Stan James £10 mobile offer is on again

The Deal

Stan is offering another £10 free bet to anyone placing a £10 bet via their mobile phone. The bet has to be placed at odds of 2 or more.

The Result

I placed the qualifying bet on the U21 soccer for a net loss of £0.64. I did have to call up customer support when my free bet didn't show up. They credited the bet promptly and without fuss though.

I then used my new found horse betting skills to find a nice high odds match, 11 at Stan vs 10.5 at Betfair to grab £9.09 of the free bet.

A net profit of £8.45. Nice one Stan. =)

A £7 voucher from JackpotJoy

The Deal

If you've been following you may remember I signed up with Jackpot Joy a few months back to claim the cashback. That all went according to plan and I haven't been back to the site since.

I got a real paper letter from JackpotJoy a few days ago trying to entice me back to the world of gambling. Included was a £7 voucher for use on the site. There didn't seem to be any strings attached apart from requiring a minimum of £10 in your account before you could withdraw.

The Plan

I considered just depositing £3 and then immediately withdrawing my new balance of £10. I thought it possible that someone might get a bit iffy about that and stop the withdrawal though, so I decided to just try and gamble it up to £10.

The Result

I wanted things quick and simple so I logged in and fired up Roulette. I put £3 on red and spun the wheel. No luck there so I put the remaining £4 on red. It came in giving me £8 in total. So I stuck £2 on red and spun again. It came in giving me £10 in total so I put a withdrawal through for the full amount.

So £10 profit for about 5 minutes work. I hope they send me some more letters soon!

£100 worth of free bets from Victor Chandler

The Deal

Victor Chandler offer £100 worth of free bets to new customers. You get a £50 free bet after making your first £50 bet at odds of 2 or greater. Once you've bagged that one there is a £25 free bet on offer after making 5 more bets of at least £10 at any odds. There's then one more £25 after your next 5 bets of £10 or more.

The Plan

After the trials of BetAfterBet I was glad to return to an offer that wasn't going to require heavy betting.

I actually signed up for Victor Chandler at around the same time as BetAfterBet, but with my cash tied up and being busy with other things I didn't get around to doing it until I had just 1 week to rattle through it.

The Result

I went hunting for my first £50 bet match and found a footy game between some obscure teams whose names I cannot pronounce. 2.5 at VC vs 2.54 at betfair seemed a good start with a net loss of £2.31.

I didn't get a chance to place the free bet until a couple of days later. Knowing that time was an issue I matched at slightly under my usual target of 80%. 6.5 vs 6.8 netted me £38 from the free bet.

I now had 4 days left to grab the remaining pot and I was really strugging to find a match, so I decided it was time I tried the horses. I'd been intimidated because there are no matched betting sites that will find matches for you, so you have to do it all manually. I was happy to find that getting matches was actually pretty easy. I placed 5 £10 bets on the horses during my lunch break at work for a net loss of £1.84. This was despite getting stung by the fast moving odds costing me £1.66 on one of the qualifiers.

Continuing the horse theme I stuck my free £25 on a nag with odds of 8.5 and layed at 8.4 at Betfair for a net of £21.34.

I got the next 5 bets the next day for a net loss of £1.69 and matched the free bet that evening at odds of 9 for the back and lay to grab £21.23 out of the last freebie.

So at the end of my run I've netted £74.73 from this run. A very respectable total. Victor Chandler was an easy bookie to work with and I'd definitely recommend taking up their offer.

I've also discovered that I quite like betting on the horses. There's a wide selection of odds available and there is a race on almost every 10 minutes. This means you can quickly churn through qualifying bets. The short time frame means I'me quite happy to place my SNR free bets at odds around 10 to maximise the return as I know the money will be back in my float in under an hour.

£100 Deposit Bonus from BetAfterbet

The Deal

BetAfterBet offer a 100% deposit bonus of up to £100 for new customers. After claiming the bonus you need to wager £800 at odds of 2 or more before you can withdraw.

The Plan

I figured the way to go for a deal with a wager requirement (WR) was to lay slightly less than required to even up the returns. That way if my first bet loses I'm out for around the same loss as if I'd taken a small hit on all the required bets, but I'd have done it with a lot less hassle. If the back bet wins then I've made a little more profit for my trouble.

The WR of £800 seemed achievable, I figured I'd need a £300 float to cover the first bet and around £800 for the 2nd. Just within my current means and I was happy enough to tip in a little extra if I needed a small 3rd bet to complete the WR.

The Result

Warning, long post ahead. If you feel lazy you can skip to the summary.

BetAfterBet turned out to be a bit of a roller coaster and I risked far more than I would have liked. There isn't a huge selection of sports to choose from and the odds are often sub par. My first bet was at odds of 2.38 vs 2.42. I underlayed to take an easy £85 profit and make a meagre £5.18 profit if the back bet won.

Murphy's law being what it is I won at BetAfterBet and found myself with the better part of £500 there. This had a big affect as I realised that even at odds of 2 I'd need to add some more cash to the pot to be able to cover my next bet. I was also really struggling to find a match. The football season is mostly over and they've been my bread and butter for matches. I tried other sports but couldn't find anything that suited. When you are dropping near £500 on a bet you need a very favorable match to ensure you are losing a lot of cash on the spread.

Finally I got lucky and found a great match, 3.55 at BetAfterBet vs 3.45 at Betfair. There's still Betfair's 5% commission to consider but a loss of just £3.85 on a bet of this size was a great find. The odds were much higher than I'd have liked and I had to top up even more to cover the bet, but I was happy to have found a good match to work through a big chunk of the WR. So happy, in fact, that I didn't stop to think about underlaying.

The education continued as a last minute goal forced the draw leaving me with nearly £1700 at BetAfterBet! So much for covering it with my original float! I still had over £100 of WR left to go and my accounts at betfair and betdaq were empty. There was nothing for it but to get the bank card ready and go looking for a final match.

I hunted around looking for the final match and finally found one with 3.4 vs 3.474 at betfair. At this stage underlaying wouldn't gain me anything, so I kept it even for a £7.09 loss. I was very relieved to have gotten the WR over with and quite happy with the result. A profit of £94.24 is a great return. However my fun wasn't quite over.

I hit the withdraw funds button, put in my password and pin, only to see a 'communication error' message. I tried again with no luck. I clicked on their friendly looking live chat icon and got taken to an email form. Thinking I'd phone them up I went to the contact page and saw their number listed as 123-456-789.

To say I was concerned is an understatement. I used the form to send in a query and got a response the next day saying they needed my id before they could process a withdraw. I sent it in and then waited. And waited. I sent a few emails chasing info and was told that they were 'processing an unsually high number of withdraws', so my request may take longer than usual. That didn't exactly reassure me. I had visions of the bookie collapsing under the weight of all the bonus hunters that had signed up and me being one of the unlucky ones who lost their cash. With just shy of £1600 in there I'd be well and truly in the red.

