You may have noticed the advert for Profit Accumulator I've been running on the site for a while now. I've actually joined this site myself and can vouch for its authenticity, you genuinely can make money from it with relatively small investments in time and money.
I've decided to write a blog to explain how it works in more detail, feel free to have a read.
First thing to declare, I am an affiliate for Profit Accumulator, if you decide to sign up using my links, I get paid a commission of 50% of the monthly fee. If you'd rather join and NOT give me any commission, please just search for 'Profit Accumulator' and join up directly.
You don't have to use a company like Profit Accumulator to do matched betting, there are various free resources available online, but I am pretty confident that the extra money you will make and the time saved by joining them will more than repay the monthly fee of £20.
So, onto the blog.
You will see from the blog below I stopped unpdates after a few weeks due to lack of time, but this is the current most recent state of play on Friday, 18th March 2022, I've been matched betting now for about 15 months.
The above graph shows the monthly earnings from matched betting since I started in January 2021 up to the current month, March 2022 - as you can see I was generally making £4-600 a month for the first 10 months or so, June was a good month due to the Euros with nearly a grand coming in. December was poor as I started a new job that month and was really tired due to the commute so not much spare time. This year I have passed the £7k barrier and aim to make £300 or so a month. It is harder to make money as time goes by as bookies will start to limit your stakes and generally don't give you free bets as much.
Below is the original blog so you can see how it was at the beginning.
So I am going to use the Profit Accumulator Free Trial to make around £45 and then use that to sign up with them, keeping the costs down initially. Regardless of the result of the match you will win and if one of the bets is a free bet that's guaranteed profit.
Signing up is quick and easy and they have video tutorials explaining how it works, the basic idea is you get free bets from bookies for signing up and you can use these free bets to make a guaranteed profit by betting one bookie against another. For example, if you bet on Liverpool to win with bookie A, you then bet on Liverpool not to win with bookie B (technically this is called a Lay bet and can be done on an exchange like Betfair).
I signed up Coral who offer £20 of free bets when you sign up and place a £5 bet with your own money. I'm going to keep a running total of how much you need for your bank as well, so the total currently is £5 with this first bet.
Also opened a Betfair account and paid in £15 (Bank now £20) which is the exchange used to place the lay bets. Using the Profit Accumulator calculator I found a bet that would mean a small loss of 13p on the qualifying £5 bet. See the image below, this is an extremely useful tool that shows bets you can do that mean losses are very small for these bets. The loss here isn't a problem as I will make about £15 profit from the free bets once we receive them, after the qualifying bet is complete.
Because I am backing AND laying (betting against) myself, I am guaranteed to lose 13p whatever the outcome from the qualifying bet and I then get £20 of free bets with which to make a guaranteed profit.
The bet I placed was on a horse called 'Make it Rain' at the 13:05 at Lingfield, this is completely irrelevant but it is handy as the race is running quite soon and the odds minimise the losses. Without access to the Profit Accumulator calculator to find such bets, it could easily take 15 minutes or so to find something suitable. In total so far I've spent about 20 minutes opening the two accounts and finding and placing the bets.
I now need to wait until the race is run so I can place the first of the free bets, I'll probably do this later today.
I checked back later in the day to see the horse had lost, but this isn't really relevant, it just means that the money had moved into Betfair rather than Coral. I was then able to bet with my first free £5 bet which I placed on a Dutch league match.
I checked back in the evening and the match had finished with my team (Zwolle) having lost, so from the £5 free bet I had gained £3.52 into my Betfair account. The odds for other bets weren't giving a great return so I decided not to use any other of my free bets today. You do sometimes find the best value is in the morning, so I decided to login again to check in the morning
So overall the first day returned a profit of £3.52 which isn't much but it was from less than half an hour's activity, I've still got £15 worth of free bets to go at and another sign-up offer as well. If I'd started with a bigger bank, I could have placed all the free bets in one go to make money more quickly, but I am trying to show how this can be done with a minimal investment.
