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.
Posts
I've been following your blog for a while now and wondered if/when you would be drawn across to matched betting.
ReplyDeleteI started around 10 weeks ago, been very profitable. Watch out for mistakes though, they can be costly and you will probably make them.
I've also got a diary, mainly as a personal thing (haven't done any promotion on it until this post)
Good luck - I'll be following your progress,
http://mbmbet.blogspot.com/
The lure of matched betting was too great. It is a little riskier in that you can make mistakes, but the rewards are greater.
ReplyDeleteI'll still be looking for straight cashbacks as well and will post on whatever I've been up to.