7 days later and it has all came good though, I just got a wonderful email from moneybookers telling me about the money that was now in my account. Phew! I learnt a lesson here, the biggest one being 'be realistic about the investment required to get at a bonus.' I was fortunate that I had the extra cash or I wouldn't have been able to cover the bets needed to release the money.

The other lesson is in how to handle wager requirements. If I was doing this over (and I wouldn't unless I had a substantially larger float, I won't go at another deal like this with less than £2000) I'd look for higher odds on my back bets. This is for 2 reasons. First it improves the chances of busting out and avoiding any extra effort. Secondly, it improves the return on underlaying, meaning if you don't bust out you'll get more than just a quid or two to show for it.

The Summary

Anyway, this blog has been long. So I'll wrap up by saying that despite the nervousness I experienced, the BetAfterBet deal is a good one. I netted £94.24 and learnt a few lessons about how to deal with wager requirements. Just keep clear until you've got the funds to be comfortable doing it.

Free £50 SR bet from BetChronicle

The Deal

BetChronicle are offering a free bet equal to the value of your first bet up to £50. You can't miss it, the offer is all over their home page.

The best part of this offer is that the free bet is a stake returned (SR) bet. This is different to the usual stake not returned (SNR) bets offered by bookies in that if you win your account is credited with both the winnings and the stake.

This makes SR bets ideal for matched betting as you don't need to match the free bet at high odds and therefore don't need a large bank roll to take advantage of the offer.

The Result

I matched up my first £50 bet at 3.15 vs a lay at betfair of 3.25 for a net loss of -£3.24. The freebet was added to my account shortly after and I matched it at 2.01 against 2.06 at BetDaq which locked in £48.03 from the free bet.

So a profit of £44.79 from this one. The great part is that my maximum exposure was £50 x 3.25 = £162.50 which is a great return. This is a top deal for people new to matched betting who might struggle to find the approx £400 required to get the best return from a SNR bet of the same value.

Stan James Mobile and Casino Bonus

The Deal

Stan James have come through with another free £10 SNR bet for anyone placing a £10 bet via their mobile phone.

They also sent me an email offering a £10 casino bonus if I correctly guessed the winner of the Eurovision contest. This offer was valid for anyone who'd bet £10 before the offer closed. Convenient. =)

The Result

I found a couple of easy matches and netted £8.31 from the £10 SNR bet.

I went for huge favourites, Norway, in the Eurovision and got the £10 casino bonus. Having got it I figured I should find out what the terms were. You can't withdraw the bonus, you can only gamble with it. I played some blackjack and won a few rounds. Because you play with your winnings first I pulled the cash out of stan james a few times to lock in a profit. I managed to squirell away £6.50 before going on a losing streak and zeroing the bonus balance. Pretty happy with the result, though it's probable that there is a better betting strategy than the one I went with.

So my good friend Stan has given me £14.81 this month. What a good bloke he is!

Bet24 £12 refund on Man United v Arsenal

The Deal

Bet24 sent me an email yesterday about an offer on the Man United v Arsenal game. They offered to refund a bet of exactly £12 on either Man Utd or Arsenal provided the game was not a draw.

The Result

A refund on lose offer is basically the same as an SNR bet, so long odds give a better return. I therefore backed the big underdog, Arsenal, at odds of 6.65.

Balancing out the SNR as normal, I layed at BetDaq at 7.6 for an £8.70 profit if Arsenal or Man Utd win. I still needed to cover the draw, so I backed it at BetDaq for £2.40 at odds of 4.3. I figured this would lock in a profit of £6-£6.30.

I realised my error after the game finished as a draw and I was only up £4.37. I had forgotten to subtract the draw stake from the draw returns. Done properly I could have locked in closer to £5.80.

I'm still happy though, as this was a very low effort offer. Having no choice on the game to back meant the only work I did was a quick check to see whether BetDaq or Betfair were offering better odds and a couple of minutes calculating the lay and draw bet.

Betclick £15 Offer

The Deal

Betclick normally offer a £10 refund if your first bet loses for new accounts. Get yourself refered though and this get's bumped up to £15. There's no minimum odds or other catches. The bet should be treated as a SNR to calculate the lay bet.

The Result

A nice simple one. Stuck £15 on at odds of 6.8 at BetClick and layed at BetDaq for £12.19 at 6.8. The bet lost at the bookie, so I got my £15 back and netted £11.82 profit after commision.

If you want to get refered for this one just stick a message in the comments.

Expekt £25 or €35 Deposit Bonus

The Delay

It's been a little while since my last post. Don't worry, I haven't lost interest in material things and joined a monastery. My laptop had a serious case of the 'Blue Screen of Death' and I then went on an awesome holiday to Amsterdam.

I'm back now though, and ready to start grabbing cash again. Here's one that ticked over since I've been offline.

The Deal

Go to the Expekt site and you'll see an offer for a 100% deposit bonus of up to £25 or €35. Before you can withdraw you need to wager three times the deposit + bonus, so £150 or €210 at odds of 1.5 or more. 

The other caveat is that you cannot deposit via moneybookers, so I signed up for NetTellers. If you want a referal let me know. (You'll get a bonus £5 for it)

The Result

I deposited £35 via NetTeller as I was hoping that they'd match the lot. However they stayed consistent with their offer terms and only gave me £25. I had a think about the wagering requirement and reached the conclusion that I'd ideally like to just lose all my cash at the bookie and then I could ignore the requirement.

With that in mind I underlayed my £60 bet at BetDaq so that if the bet won at the bookie I'd make a profit of £8 and if it won at the exchange I'd make a loss of £3.74. The thinking behind this was that if I have to bet the full requirement I'll probably lose £3-4 along the way. By doing this I'll either get out with the expected amount in one go or I'll make extra profit for my trouble.

The bet lost at the bookie, so I pocketed £56.62 at BetDaq. £35 of this was my original deposit, so a profit of £21.26 from a single bet. Nice and easy. =)

Lightspeed Panel

Money for Surveys

You may remember I signed up for a bunch of survey sites a while back. I haven't mentioned them much because as a rule I tend not to qualify for surveys. Apparently I'm not in many companies target demographic.

I have finally managed to complete enough surveys to see some cash though. I've done 5 surveys with Lightspeed Panel and have been payed £5 for my trouble. The easiest way to get the cash is via pay pal, but you can get slighty more cash for your points if you get amazon vouchers.

Second Quidco Payout

Quidco comes through again

Received another payout for quidco to my bank account and this ones a beauty. £122.50 has been transferred into my bank account. At the moment I only expect £50 or so next month, I'll have to do another trawl and see if I can spot any new deals.

Bet365 £25 Mobile Offer

The Deal

Bet365 offer a refund of 50% on the average stake of your 1st 5 bets by mobile phone, up to a maximum of £25. So you download their phone application, place 5 £10 bets using it. Once you're done you send an email to Bet365 to claim the bonus and they credit your account by £25.