Placed all three of the remaining Coral free bets, had to do this sequentially as I am trying to keep the bank small, but by betting on games at 11:30 AM, 3:45 PM and 7PM meant I could use all three free bets remaing at Coral without needing to increase my bank at Betfair. Not completely happy with the returns as odds meant I was only getting around £3.70 from each bet but it will do as I need to be quick so can move onto the next offer.
In total I probably spent around 20 minutes today finding and placing the bets and checking results.
The image below shows my Betfair account after the first five bets with Coral, the qualifying bet and the four free £5 bets. You can see the profit for each (the first bet was a small loss as I lost the £5 at Coral but the others were free bets so all profit). The profit generally goes up as more money is in the Betfair account which means I can go for higher odds, the last one won me £3.97 which is pretty good for a £5 bet.
Tomorrow I will be looking at the next free offer which is with Betfred and is worth a bit more, this will mean increasing my bank. More on that tomorrow.
Please note you may see a slight variation in the profits above as the calculator on the Profit Accumulator assumes Betfair will charge commission but it looks like they haven't - I think this may be a signup offer so in fact my actual profits are slightly higher than I've been writing.
The next offer from the Profit Accumulator free trial, is with Betfred and it's 3 x £10 bets once you make your first bet of £10. Now I could withdraw some of my profit money from Betfair to use if I wanted to keep the bank low but I want to turn this over quickly so I have opened the Betfair account with a fresh £10 so that's added to the bank required above.
If you are struggling to get a bank then of course by doing things more slowly you can reduce the bank size.
I placed the £10 qualifying bet on a horse race at 1:50 PM so I can then access the free bets hopefully later today to get them changed into profit. The odds here will result in a 63p loss but the £30 of free bets should result in profit of around £25 or so.
In the end the day was a bit of a wash out as the BetFred free bets didn't arrive in my account despite an email saying they were there and ready to use. Live chat was busy so didn't get through until quite late in the day.
However, they solved the issue and I got the free bets and time to place one of them on a late football match, this netted £7.01 in profit. I can get the other two free bets completed tomorrow.
Managed to get through the remaining two BetFred free bets quite quickly as there were two suitable games in the afternoon. Total profit from these games was £7.15 and £7.45 which isn't too bad.
That concludes the free trial with Profit Accumulator and I have now signed up to their Platinum membership at £24.99 per month. This may seem like a lot but I've made more than enough profit to cover that and from past experience (I have done matched betting before) I will easily make more than enough extra profit every month to cover this. You are also much less likely to make an error if you follow their guides and their calculators and oddsmatching apps are great time savers.
The first offer I've spotted as a full member of Profit Accumulator is the SkyBet one, bet £5 and get £20 of free bets. So I put the qualifying bet in (added to the bank required) and wait for the free bets to arrive.
I managed to find a bet for the qualifying bet that resulted in zero loss (or profit) and then placed the first of the free bets on a horse race tomorrow at 1:30 PM, this will see profit of £6.86 - I actually made a slight error with the calculator here or I could have had a bit higher profit.
I've withdrawn £20 from my Betfair account so I can keep the bank small, this is basically the profit from the BetFred offer and should arrive back in my bank account in a day or two. This leaves enough in the Betfair account to lay the bets for the forseeable future. The withdrawn money will be used for future qualifying bets.
Goal today is to turn over all the free Sky bets and this should see me break the £50 profit barrier. I will then do the next sign-up offer. If you are happy to use a bigger starting bank you can do this more quickly and do 2 or 3 offers a day, that should make it possible to make over £200 profit in your first week.
The first of the free Sky bets was placed yesterday and landed so I then placed the second of the two £10 free bets, this resulted in a nice profit of £9.68 - both bets 'lost' so the exchange (Betfair)balance is looking quite nice.
