Easily make money matched betting online - no experience needed
Matched betting blog
I did matched betting for two years, turning bookmaker free bet offers into £5,685.15 tax-free cash, all in my spare time, without knowing the first thing about sports or betting. I've kept this page as a complete hub for anyone curious, my real diary, my monthly profits, what I learned, and links to every post I wrote along the way.
Matched betting isn't traditional gambling. You're covering every outcome mathematically, so the profit comes from the free bet itself, not from chance. I used Outplayed (called Profit Accumulator when I started) to do the maths for me, and it's still who I'd recommend today.
Start your own free trial with Outplayed here, or read on for everything I learned along the way.
A quick note on Outplayed and Profit Accumulator
Profit Accumulator rebranded to Outplayed a while back, so if you see PA or Profit Accumulator mentioned anywhere on this page or in my older blog posts, it's the same company.
Their free trial currently runs for 7 days, and you'll need to enter card details to start it, it automatically upgrades to a paid subscription unless you cancel within the 7 days. Worth knowing that upfront rather than being caught out.
Matched betting explained really simply
It can be hard to find matched betting explained simply, especially as a beginner. I needed a matched betting for dummies guide when I started, I didn't know the first thing about sports or betting (I still don't), or the maths behind it.
Matched betting is a way of turning the free bet and bonus offers that bookmakers give away into real cash. You place bets covering every possible outcome of an event, so it doesn't matter who wins, loses, or draws, you extract the profit from the free bet itself rather than gambling on an outcome.
Here's how Outplayed put it:
"Matched Betting is an established method of turning free bets offered by online bookmakers into real cash. It works by placing multiple bets, or wagers, on every possible outcome of a sporting event so that every eventuality is covered. Win, lose or draw, it's covered."
You don't need to understand the maths yourself. Outplayed's software works out exactly where to place each bet, how much to stake, and how much profit to expect, it was invaluable for me when I started, and other sites I tried first just confused me.
Getting started as a matched betting beginner
Matched betting is completely legal. It's not traditional gambling either, you're not risking money on an uncertain outcome, you're covering every possible result to extract a profit from free bet offers. It's maths, not chance.
You don't need any interest in sports or betting to do this, I certainly didn't, and I still don't. You don't need to place a single bet without knowing exactly what you'll make from it first, Outplayed's software tells you that upfront for every offer.
Things moved quickly for me too, I made hundreds of pounds in my first couple of weeks, and thousands within the first few months, all in my spare time.
Is matched betting tax free?
Yes. In the UK, profits from betting are treated as gambling winnings, not income, so there's no tax to pay and nothing to declare to HMRC, even if you make thousands. That's one of the reasons it's such a popular side hustle. Every penny of my £5,685 profit was tax-free.
Read on below for my own matched betting profit milestones, real profit figures month by month, and answers to the questions I get asked most.
My matched betting profit milestones
Here's how my profits built up over two years, from my first two weeks to my final total.
Many others make far more than I did, but I only ever gave it my limited spare time. Some weeks that was just 30 minutes, and I was still able to make up to £50 an hour, a genuinely profitable side hustle for very little time.
2 weeks in: £300 profit
40 days in: £753 profit
2 months in: £1,341 profit
3 months in: £1,706 profit
4 months in: £2,172 profit
Year one: £3,319 profit
18 months in: £4,989 profit
2 years in: £5,685 profit
More matched betting blog posts & FAQs
Beyond this page, here are more posts covering common matched betting questions, opinions on things I've been asked or seen said about it, myth-busting, and reviews of the software I used.
Read enough already and keen to get started? Start your own free trial with Outplayed by clicking here
Real life matched betting stories
It's not just me, six other bloggers have shared exactly how much they made from matched betting too, from a few hundred pounds a month to six figures over several years.
National publications that have featured matched betting
Still not sure about the legitimacy of matched betting? Many people assume it's a scam and don't look any further, I was one of them for quite a while myself, until I saw bloggers I trusted writing honestly about their own experiences.
Their journalists have tried it themselves, spoken to bookies and experts, and proven it's legal and genuinely tax-free. Here's where matched betting has been covered:
How much can you make matched betting, and how long does it take?
How much you make depends on two things: how many sign-up offers you have and their potential value, and how much time you give it.
The sign-up offers are where the quick money is. A beginner can realistically make £1,000 to £1,500 in the first few weeks from welcome offers alone. I made £300 in my first two weeks and £1,341.81 in my first two months.
Once those are used up, profits come from reload offers for existing customers, which are smaller. In my second year I made £2,307 in total, an average of around £190 a month, from roughly 4 to 8 hours a month. That works out at up to £50 an hour.
One tip to make even more money, which I didn’t realise when I began, is to sign up to each bookie through Top Cashback. That way you’ll also get cashback for every bookie once you’ve placed enough bets, which is more than likely if you continue matched betting.
Many of the cashback offers are very high, around £30-£50 per bookie. It’s a great deal and I wish I’d realised when I started. I discovered this tip once I'd already signed up to almost everything, but I managed to get cashback for one of the bingo sites.
Can you make £1,000 a month? Some people do, but they treat it like a part-time job, working through every reload offer and putting in far more hours than I did. My best month was £753.62, right at the start, and once the welcome offers were gone, my spare-time approach brought in a few hundred pounds a month at most.
It does get quicker with practice. My very first bet took me an hour, and after a few weeks each one took a few minutes.
Bookmakers can also restrict accounts that only ever take offers (known as being 'gubbed'), which slows profits down. Experienced matched bettors use strategies to avoid this, such as placing occasional normal bets ("mug bets") so their accounts look like those of regular customers. I didn't bother with this, and I had 11 accounts restricted in my first year, so it's worth learning these from the start if you want to keep earning for longer.
My matched betting profits every month
Here's exactly how much I made, month by month, for the whole two years I did this. I started at the end of January 2017 and continued through to March 2019.
The sign-up offers were by far the most lucrative, though I kept making a profit even after I'd worked through all of those, just from ongoing reload offers.
I never did every single offer available, I just fitted it in when I had spare time, sometimes just half an hour a week. There are people on forums making far more than I did, it really comes down to how much time you put in.
Start your own free trial with Outplayed by clicking here today!
My matched betting profits by month:
End of Jan + Feb 2017 - £753.62
Mar 2017 - £588.19
Apr 2017 - £365.00
May 2017 - £465.95
Jun 2017 - £249.49
Jul 2017 - £61.64
Aug 2017 - £209.66
Sep 2017 - £274.68
Oct 2017 - £70.81
Nov 2017 - £167.00
Dec 2017 - £113.26
Jan 2018 - £125.88
Feb 2018 - £201.81
Mar 2018 - £343.66
Apr 2018 - £212.35
May 2018 - £175.45
Jun 2018 - £413.63
Jul 2018 - £197.35
Aug 2018 - £268.84
Sep 2018 - £104.06
Oct 2018 - £53.74
Nov 2018 - £36.96
Dec 2018 - £173.30
Jan 2019 - £41.04
Feb 2019 - £6.47
Mar 2019 - £11.31
GRAND TOTAL PROFIT: £5,685.15