The Result

I'm backing the same result more than once lately to avoid unneccessary effort, so I found 3 matched bets and did 2 of them twice. I was fortunate enough to find an arb which meant that I actually made a profit on my qualifying bets of £0.28.

I then sent an email to Bet365 asking for the bonus and they credited my account with £25 the next day. Including the small profit on the qualifying bets the profit on this deal was £25.28. This was a very easy offer to work through, I hope the next bookie is as good!

Finished the Bet365 £200 Bet Basket

Raced through the last 2 free bets

I was working harder than I needed when placing qualifier bets by trying to find a different match for each one. I decided to try and make it easy for myself and have finished up by placing two seperate £50 bets on any match I found. This didn't cause any problems and saved me a lot of effort.

I've placed and been paid for the 2 £50 SNR bets. I made £40.62 from the first and £41.67 for the second. The big suprise was that I also made a profit of £2.53 on the last 10 qualifying bets. This gain came as a result of some sizeable arbs on 3 of the bets. I had 2 £50 bets on one match that made me a £1.50 profit each and an even better £3.35 profit on a bet on scottish football bet.

Thoughts

So at the end of the offer I'm now £174.32 richer! I found Bet365 a great bookie, deposits and withdrawals were processed very quickly and finding matches is relatively easy.

One thing to be aware of is that there is no notification that you have qualified for a free bet. I ended up making one extra qualifying bet than I needed to which probably cost me about £1. Just keep track of how many bets you've made and this one is easy to avoid.

To make the most from a SNR offer you want to have at least 6 times the bonus amount so you can place the bet and then lay it off  at odds of 7 or less. This means you'll want a float of at least £300 to make the best of this deal. A larger float will be more convenient as you'll spend less time transfering cash about.

Finished the WBX £25 Deal

Asta la vista, WBX

I've moaned a few times about the difficulties I found getting through the WBX offer, but I managed to finish the requirement while working through the 888 Sport bet basket. 

WBX's less than excellent liquidity and prices made it difficult to get the most from the free bet. I ended up taking a match at odds of 8.2 at WBX against a lay of £20.37 at odds of 8.6 at BetDaq. I made a net profit on this of £19.76, but I had to pay £1.20 to deposit cash at WBX in the first place. So the final return from WBX is £18.56.

Thoughts

The liquidity and prices at WBX aren't great, I found it a pain to have my cash tied up in there and had difficulty finding a decent match. The offer is still well worth doing, but I'd recommend saving it until you've got a float big enough that you won't mind having £100 or so sitting in there. With a little luck you'll also be better than I currently am at finding matches by then and will find the whole thing a lot easier.

Finished the 888Sport Bet Basket

£50 Bet Basket Complete

I qualified for and placed the last £20 SNR bet from 888Sport yesterday. I got the back bet in at odds of 7 and layed at BetDaq for £16.74 at odds of 7.2. I won at the exchange to net £16.24 profit from the bet.

The overall profit from the deal (including qualifying bets) was £23.83. This would have been £14 higher if not for the mistakes I made along the way, but I've learnt a few lessons from it. With the offer complete I've zeroed my balance at 888Sport and will now look for my next target 

Another free £50 from Bet365

What I've been up to

I've been continuing to work through the deals at Bet365, 888Sport and WBX. The road has been a little rocky this last week, but I've got through it ok and have learnt to be extra cautious.

BetDaq

On the advice of the bookies info spreadsheet. I sent an email to BetDaq asking questions about commission. They quickly responded to inform me that my commission would be reduced to 3% for a couple of months. Keeping the costs down means more profit so this is a bonus and I recommend anyone who has a BetDaq account does the same.

888Sport

There's bad news. You may recall I'd mistakenly made a lay bet on the wrong match. I figured I could lock in a loss of £8 or so and move on, but instead I decided to try and be a little tricky. I backed for £15 worth a 888Sport as I figured I might as well get another qualifying bet out of it and the odds there were only slightly worse than betfair. I then figured I'd hold off placing a back bet for the remaining amount require equalise my profit/loss until after the game had started. I thought that after the game had run a few minutes the price might improve. I couldn't have been more wrong, Arsenal scored very early and the price dropped to nothing. The end result was me being down £14 instead of £8. I was obviously gambling in the hopes of recouping the losses from my mistake and I paid the price. Never again!

This mistake means that my profit from 888Sport is reduced to just £7.59. I take consolation from knowing I'm only a bet away from the final free £20 bet so I'll still end up ahead by a reasonable amount.

Bet365

Better news from Bet365. I survived unscathed from my error with them and earned my 2nd £50 free bet. Betfair and BetDaq had the same lay price so I matched most of it BetDaq. I couldn't get the whole bet on there so I filled the remaininng £5 or so at Betfair. The bet won at Bet365 at odds of 6.5 for a profit of £41.18. I almost feel sorry for them as it seems a lot of my bets with them have been winning.

There's another free £50 bet waiting for me after another 5 bets. Onwards!

WBX

I managed to finish the requirement for the free bet so now I just need to grab the cash. Once again low liquidity is causing problems and I'm having trouble hitting the 80% retained target I've set myself for SNR bets. Once I've found a decent match and grabbed their cash I'll be walking away from this crowd.

Cho Yung Cashback

The Deal

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I thought a quick flick through the cashback offers was in order. WePromiseTo are offering £7.50 for taking up the 14 day trial of a diet tea call Cho Yung Tea. I had a quick look at the other cashback sites and they are offering a higher cashback, but only payout if you don't cancel before 18 days. At around £35 / month I have no plans to hang around till after the trial has expired.

You do have to fork out £1.99 for postage, so the profit on this one will be £5.51. I signed up and gave over my details. I stuck a task in my rememberthemilk account to remind me to cancel in 7 days from now. I didn't even bother lying about my weight, the site tells me my weight is healthy, but tea will make me even healthier!

If you fancy taking advantage of it yourself, why not help me out and sign up via my WePromiseTo referal link, which will make me a cool £1 per person.

Another free bet from 888 Sport

Working my way through the offers

I've been working on the 888 Sport offer, the Bet365 offer and the WBX offer over the last week or so. The WBX offer in particular has been hard to get to because I've had issues getting a decent match at that exchange.

888Sport

Nine £15 bets were required at 888 Sport to get the 2nd free £15 bet and I hit the target just before easter.  I made a net loss of £3.16 on the 9 bets, or around £0.36 per bet. I could have done a lot better than this if I hadn't taken some less than ideal matches against WBX as well as a blunder I made last week that meant I lost £0.93 on a single bet (More on this later).

Having aquired my free bet I stuck it on a football match at odds of 9 for both back and lay. The high odds meant I kept £12.74 of the free bet. Netted against the cost to earn the free bet I've made a profit of £9.58.

I'll earn another free bet of £20 after I've placed another 5 bets and then my time with 888 Sport will be over.

My blunder

I mentioned earlier that I made some mistakes last week. Everyone seems to say that you'll make a mistake eventually, but I was trying hard to be the exception. Unfortunately this was not to be as I made 2 mistakes in quick succession.