I signed up for the BetVictor offer using £5 that I withdrew from Betfair yesterday, so no need to add anything to the bank. The good thing with this offer is they credit your free bets as soon as you place the qualifying bet, which I have done and it will result in a loss of 27p.
The offer is for a free £10 sports bet, another £10 bet for an accumulator and a £10 'game show bounus' - this is basically like free spins on slot machines or similar.
The qualifying bet lost and the funds moved to the Betfair exchange, you may have noticed this happens a lot and I actually aim to do this as it means your money is easier to keep track of as it's all in once place. It also means the bookies are less likely to close your account as they are happy when punters lose! One problem with matched betting is that bookies will close accounts if they suspect they are being used for matched betting. There is advice on Profit Accumulator about how to ensure your accounts don't get 'gubbed' in this way.
I then placed the free £10 bet on the Fulham v Spurs game tonight, by backing and laying Fulham I guaranteed a profit of £7.78. The other bet is a bit more complex as it's an accumulator so I'll leave that for tomorrow.
I've placed the free £10 bet with BetVictor today on the accumulator, they stipulate it has to be over 5 legs. This is quite a tricky thing to do but made much easier using the Profit Accumulator 'Acca Catcher' and I found a bet that will result in profit of just under £6. With accumulators you need to lay each leg sequentially, as if the first leg loses you have finished and the profit is released. Due to this you are best picking matches that are played at different times and dates.
I also used the £10 free credits that BetVictor gave me and used it on a 'wheel of fortune' type of game but that resulted in no additional profit, still it didn't cose me anything.
I signed up with Ladbrokes who offer £20 of free bets when you sign up and place a £5 qualifying bet. The qualifying bet is this evening but Ladbrokes give the free bets immediately the qualifying bet is placeed, which is nice. The qualifying bet will result in a loss of 10p. I used the money I withdrew from Betfair a couple of days ago to sign up here so no increase to the bank.
I actually made a mistake with the first free bet as the odds to back the horse with Ladbrokes had dropped slightly, so I would have ended up with a loss of about 40p. I was able to cash out both the back and lay bets however which meant I ended up making a profit of £1.88 which is much less than I should have got but at least it's profit and not a loss. This illustrates how important it is to check what you are doing carefully as I should have spotted it before I placed the bet!
I used the second free bet on another horse that runs this evening, that will result in profit of £3.80 which is more like it.
The odds for this horse were quite long so it is tying up my funds at the exchange which means I will need to place the final two free bets either later this evening or tomorrow.
Feeling a bit rough today so not going to do much but I will turn over the remaing two free bets with Ladbrokes. Got on a horse with the first for a profit of £3.97 and another horse for £3.87.
May do something later if I feel better, one of the good things about matched betting is you can do it when you like and how often you like.
Feeling better by tea-time and I had an email from Betfred with a nice offer, a free £5 bet if I placed £2 on the lotto with them. I did this (deposited £5 to cover this) as although I will probably lose that money the free bet is still enough to make a profit overall.
Also deposited £10 with William Hill and placed a qualifying bet (to get £40 of free bets) and that lost me a net 38p.
One of my Ladbrokes free bets won into the bookie so I have withdrawn that, total of £27 which I've used to fund the above two deposits and will keep the spare money for another offer, no need to increase the bank.
This concludes my first week of matched betting, profit banked so far of almost £80 which is OK considering I am starting slowly due to a small bank. On track to make over £300 in my first month which will be a decent outcome.
I've stopped tracking the bank amount now as I don't expect to have to use more cash I will just reinvest profit, the money I withdrew from Ladbrokes yesterday will fund the next few promotions.
I expect to make over £20 profit today from the William Hill offers, the first bet is on the lunchtime game today at Wolves.
A little nice bonus today as I got an email from William Hill offering another 3 x £5 free bets if I placed a £10 bet today. I did so (Leicester to win, not that it matters) and the free bets are now showing. I will lose 45p on the qualifying bet but the free bets are worth about a tenner so a good result. I now need to wait for some of the bets to result before doing anything further as my Betfair funds are all committed at the moment.
