As well as calculations, highlighting the lay stake for both the win and each way market. You can find optimal horses for all the days extra place offers in a matter of seconds.
Saving time is as good as making money when trying to decide if matched betting offers are worth it.
Potential profits from extra place offers can vary dramatically. Some extra place winners can bring home over £100 profit, on average you can expect to make around £30 when they land.
If you are patient, and only complete these promotions when good value opportunities present themselves, you will complete around 1 a day. (More during popular racing festivals)
The potential hourly return on these types of matched betting offers is huge. They’re attractive because you can often make £30+ profit when it goes your way.
However the realised hourly return isn’t as attractive, when you consider the number of attempts that showed no returns, or in fact lost a small amount of money.
Average monthly profit: £100
Hourly Rate: £12+
Worth it: Yes, if you’re selective.
Matched Betting Accumulators
Here is a disclaimer right from the start, when it comes to completing Accumulator offers:
I’ve successfully completed this type of offer once, and don’t plan on doing it again.
Don’t let me put you off experimenting with accumulator offers, there are thousands of people making money from these offers every week.
Here’s how they work, and why I personally stay away from them. Let’s look at an example offer:
“If one team lets you down, we’ll give you your money back as a free bet”
Just like the Extra Place offers, you have 2 options if you’re looking to make money from these accumulator promotions:
Option 1: Be a Maths genius and spend hours calculating the odds and lay amount.
Option 2: Follow the step by step instructions on the accumulator tools, that come standard with the premium membership.
My issue with the accumulator offers is that they require my free time after the bet has been placed. And with a wife and 2 kids, that’s not always an option.
You will need to monitor the results throughout the day and ensure you are available to lay the next section of your bet.
If your goal is to make a full time income from Matched Betting, then the extra income from these offers will be attractive.
If you’re looking for the best use of your time when matched betting, you will want to avoid accumulator offers.
A single accumulator offer can take over an hour, and you’ll need to be free at a particular time for each lay bet.
Average monthly profit: £200
Hourly Rate: £5+
Worth it: No
All things considered Is Matched Betting worth it?
The answer to that question will depend on your circumstances.
I’ve personally made thousands of pounds matched betting, I find it entertaining and a great side income.
If you’re doing the calculations yourself, it’s not going to be worth your time.
If you make the most of purpose built matched betting software like Oddsmonkey then the time saved most certainly does make matched betting worth it.
Without Oddsmonkey, the time you spend searching and completing offers will translate into a poor hourly return.
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