The first was when I was working through the 888 Sport offer. I placed a bet on the Arsenal v Villareal game and layed it off at betfair. The alarm bells should have been ringing, as I had found what I thought was a reasonably large arb of £0.60 on a £15 bet. It wasn't until after I'd placed both the back and lay that the penny dropped that Arsenal would play Villareal twice. I had placed a back bet on the first match and then layed on the second!

So I had 2 bets to fix. The first was easy. I placed a lay bet on the correct match for my 888 Sport bet to lock in a £0.92 loss. Not great, but no disaster. The lay bet is a much bigger problem though. The spread between back and lay prices at betfair were very large (another warning sign I missed) so just backing the same market would lock in a loss of about £8.00. I didn't want to take the hit, so I've just bided my time hoping the odds would improve. The game plays tonight and not much has changed. I will give it a bit more time before locking in such a large loss, but I think I'm going to be left without much choice. I'm trying to treat it as a lesson and be grateful that I didn't make this mistake with a much larger bet.

And another one

Despite this error being fresh in my mind I then went on to make another mistake. I'm also working through the Bet365 offer and found a nice match against a market at BetDaq. I didn't have quite enough cash in my BetDaq account so I topped up another £10 from my MoneyBookers account. Everything seemed to work fine so I placed my back bet and then went to lay at BetDaq. Insufficient Funds! Turns out that BetDaq take around 24hrs to process MoneyBookers transactions. I gave them a phone call and they got the money credited to my account, but by this time the market had dried up. There just wasn't enough money in there for me to match the bet! This left me in the situation where if my back bet won I'd be up around £10 and if it lost I'd be down by the same amount. That's not matched betting, it's gambling!

Fortunately the bet did win at Bet365 which was a let off for me. It did however teach me a couple of lessons. The most obvious one is don't use MoneyBookers for BetDaq, not only are they slow but they also charge you money for it! The more general lesson was to be absolutely sure you have the funds ready to make the lay bet before placing the back bet. It also highlights that caution is needed when betting in low liquidity markets.

WBX and Bet365

This post has gotten pretty long so I'll wrap up. Just a quick update on where I'm at with the other 2 deals I'm pursing at the moment.

I'm very close to finishing off the WBX requirement. Another £15 bet should cover it, then I'll take my money and run.

I placed the last bet required to qualify for my 2nd Bet365 free £50 bet about half an hour ago. I'll match the free bet when it comes through and then continue on to the next free bet.

Stan James Mobile Offer

The Deal

Stan James sent me an email recently offering me a free £10 SNR bet for placing a £10 bet on my mobile phone at any time in April.

The Result

I found a good match on football with back odds of 2.25 and a lay of £10.47 at odds of 2.2 at betfair. This won at Stan James for a net loss of £0.06.

It took a day or two for the free bet to show up in my account. When it did I placed it at odds of 8 and layed for £9.03 at odds of 7.8. The lay bet won for a £8.58 return.

I'm liking Stan James, their offers are easy to do and finding a match has been easy. Net profit on this offer was  £8.52. In total Stan has made me £55.10.

Quidco Pays Out

Good News
Remember all those cashback deals I was doing a while back? Well they haven't been quick, but they're finally starting to turn into cash. Received my first payment of £13 yesterday.

The deals that have turned into cash are

Audible
eMusic
Napster UK

Hopefully next months payout will be even more!

Bet365

The Deal
Bet365 are offering a free £50 bet after you place a qualifying bet of £50 at odds of 1.5 or more. They then offer another free £50 bet after you've placed another 5 £50 bets up to a max of 3 times. So a possible £200 on offer.

The Plan
I'll claim the first free bet and then start working my way through the remaining 15 bets required. I want that full £200!

The Result
Took a while to get this one going. Bet365 are pretty keen on validating your account, but less clear on exactly what's required. I ended up typing my passport number in on one of account pages and that sorted it out.

I then placed my first £50 bet on football with back odds of 1.66 and layed it at betfair with a stake of £50.92 at odds of 1.68.

Before this game had even been played I got an email telling my free bet was ready. I found a great match up with back odds of 12 and a lay of £48.03 at odds of 11.5 at BetDaq. To cover this bet I needed a wopping £500, but I couldn't resist the odds so I quickly deposit some extra funds.

The free bet game finished before the qualifier and won at BetDaq, allowing me to pull my extra float back out straight away, along with the initial deposit I opened the account with. All the cash at BetDaq is now winnings and I look forward to doing the same at Betfair soon.

The qualifier won at Bet365 and made me a net loss of £1.63. Netted against my winnings on the free bet I made a profit of £44.00. Not bad at all!

The Follow Up
I've made a start on getting the next free and have placed a £50 bet at 3.1 against a lay of £52.24 at odds of 3. This will give me a net loss of £0.09 and leave me with 4 bets to go until my next free £50 bet.

WBX and 888Sport
I'm still pushing on with the qualifiers for WBX and 888Sport. WBX is the real ball and chain here, it's not easy to find a decent match with them. I'm halfway through the £100 requirement though, so I'll stick with it.

I'm laying off some of the 888Sport bets against other exchanges and finding some decent matches. Even made a £0.20 net profit off one of the matches (which makes me think warm thoughts about arbing later on when I've got a bigger float). Currently 5 bets in, so 4 to go before another £15 free bet.

888Sport and WBX

The Deal
888Sport offer a free £15 SNR bet for betting £15 or more at odds of 2 or higher. They also offer another free £15 SNR bet after you place 9 more bets and a final free £20 SNR after a final 5 more bets.

WBX is a betting exchange similar to Betfair. They offer a free £25 SNR bet after you've won or lost £100.

The Plan
I'm going to try and play these two offers against each other. I figure by the time I hit the 2nd free bet at 888Sport I should also get my free £25 from WBX, which I'll lay off at Betfair.

The Result
I signed up at WBX and the first discovery was that there seems no way to avoid a % based deposit fee. This seems crazy to me, I saw the fee and promptly reduced how much I was planning to deposit. If I was an exchange I wouldn't want people thinking that... The £25 bonus has already been reduced in value to £23.80.

I then hit my 2nd snag. The odds at WBX aren't great, I'm having trouble finding a decent match. I gave up and matched my first bet against betfair instead. I found a qualifier with back odds of 2.25 and layed at betfair for £15.55 at 2.22. The lay won at Betfair for a net loss of £0.23.

My free bet at 888Sport showed up instantly and I quickly matched it against Betfair as well. Backed at 10 and layed at Betfair for £13.85 at 9.8. The lay won again for a net gain of £13.16.

So a net profit so far from 888Sport of £12.93 which I am quite happy with.

Still to come is finding another 9 matches at 888sport and racking up my £100 win/loss at WBX.