Another small bonus (Saturdays tend to be a good day) as Skybet offered a free £5 bet if you place a bet on the Liverpool game. The T&Cs for this state you can place ANY bet as long as it's on that game and for a minimum of 5p, so I placed a 5p bet and no need to lay it off as I can take that kind of loss for a free fiver bet!
Made £11.36 from the first of the free William Hill bets settled by 5 PM, I've now placed the free Skybet offer so not enough left with Betfair (available) to place the other free £15 bet from Hills but there is enough for the first of the free fiver bets, so that's now on.
So in total by the end of the day I've got bets settled with profits of £35.62 - best day so far, but Saturdays usually are! In total now over the £100 mark.
Almost forgot to mention, if you remember I placed an accumulator with BetVictor a few days ago, using a free bet. The good news is the first leg was today (Bournemouth) and they lost so the profit from that is released and I've counted it in my daily total for today. With accumulators you have to lay each leg sequentially until one loses, or it wins, to get the profit. It's relatively easy to do using the Profit Accumulator 'Acca Catcher' and the fact it lost at the first hurdle is great for me as no more laying to do, the profit is in the bank - or my Betfair account to be more precise!
I've put a screenshot from the Acca Catcher below so you can see what it looks like and how it works, this is all automated you just need to lay each leg after (if) the previous one wins. Please note I don't have an Smarkets account yet so I used Betfair as the odds were the same for the first game.
Placed the second and last of the free £15 William Hill bets today, on a horse race at 3:50PM.
Had a power cut here that lasted for most of the day so not done much else, I could use a mobile but really prefer the desktop as I am more confident not making any errors that way. Put the remaining two £5 free bets with William Hill on a couple of horses for tomorrow, so profit today is a slightly disappointing £12.49.
Mondays are often quiet after the weekend and today was no exception, but there is the profit from both the final William Hill free bets to add to today's total, £4.37 and £4.28 I did get another free bet from Betfred, only a fiver but that translated into £4.08 profit so overall pretty good for a Monday.
I did have a surprise £2 at Ladbrokes I just randomly found as I'd logged in to check the account, so that is placed on a horse this evening for another £1.66 profit, not much but it all adds up!
I've had two of the William Hill free bets win, which means there is a balance with that bookie in total £65.76 that I am now withdrawing and using to go for more offers. I am now opening an account with 888 Sport who offer £30 of free bets when you place a bet of £10.
Placed the qualifying bet with 888 Sport on a horse running at 5:40PM for a loss of 91p, this is showing in today's profit and loss. I can then place the free bets probably tomorrow.
According to Profit Accumulator 888 Sport can be slow to credit the free bets, so I have also opened an account with MansionBet, this offer is £20 of free bets once you place a £10 qualifying bet.
In the event the free bets at 888 Sport are showing quite soon after the horse race finished so I placed the first one for a horse race tomorrow.
Finished off the free bets with 888Sport for a combined total of £16.45 profit. I also noticed I still had a free bet left as one of the earleir bets must had been a non-runner, so I placed that again on another race. It's not a problem as non-runners are voided at both the back and lay side so no loss.
I've dabbled at doing some 'reload' offers today, these are offers open to existing customers and they are what you need to do regularly if you want to make money from matched betting after you've got all the new customer bonuses.
The first offer was with 888 Sport, I went for that as there is some money in the account as one of the free bets won at the bookie. They offer a free £5 bet if you win a bet for £10 at odds of 4/1 or higher. This offer is daily, you can win one free bet a day. Now the problem here is it isn't risk free as you cannot guarantee getting a winner at those odds, but my thinking is if I can get a bet that qualifies and only loses a small amount, it is worth the risk as on average you'd expect a free bet every 5 attempts, ie a bet at 4/1 is going to win roughly one in five times.
