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.