I've made a start with a back of 2.4 against at £14.81 lay at 2.46 at WBX for an net loss of £0.62. I'm hoping that WBX win as I want to avoid having to deposit any more money there if I can. I'll give WBX another couple of goes, but if it continues to show awful odds I think I'll cut my losses and back at WBX vs Betfair and take whatever I can get for the bonus.

Stan James Mobile

The Deal
I already nabbed a £50 free bet from Stan James earlier, but they also offer a £10 free bet for placing a bet via their mobile platform. It's all nice and simple, install the software on your phone and place a bet of £10 or more at odds of at least 2 for a free £10 SNR bet.

The Result
I deposited £10 a Stan James and then tried to log on with my N95. I couldn't log on, but a quick call to customer services sorted it out. The problem was that you can't have capital letters in your password for the mobile log in. Kind of silly, but easily fixed.

I stuck £10 on a football game with back odds of 2 at Stan James and layed at Betfair with a stake of £9.95 at odds of 2.06. The back bet won leaving me with £20 at Stan James and a loss of £10.55 at Betfair, so a net loss of £0.55.

I placed my free £10 SNR bet at odds of 7.5 and placed a lay bet at Betfair of £8.69 at 7.53. This one won at Betfair giving me £8.26 after commission.

I then transfered my £20 Stan James balance back to Moneybookers.

So I spent £0.55 to earn the free bet, which made me £8.26. A net gain of £7.71.

Bet24

The Deal
Bet24 have a 50% deposit bonus up to a maximum of £30. They charge a fee for direct debits, but not for Moneybookers.

This is the first of the more complicated wagering requirements I have done. Before you are allowed to withdraw any funds you have to wager 4 x the bonus. At the maximum bonus of £30 this means £120 worth of bets. To count towards the requirements bets have to be at odds of 1.5 or above.

The Plan
I'm after the max bonus so I'll deposit £60 via money bookers. Once the £30 bonus shows in my account I'll find a £90 matched. With a little luck I'll lose at Bet24 and the money will end up in my exchange account.

If I win at Bet24 I'll need to make another £30 bet to finish the wagering requirement. Whether it wins or loses I'll pull all my cash out of Bet24 after it has settled.

The Result
Deposited the cash via moneybookers and then worked out I needed to send in ID before I'd be credited with the bonus. I scanned a copy of my passport, blotted out a couple of numbers and sent it in. The bonus was credited about half an hour after my email.

I found a matched bet on football for the 22nd at 1.9 vs 1.9 at Bet Fair and slapped my £90 on it for a £2.18 loss. The back bet won so I needed to place another bet to get at my cash.

Found another game on the same night at put the remaining £30 of my wager requirement on at 3.15 vs 3.05 at Bet Fair. This match was a tiny loss of just £0.08.

Won at Bet24 again and pulled out the full £235.50 via Moneybookers. I'm pretty happy with this one as I managed to hang on to £27.74 of their £30 bonus cash.

MoneyBookers

An easy way to move cash
I'll keep this blog short and to the point. Up until yesterday I was depositing money at the bookies by debit card. There's a couple of problems with this.

1. It's harder to keep track when bookie deposits are in amongst every day spending.
2. Withdrawals from bookies can take a few days to show.
3. The bank may not think it a positive that I'm constantly sending money to bookies.
4. Some bookies charge a fee for depositing via direct debit.

Number 4 in the list is what prompted me to action. I've created a moneybookers account that I plan to use for all my matched betting. This will let me avoid deposit fees and also enable me to shift money between bookies a bit faster.

I couldn't find a sign up bonus for them, but they do have a referral program. So if you feel like helping me out, sign up via my moneybookers referal link.

Stan James

The Deal
I signed up for Stan James a bit before Cheltenham when they were offering a free £50 bet after you make a qualifying bet of £50 at odds of 2 or more. This offer has now dropped to £25. The offers for the bookies seems to move around a bit and just before big events tends to see the biggest bonuses.

It took me a while to cash in as I've had my funds tied up in other bets, but I finally made a move.

The Result
I matched a £50 qualifier on a football match with odds of 3 at Stan James and 2.96 at Betfair. The bet lost at Stan James and I made £48.97 at Betfair, so the qualifier cost me £1.03.

I put the free bet on football as well, 4.75 at Stan James and 4.6 at Betfair. I lost at Stan again and made £39.90 at Bet Fair.

So profit from this deal was £38.87.

Thoughts
Both of the matched bets I did were slight arbs, in that the lay odds at Betfair were actually better than Stan James back odds. The commission at Betfair ate this up, but it helped me make the most of the deal.

The free bet was an SNR, or Stake Not Returned bet. You get the most out of these by betting at high odds to make the stake as small a percentage of the total as possible. With a limited bank roll I was happy to grab what I could. As my float builds up I should be able to take better advantage of these.

A New Tally

No grab today
I got home this evening ready to hit the blog, but I didn't go cash back hunting or matched bet hunting. I decided to do a bit of maintenance work instead. The way I've been showing my progress has been bothering me. It's not very clear and it was a pain for me to maintain.

My cunning solution
Being a programming type I went looking for a better way. The result is the tally widget you can see on the right. It's built from a google spreadsheet that I'll be maintaining online as I do the deals. That means it will be right up to the minute and may even contain info that hasn't made it into a blog post yet.

If you click on each of the rows it will expand to show you where the total numbers come from. Click again and it will shrink back up.

What the headings mean
Cashflow
This is a track of money going in and out of my bank account. I figure this will be the ultimate track of how well I'm doing. I'm theoretically well in profit at this point, but I won't be happy until cashflow is showing a big positive number.

Cashback
This is expected earnings from cash back sites. It will show purely the amount of profit I expect to get, without factoring in how much I may have spent to earn it. (Spendings are already shown in the cashflow section)

Betting
This is expected profit from betting. This will show losses and gains made from my betting activities. I'll also have a float at various bookies which I use to make the bets, but this won't be shown here.

Surveys
This section will show how much I've earned through doing surveys. I'm not sure how big a number will end up here. I've signed up for a bunch of survey sites, but I'm not getting a whole lot of offers to actually do surveys. Maybe I'm the wrong demographic?

Expected Earnings
This is a total of all the above except for cashflow.

Blog by blog earnings
I'll still be showing how much I've made in each blog, but it will now be much easier to distinguish how much was earned by the the day's grab and what the total is over all.

If you think things are still unclear let me know. I'm happy to shuffle things around to make them easier to follow.

I've discovered matched betting

Discovery!
I've been a little slack on the postings of late, but it's not because I've lost interest. My money hunting has uncovered a method of making money called matched betting.

Bookies offer hundreds of pounds in sign up offers trying to attract new customers. These offers usually are something like, bet £10 and get a free £10 bet. Now you could sign up and place the 2 bets, hoping that at least one will we win. It makes it more likely you'll win, but it's still gambling.

How it works
There is a way to get your hands on that free £10 that doesn't require luck though. The easiest way to explain is with an example. Let's say there's a game on between Arsenal and Man United and the current decimal odds are 2 for Arsenal to win.