So if each bet loses 20p or so, it is going to cost about a pound to get the free bet, so it is worth trying. In the event I found what is known as an 'arb' or 'arbitrage' bet. This is a bet where the odds are higher at the lay side (ie betting against) that on the back side (betting for) and so my £10 qualifying bet is actually going to make a small profit, around 20p in this case. You have to be careful backing 'arbs' as the bookies will probably spot it and will limit your account (known as 'gubbing') if you do it too much.
The first bet I am trying this offer on is a horse race tomorrow afternoon, so I will keep an eye on how it turns out.
I also went for the SkyBet offer of a free £5 bet on the Leicester vs Chelsea game = the deal here if you place a £5 bet during the first half of the match, you get a free bet for the second half.
This is where matched betting is not risk free! As I was placing the bets (Draw) there was a goal scored and so the lay bet didn't get taken, I was literally a second away from it being settled. This meant the odds had changed a lot and so when I did get the lay bet on I will lose £2.90 on the qualifying bet. Now I can probably make more than that with the free bet so overall I will return a small profit but it is a lesson learned, but really not much you can do if you are betting inplay. Might have been worth betting on corners or something like that instead.
Unfortunately Leicester scored again to lead 2-0 at half time and this meant the odds were generally poor, so I could only just break even over the two bets. I decided to hang on to the £5 free bet until I could find something better. The bet itself doesn't specify it has to be used today, but says 'no expiery'.
So today overall has profit of £11.45 a bit dented due to that inplay bet, but you live and learn!
I oplaced the free Sky Bet from last night first thing, found a good match on a horse race for £4.05 profit which makes up for the qualifying bet loss yesterday.
The bet I placed with 888Sport won at odds of over 4/1 (it was 5/1) so I got a free £5 bet with them which is placed on another horse and this locks in £3.75 profit for today. I also had another outstanding bet for £8.61 profit.
Overall a quiet day as much of my bank was tied up in the exchange as I had late races, tomorrow should be busier.
I did get a nice email from Betfred late in the day about the £5 free bet I got from their Lotto offer (I wrote about it a couple of days ago) so that's put on a horse tomorrow.
So in total today with the bets I had on, profit came to £17.56.
Opened a new account first thing with The Pools - deal here is a free £10 bet if you place a first bet of £5 at odds of evens or overs. I will lose 16p on the qualifying bet, so all good.
The bet I placed with 888Sport won at odds of over 4/1 (it was 5/1) so I got a free £5 bet with them which is placed on another horse and this locks in £3.75 profit for today. I also placed another bet on another horse to see if I could get another free bet from them, the qualifying bet lost me 71p.
I also opened another new account as I am trying to speed things up a bit now, so joined Betway which is a free £10 bet when you place your first £10 bet. This time I will lose 31p on the qualifying bet.
The Pools are doing an offer today for existing customers where if the winning horse of the first race of the day is at odds of less than 10/1 you get a free £5 bet if you place a bet of £10 on any horse. These are not guaranteed but I've looked at the race and 7 of the 11 runners are under 10/1 so feel it's a good chance of success for risking a qualifying loss of £1.14. Will check back later on that one.
I've also repeated the offer with 888Sport where you get a free £5 bet if you win at odds of 4/1 or higher with a £10 bet, the loss here is 74p so fingers crossed.
Betway were quick to give me the free bet from their offer so I placed that on a horse running this evening for a guaranteed profit of £7.96.
The Pools offer won, a horse under 10/1 won the first race so I have my free £5 bet from them and already placed on another race this evening, profit of £3.57. I could have got more profit but it's best not to always take the highest prices as it's more likely the bookie will limit your account, they don't like matched bettors! The Pools are doing the same offer again on the first race at Newcastle today so I've gone for that as well and the qualifying bet loses 14p! Again, about half the field is under 10/1 so decent shot of another free bet.
More good news is that the horse I backed for the 888Sports offer won - so another £5 free bet which I placed straight away for another profit of £3.62. You can see how this starts to add up quite quickly once you get going with the reload offers.
I'm also doing an offer with Coral for existing customers - place 3 x £5 inplay bets and get a free £5 bet. So far I've done one and that lost me 19p. I'm doing these on football and placing them at half time to avoid prices moving around too much.
In the end the 3 Coral qualifying bets lost me £1.01 but the qualifying bet will see profit of £3.40 which isn't great but it all adds up. I think in future it's best to do these bets in the evening when there are plenty of games on so you can find good odds matches to reduce the losses on the qualifying bets and maximise the profit on the free bet.
Overall a decent day considering there wasn't that much on.
Today marks a fortnight matched betting, let's see if I can break the £200 barrier!
I've got a £5 free bet from Betfair today, only rule with this is that it must be placed on an accumulator with at least 2 legs. It took about 5 minutes to find a suitable match, the Dortmund and Monaco games today and tomorrow and this locks in £4.13.
William Hill do a daily free game called 'Scratch of the Day' and using that I got an offer of a free £2 bet if I placed a £5 bet on a horse - I found a matched bet that means I lose 17p on the qualifying bet so I've placed this as it is worth it even for a small free bet, as you know, it all adds up!
I'm going to try the Coral offer again today, place 3 x £5 inplay bets to get a free £5 bet, the first qualifying bet is placed on an Australian league game and will lose 49p. I'll come back to this later.
In the meantime I checked The Pools website and my free welcome bet of £10 is now ready to use, so that's on a horse tonight for a guaranteed £7.13 profit.
Spotted Betfair had given me 90 free spins as a welcome offer that I must have missed when I joined up. Took the spins for a nice little £14.32 and it's straight cash, no need to wager it! Result!
Placed the second qualifying bet with Coral, this time 34p lost, just one more to go. The final one is costing 80p as I made the mistake of not waiting until half time and the odds moved as I was placing the bets, possibly a player got injured or something like that. Need to remember to wait to half time in future. Still it's a free £5 bet coming now for an overall loss of £1.30 so I will make about £3 overall.
Coral are on the ball and the free bet is credited pretty much as soon as I placed the last bet, so it's on a Croatian game to return profit of £3.52.
I've set up a new account with Hopa, who offer a £20 free bet when you place a £10 bet, the bet is now placed and will lose me 61p.
William Hill have very kindly just sent me an email with a £5 free bet if I place a £5 bet on this weekend's football. I've done that for a loss of just 14p and will keep an eye out for the free bet.
Saturday tomorrow and I am hoping for my best day so far as the bank is growing nicely and there's usually a lot of freebies around on the weekends. See if I can break £30 for the day! I've got a fre free bets already lined up so should have a good chance.
Expecting a very profitable day today, lots of offers about.
First offer of the day is with Betfair, they're offering a free £10 bet if you place a £10 bet as a 'Same Game Multi' on today's Aston Villa vs Newcastle game. Now this is basically an accumulator (minimum 2 legs) on the same game, so for example Villa to win and both teams to score would qualify. I cannot lay this off with Betfair as they don't like you doing that, so I've opened a Smarkets account as they are also an exchange.
Smarkets will also give me a free £10 bet if I lose at their site, so I will try to find quite high odds for the bet as more chance of it losing at the exchange, so I get the additional free bet. As it happens I cannot find a good price match at this time (minimum loss I can find is £2.75) so I will have a look later when there should be more money in this market to narrow that loss.
SkyBet have an offer on the 13:50 horse race at Ascot today, it's get your bet back as cash if your horse finishes 2nd or 3rd. Now these can be quite lucrative (this one has a limit of £10 on it) but I've looked at the odds using the Profit Accumulator oddsmatcher and there's not a single horse that I can match without losing over £1.50 with a £10 stake, so for now I am giving it a miss. You'll often find bookies offer poorer odds if they are running an offer on a race as they know they will lose money with their offer so try to recoup it by offering lower odds. I will keep an eye on this race and see if any odds change in my favour later on, I don't mind risking a small amount as the refund will be worth it - there are 12 runners here so those two places mean about a 20% chance of a refund.