You go to a bookie site and deposit £10. You then go to betfair and deposit £10. Your total outlay is £20.

At the bookie you place a £10 bet to back Arsenal to win.

At betfair you place a £10 lay bet on Arsenal to win. A lay bet is when you play the part of the bookie. If Arsenal don't win you'll take get the £10 stake, if they do win you'll have to give the stake back plus an additional £10.

If Arsenal win your bet at the bookie wins, you'll have £20 in that account. You'll lose at betfair though and that account will be empty.

If Arsenal don't win you'll lose at the bookie, but betfair will win and you'll have £20 there.

So regardless of the outcome of the match you won't win or lose anything. That may seem a bit pointless, but the trick is that by doing this you have now qualified for the £10 free bet the bookie was offering.

Simply repeat the trick above and you get to pocket that £10 with zero risk!

Matched betting in action
So I decided to give matched betting a go. I signed up for betfair via quidco and with a refer and earn £50 promotion (that has sadly just been reduced to £25 now). I'll get £30 from quidco for this one. If you want to join betfair definitely go via Quidco, but when you are signing up you can put in my referal code WWNET4LNK to get an additional £25 bonus.

I then joined the bookmaker Jaxx. They have a bet £25 get a free £25 bet offer and you also get £25 for signing up via Quidco. I matched 2 football games, Man Utd v Inter and Juventus v Bologna, for a cool £21.08 in profit.

I joined BetDaq, another betting exchange. Quidco is £20 and I used a promotion code of gom1 for a free £25 after I've bet £25. (I think this code expires at the end of march.)

Signed up for BetUK, who offer a bet £50 get £50 free bet.
Matched another 2 football games. The first against BetDaq to qualify for the free £25. The 2nd against BetFair, qualifying me for their £50 offer. The bets themselves netted a profit of £31.32. (Probably a bit short, but the odds at BetUK seem really bad.)

In order to do all this I've deposited £400 at the bookies and exchanges. All my bets at the bookies have lost, so my cash is all at BetDaq and BetFair. I could withdraw it now if I wanted, but I'm leaving it there so I can lay off more bets at a time in future.

So all in all I've got
Cash in Hand: -£300.00
Quidco: £75
Betfair: £50
Jaxx: £21.08
BetDaq: £25
BetUk: £31.32
Total Profit: £202.40

Will I be doing more of this? You better believe it!

The Tally
I've plunged more of my own cash into the matched betting scheme, but I'm confident that it will soon make enough profit that I can pull out my original stake and continue matched betting with my winnings.

A couple of busy days

Today's Grab
I'm pretty focused on a side project at the moment. I'll be telling you all about it soon. Takes a little more effort than just signing up for stuff, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Back to the task at hand though. I've just done a quick look at topcashback and picked off a new cash back on registrations for a mob called Brand Alley worth £0.64. I then went and completed another quote at confused (the first one has already validated) for another £1.

One of the survey sites finally sent me a survey I could do. The crowd was TechSay which is an IT focused survey mob. It earned me $10 USD and I got a $2.50 sign up bonus as well. I'll be watching out for more from this crowd, because I can't actually bag the cash until I hit $50.

The Tally

• Cash in hand : £-47.87
• Quidco : £139.77
• ING : £21.00
• Top Cash Back : £6.32
• RPoints : £1.00
• We Promise To : £4.44
• TechSay Surveys : £9 approx

The small guys don't track well

Today's Grab
Just a wee one today, but it's a repeat earner. Confused offer £1 for getting a quote on home insurance for up to 5 quotes. Got my first quote today. =)

Bad Tracking
I've had a whole swag of deals not track in quidco from the small deals I did. The ones that bounced were...

O2, My Pix, Ibood, Pampers, UKPrizeDraw, Flatmateclick, EmailInForm, MoveMe, GMI

Untracked earnings : £5.85

Can't yet lodge an issue with quidco as apparently I have to wait 14 days. Maybe I'm cynical but that feels like giving me a bit of time in the hopes that I'll forget all about it.

The Tally
After adjusting for the untracked earnings I've gone backwards a bit today. Makes me feel a bit like one of the banks writing off my assets.

• Cash in hand : £-47.87
• Quidco : £138.77
• ING : £21.00
• Top Cash Back : £5.69
• RPoints : £1.00
• We Promise To : £4.44

2 Quick Sunday Deals

Today's Grab

I had a quick look at we promise to for some deals and found a couple of easy ones nice and quick. Both were quick and didn't require me pulling out my bank card.

The first was a 2 books for free from Mills and Boon. You get £1 for signing up, but it's actually a subscription. Even though they didn't take any bank details I'll be sure to cancel as soon as I receive the books.

The second deal was a registration for Qeep. This pays £3 for a registration which is a bonanza! The only tricky bit is that Qeep is a mobile service, so you'll need a web enabled phone to grab this one.

The Tally

Still ticking along, £4 for the day

I wonder if those surveys are any good?

Today's Grab

I've been up to two things over the last couple of days.  First up I've started going through the offers to topcashback see what I can find.  This was complicated a bit because some of the offers are the same as quidco, but the fact that I noted the offers I took up with quidco in this blog has made it easy to avoid trying the same offer twice.

The topcashback offers I've taken up since the last post are...

Who remembers me, Registration, £0.10

It's your View, Survey, £0.70

Super Free Bingo, Registration, £1.00

Just Rewards, Survey, £0.96

Great UK Surveys, Survey, £0.83

Orange, Sims, £0.60

for a total of £4.19.

One thing I've noticed with a lot of these smaller deals is that you'll frequently get offered the 'opportunity' to join other sites. I'd recommend not signing up for any of them, there's a good chance that doing so will lose you the chance to get a signup bonus for them. If you're interested, at least take a look at the cashback sites to confirm that there are no current deals on that site.

Surveys surveys!

The freebie cashback I've been enjoying so far are great, but they are limited in number and I suspect I'll be running short on them soon.  There seem to be a lot more offers where you can spend a little and get back more,  but I don't want to take too much cash out of my pocket chasing these offers.  Spending £5 now to get £15 later is something I'll be a lot happier doing with my profits.

So I've started looking for what other ways I can bring in some cash and there seems to be a bit of a buzz about paid surveys.  I figure it's worth a crack so I've gone on a bit of a sign up spree. I've gone and joined...

Global Test Market - Sign up via we promise to for £0.44 cashback

Lightspeed Panel - Sign up via rpoints for £1 cashback

You Gov - I couldn't find a cashback on this one, but sign up via this link and at least I'll get something for it.  =)

We promise to and rpoints are 2 other cashback sites that I haven't investigated very thoroughly yet.  Use the links above and I get a small bonus when you join. For the surveys themselves I haven't done any apart from sign up types. Hopefully surveys will frequently become available and they'll be useful earners.  I'll keep you informed.

The Tally

With the different cashback sites I've started joining I figured it will be useful to list the earnings seperately to give an idea of how they perform.  I'll be listing any survey earnings seperately as well.