I've placed the £5 free bet I got from Williahm Hill and found a good match that returns £4.28 in profit.
The William Hill 'Scratch of the Day' offer has again given me the chance to get a free bet for £2 if I place a £5 on any sport. I've had a quick look and if I place the bet on Sevilla to win it will lose 26p which is worthwhile for the free £2 - it all adds up!
Some general advice here, bookies do not like matched bettors as they don't make money from them, so it's important to try to behave in a way that prolongs the life of your betting accounts. A good tip is to place bets on high profile football matches and not to bet too far in advance. The Sevilla game isn't exactly high profile, but it is in La Liga, so it's quite high profile and it is on today so that should be OK. Also try not to hit the same bookie for their offers too much, give it a break every now and then.
Logged into Hopa and see my free bet is there (it's not easy to find to be honest) but couldn't work out how to use it. Had a quick chat with their live chat and sorted it out, this bet is only going to return profit of £14.17 which isn't great for a £20 free bet but it looks like Hopa doesn't generally offer good odds so I took that profit rather than waiting around too much for better odds.
Betfair have again given me a free spins offer, unlimited spins until you win, that netted me a massive 46 pence!. Pays for a couple of qualifying bets at least.
I'm going back to the Coral offer now, this is available every day - free £5 bet if you bet 3 x £5 bets inplay on football, the first bet loses me 30p.
I now spotted using the Profit Accumulator oddsmatching tool, that a horse in the 13:50 at Ascot (remember earlier post) was now showing a rating over 90% - this means I can bet on that horse, Janika, and will only lose £1 from my £10 stake if it doesn't finish 2nd or 3rd. I think that's a fair trade, I am in effect getting odds at 9/1 on that happening when really the odds are more like 5/1. The horse is one of the favourites so should be near the front. Strictly speaking this isn't matched betting as I am not in control of this outcome but feel it's worth a shot for a quid.
The second Coral qualifying bet has lost me 40p, just one more to place for the free bet. And the final qualifying bet will lose 28p so in total the free bet is costing me 94p, not too bad. The free bet shows profit of £3.50 so this offer is now completed for the day, onto the next.
My horse in the 13:50 at Ascot didn't finish in the first 3 places, so that's a quid down the drain, that's gambling for you, I need to stick to matched betting!
The odds on the Villa game are now better so I can place the £10 qualifying bet for a loss of £1.97 which is not too bad - as a general rule of thumb you want to keep losses under 20% for qualifying bets (10% is better) and then take 80% profit from the free bet.
A Betfred offer popped up, free £5 bet if you place a £10 qualifying bet on an FA cup game today, inplay. The qualifying bet will lose me £1.98 which is poor, my fault as I missed most of the games and could only place it on the Manchester City game which didn't have great odds, should still see a profit overall though.
So a busy day as you can see but not great profit wise, expected more, but now have a fair few free bets to come hopefully tomorrow.
Hoping for a better day today.
Coral have an interesting offer that I will keep an eye on, it's a free bet if you have a winning acca - the amount is equal to your winnings, up to £100. Now bookies love accas as they tend to lose, but I can do this using good matched bets so losses will be small and if I pick low odds then the chances of winning often enough to make it worthwhile are pretty good. You only need 3 selections and odds overall need to be odds of 2.5 or above which isn't too tricky. I'm not doing this just yet but will keep an eye on it.
My free £2 bet from Hills is showing so that's placed on a German game today for profit of £1.51. They offered me another free bet if I place a bet on the Liverpool vs Man Utd game today but on the #YourOdds market, this can be hard to match so I will leave that for now but take a look later in the day, see if I can match anything.