Cash in hand : -£47.87

Net Position : £122.38

Quidco : £144.62

ING : £21.00

TopCashBack : £5.69

RPoints : £1.00

We Promise To : £0.44

Want to buy a t-shirt?

Today's Grab

Having exhausted the free offers on quidco I took a look at some of the other cashback sites. The next biggest name seems to topcashback. I signed up and checked it out. Doesn't seem to have as many offers as quidco, but it's got a few different ones.

An interesting find was spreadshirt, which pay £1.50 for opening up a shop. This means signing up and creating a t-shirt that can then be bought online. So I've created an original money-for-nothing t-shirt. Pretty stylish huh? I can't honestly see me retiring off the profits, but it amuses me to have a blog shirt up for sale.

My first affiliate link

You'll note that I've made that when I first mentioned topcashback above I made it a link. The reason being that if you aren't yet signed up for topcashback and go to the site via that link I'll get a referal bonus of £2.50. So go on, sign up! Then refer all your friends. =)

I'm hoping to find more links like this, as they have the potential to provide an ongoing source of cash without me having to do anything. I won't be getting greedy though. If I know that you can get a better deal if you go to the site without following an affiliate link I won't post it.

The Tally

Small fry earnings today, but the numbers are still moving in the right direction.

Cash in Hand : -£47.87

Expected Earnings : £164.62

Net Position : £116.75

Anyway

More cheaper than free DVD's

Today's Grab

I've been eyeing off a deal on Quidco for £15 cashback for a free 2 week trial at LoveFilm. I was hopeful that I could combine it with a free 3 month deal and get paid for 3 months of DVD's. 

Unfortunately that was not to be, I had a chat with some of the folks at moneysavingexpert and the general concensus was that trying would result in 3 months of dvd's for free, but no cashback.  I'm all about the cashback, so I'm not going to try and be fancy.  Even with a 2 week trial it's still a great deal.

You snooze you lose

I posted yesterday about the £20 ING direct offer.  Apparently that deal was too good to last! I was going to wait a day or two before signing my wife up as well, but I should have just dived in and signed us both up because the offer is now gone.

Oh well, £20 isn't £40, but it's a lot more than nothing. Unless I've got a good reason to do otherwise I think I'll be snapping up any great deals like this one the moment I see them.

The Tally

I didn't celebrate yesterday as there's a cloud hanging over some of the smaller bonuses I'm expecting to receive.  Today however I'm confident and proud to declare that I've netted over £100 of free cash! Quite a bit more than I was expecting after just 2 weeks.

Cash in Hand : -£47.87

Expected Earnings : £163.12

Net Position : £115.25

There's more to free money than quidco

Today's Grab

I jumped onto Quidco again today planning to run my way through another bunch of small freebie offers.  I was suprised to discover that after just 2 days the well seems to have run dry! I'm sure there's a couple of deals on there that I've missed, but I'm not keen on spending large chunks of time trying to find them.

There is still more to be had on quidco, but I'm also not keen to outlay any more cash at the moment, so I expanded my search a bit.  I took a look at the moneysavingexpert forum and quickly discovered a clear winner.  ING Direct are offering £20 to any new customer opening anyone opening a cash saver account.  To claim the cash I just need to deposit £1 before march 31.  Looks great, I'll mail them a cheque tomorrow.  Even better, I see no reason why I can open an account in my wife's name as well.

I'll open just the one in my name today and then give it a few days before opening the other, just in case ING are against this sort of thing.

Quidco Tracking

The other dissappointment I've had with quidco lately is the tracking.  Up until my cheapo runs of the last 2 days everything had always tracked within minutes.  However I've found about half of the recent ones haven't tracked yet.  I'll give it another few days and then raise an issue with quidco about them.  Could be good in a way, as I'll get to report back on what their enquiries process is like.

The Tally

The £1 I'll be sending to ING tomorrow isn't really spent, as I'll be pulling it back out as soon I get the bonus.  It won't be in my pocket though, so I'll take it off my cash in hand and add it to my expected earnings.

Cash in hand: -£47.87

Expected Earnings : £148.12

Net Position : £100.25

More little wins

Today's Grab

I found yesterdays sign ups pretty painless, so I didn't think to hard today and just went through some more of the little ones on quidco.  I went for these ones.

Plum Offers, Sign up,£0.80

Flatmateclick, Registration, £0.85

EmailInForm, Survey, £0.85

MoveMe, Sign up, £1.00

Just Rewards, Survey, £1.10

GMI, Sign up, £1.30

For a total of £5.90

A couple of quick notes. I found the EmailInForm survey long and tedious, only bother doing this one if you are keen.

The GMI is a survey site for computer types (I'm a programmer so I fit) that promises money for doing surveys.  Their speil is interesting, if I'm reading it right then doing 5 surveys will net me $50 USD.  I'm not mad keen on surveys, but that doesn't sound too bad.  I'll report back on this one later.

The Tally

Cash in Hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £127.12

Net Position : £80.25

Quantity vs Quality

Today's Grab

There a ton of smaller cashbacks on quidco that I've just skipped past when looking before, but I figured there's good money there asking for me to take it. To make the process as painless as possible I downloaded google toolbar and entered my details into the autofill section. This means that on most sites I can just click the autofill button to automatically populate the registration form. Once set up I went to quidco and started clicking. Here's the deals I signed up for today.

O2, 4 x Sims, £0.60

Lands End, Newsletter, £0.15

Secret Sales, Registration, £0.25

Maxi Muscle, Free Catalogue, £0.25

My Pix, Newsletter, £0.30

Ibood, Newsletter, £0.40

T-Mobile, Sims, £0.50

InstantWin4Now, Signup, £0.56

Pampers, Signup, £0.60

Opinion World, Signup, £0.70

UKPrizeDraw, Entry, £0.75

So a total of £5.06 for today.

Unsubscription Spree

Did a bit of housework unsubscribing from the free trials I signed up for last week.  The only slightly tedious one was the Experian Credit Reports, which required me to actually phone up to cancel.

The only other thing I need to do today is watch 'The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', one of the movies I got from block buster.  =)

The Tally

Cash in hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £122.06

Net Position : £75.19 

I love the weekend

The day after Friday

Didn't get a post up yesterday, I'm thinking Friday night posts are probably going to be pretty rare.  After a healthy sleep in and bacon and breaky to speed my recovery, I figured I should take up another deal.

Today's Grab

Jumped onto quidco again for a look around.  I thought I'd go for a deal where I didn't have to outlay any cash, so I've ordered a SIM from Tesco.  They mail me out a SIM, I stick it in my phone and call them to activate it, they give me £3.  Ordering was simple and I didn't need to hand over card details. Giddy up!

The Tally

Cash in hand:  -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £117.00

Net Position : £70.13

Photos for Nothing

Today's Grab

I've got a million digitial images sitting on my hard drive that I seldom look at, so today's deal works out pretty well.  Sign up to snapfish via quidco and you get £3.50 as a sign up bonus when you place you first order.  But here's the great part, your first order of up to 40 photos is FREE! Though you do have to pay £0.99 for postage.  This deal might not have the cash value of the last two, but it's still great!

The Tally

It's occurred to me that my current method of showing cash in hand and expected earnings makes it less than clear exactly where I'm at, so I'm adding a third value to show my net position.

Cash in hand : -£46.87

Expected Earnings : £114.00

Net Position : £67.13

Hitting my target in just 2 days!

Today's Grab

I'm very happy with the deal for today.  Lunarpages is a web hosting company with a basic plan including a domain name for just £35.88/year.  Hit the site via quidco and you get a £60 sign up bonus.  That's £24.12 of easy profit and I've actually been meaning to get a hosting package for a while anyway.

Smashing the target

In just 2 days I've hit my self set goal of £30/week and made up for the short fall last week.  I'm sure I'll have to venture away from quidco sooner or later, but for now it's really coming up with the goods.

The Tally

In yesterdays blog I said I had £1 I could pull out of jackpotjoy, turns out I should have read the T&C, they wanted me to wager another £40 or so before I could withdraw so I've just gambled the last of it away.  Means another quid taken from my cash in hand.

Cash in hand: £-45.88

Expected Earnings : £110.50 

Starting strong

Today's Grab

I fell short on my cash goal last week, but I did spot a couple of likely options.  One of these was a signup bonus for Jackpot Joy.  Quidco will pay out £25 for a signup and deposit of £10.  You do have to wager at least £10 so you can't just put the money in, pull it back out and run.

Still, I figured £10 in and £25 out sounds a good deal, and I might even win.  Only minor wins meant I used 9 of my 10 quid to hit the wager requirements.  That leaves me £16 ahead.  Not bad for 5 minutes work!

The Tally

I've ventured into territory where I've outlayed money to get a larger return.  Should work out well in the long run, but for now it drives my cash in hand into the negatives.

Cash in hand: -£9

Expected Earnings: £50.50

Fancy a movie?

Todays Grab

I've seen some potentially good earners out there, some of the the bingo sign ups look good.  I want to be sure I know what's going on though, so I'm playing safe again today.  I've signed up for 2 weeks of Dvd's from blockbuster.  Not a bad payout at all for a signup at £7.50.  I've placed an order for a couple of Dvd's so I'll have something to watch this weekend too.

A bit short

I've fallen short of my £30 per week target thanks to a couple of days off.  I've got some ripe plums I'm eyeing off for next week to get my average back up though.

The Tally

No money in the bank yet, but the expected earnings are on a steady rise.  Looking forward to it turning into a steady stream to the cash in hand figure.

Cash in hand: £0

Expected Earnings: £25.50

A few days off

My Excuse

I was slack and idle on Friday and Saturday.  I'm on a train back to London now (I love that the trains have wifi) having enjoyed a lovely and relaxing weekend with my wife in York and Whitby.

Todays Deal

I'm signing up for a 7 day trial of napster today for a £5 bonus.  The eMusic subscription was an easy way to score a sign up bonus, but the music choice was somewhat limited.  With luck Napster will prove better, but if not I'll still be ahead.

Ground to make up

I'm trying to hit a target of at least £30 a week.  Not doing anything for a couple of days hasn't helped but I'm confident I can find a winner tommorrow to get me back up to par.

The Tally

Cash in hand: £0

Expected Earnings: £18

It all adds up

Mp3's from EMusic
How much would you expect to pay to download 25 of the latest music tracks? £25? £10? FREE!?!

Why even settle for free when you can get paid to download music you want anyway? I'm pretty chuffed with today's find, £4 for signing up with eMusic on a 14 day trial. I found this through (you guessed it) quidco.

It all adds up
You may be thinking that all these little bits of cash I'm getting aren't worth the effort, but it does all add up. If I can keep finding 1 little bonus like this each day I'll have around £30 extra in my pocket each week! As for the amount of effort, so far it's been pretty low. Five minutes tops. I spend more time writing this blog. =)

Protect yourself from spam
For anyone thinking of emulating me and getting a bit of spending money for themselves I have a recommendation for you. Create an alternate email address. I signed up for a free one from Yahoo and am entering it as the email address for anything I sign up for. This way I can be sure I won't have to worry about spam at my normal email address

The Tally
The Equifax and Audible deals from the previous entries have both now tracked, so I know the sign up was successful. It can still take some time for it to show up in my account though, so I won't count it as cash in hand until I've really got it.

Cash in hand: £0
Expected Earnings: £13

More Money for Nothing

Free trial from Audible

It's been a big day at work so I'm picking off some more easy money

for today's cash grab.

I've headed back to quidco looking for freebies. This time I've found

a £4 sign up bonus for a trial at www.audible.co.uk. Sign up was quick

and painless and I've downloaded a spanish audio book in the hopes

of fulfilling a long term goal and learning another language.

Don't get caught!

I'll be signing up for quite a few free trials as they are an easy way to
get some cash and you often get something useful from the service as

well.

The thing to be careful about is that as a rule, when the free trial
ends you will automatically switch to a paid subscription service. This
is of course something I want to avoid.

To make sure I don't get caught out I've signed up for a free service
called Remember the milk. It lets you enter in things you'd like to be
reminded of and will send notifications when they are due. I added a
reminder for a week from now to unsubscribe from Audible as well as
the Equifax credit report I signed up for yesterday. For good measure I

put in my wedding anniversery as well.

I've heard talk that this service can even send free sms reminders, but I
will look into that on another day.

The Tally

The Equifax sign up hasn't tracked in quidco yet, so still no cash in
hand.

Cash in hand: £0

Expected Earnings: £9

Money for Nothing

Welcome
My name is Peter and this is the first post in my new money-for-nothing blog. Soon to be full of cunning tips & tricks to get cold hard cash without doing anything that resembles real work.

I'll be writing about ways to generate real money using sign up bonuses, cash back offers, referral/affiliate schemes and anything else that will give me a bit of extra cash in my wallet.

As we go I'll be keeping a running tally of exactly how much I've managed to get and hopefully demonstrate that it's easy for you to do the same.

I've already done a bit of this and had some success, which is what inspired me to start this blog. However I won't be counting any past wins, the tally starts at zero right now but I'm looking forward to racking up a substantial amount of cash.

Today's Free Money
I've already spent a bit of time today getting a domain name and setting up this blog, so I'll go for a nice easy one. Quidco.com is a site you'll probably see me mention a bit in this blog. It is full of great offers. There's nothing better than knowing what you want to buy and then seeing that you can get £££'s back from quidco for something you were getting anyway.

I got knocked back for a credit card application a couple of days back despite the fact that I'm fine financially. Signing up for a free credit report for Equifax will get me £5 without (providing I remember to unsubscribe within a month) costing me a penny.

The Tally
Cash in hand: £0
Expected Earnings: £5