My free bet from Betfair is ready to place, so that's £10 on Sassuolo locking in £7.58 profit.
Betway do a weekly Bet Club for £25 of qualifying bets on accumulators with 3 legs or more at odds of over 3.0 so I've stuck a treble on today with a loss of £2.01. Won't get the free bet today unfortunately but should be showing tomorrow.
I've had another look at the Coral offer and found an acca for £10 that will lose 95p - if it wins however I get a free bet worth £25.89 which I feel is worth the risk as the three teams are all quite strong favourites, Leicester, Everton and Lazio so I have placed this. The way I look at this one, I would need to win 2 accumulators with 3 legs at over 2.5 odds a month if I placed one every day to make a profit. I'm not the greatest punter in the world but even I could manage that!
I'm going to finish for the day as not much else about and I don't fancy opening new accounts today but I probably will tomorrow.
Betfair gave me 10 free spins in an email that netted a huge 85p!
The acca I placed with Coral won, so I logged in to get the free bet. This is a good example of why you need to read the rules around free bets carefully, I do have a free bet but it's only for £2.59 and not the £25.90 I was expecting. The small print says the free bet amounts to a total of 10% of your winnings and not the 100% I had assumed. So I will still make a profit with this offer but it's not something I am likely to do again in a hurry for a relatively small reward. The free bet will net be £1.99 and is now placed.
It looks like a very quiet day today in the sporting world with not much around so I'll check back at lunchtime when the Profit Accumulator site usually put up details of any free bets and offers.
Decided to make use of the quiet day and opened a new account with Novibet as I've seen a lot of free bets available with them on the Profit Accumulator forums. The deal here is you get a free £20 bet when you place your first bet of £20 - qualifying bet will lose me £1.83 and is placed on a Turkish super league game later today. This is a bit obscure so not ideal as it may make the bookie a bit suspicious but as a one-off probably OK.
I've decided to try again at the Coral acca offer, I've found a bet that looks like it has a decent chance of winning and if I stick £30 on it the losses are only £1.61 - if it wins I'll get a free bet around the £9 mark so let's try it again.
Bit of a bonus here as the Coral acca first leg won and the second leg odds have dropped so I am guaranteed to make a profit on the qualifying bet of £2.16 which is a nice bonus. It's rare odds move in your favour like that!
Having another go at the Coral inplay offer, 3 x £5 bets for a free £5 bet, first one loses 39p, second one 44p. The final bet will lose a more modest 25p. What I've found with these inplays is the more money there is on a game, the lower the losses as the odds tend to be tighter.
As usual Coral are on the ball and I get the free bet as soon as the third inplay was placed, but need to check back later to use it as not many games on at the moment.
The Coral acca lost so I'm calling it a day, another poor day but here's hoping for better tomorrow.
William Hill have again offered a free £2 bet for placing a £5 qualifying bet, I lose 21p on this bet and then will make £1.80 on the free bet.
Netbet have given me a bonus spins offer with which I've won £5.40 but this isn't cash I can withdraw (not counted in my profits on here), but I have to 'wager' it to release it. I might have a go at this later but it can be time-consuming for not much of a return.
Betfred are giving a free £5 bet if you place an inplay bet on the Premier League games this evening, so I'll need to look at that later today.
My free £10 bet from NBovibet was used today, this was delayed as they asked me to sent copies of passport/bank statement etc to verify my account. A bit of a pain but you find most bookies will ask for ID at some stage for legal reasons, that bet will net me £7.28 so worth the effort I think.
Other than that another quiet day, hope it picks up soon. The Betfred offer never really hit the required odds, would have lost too much on the qualifying bet to make it worthwhile.
I've received my 3 x £10 bets from NetBet so will try to get those placed today. The first bet was on Virtual Sports so you cannot lay that off so I purely punted it on a virtual horse that virtually lost. Next up I put the free sports bet on a Man UItd draw, profit here is £4.09. Finally the free accumulator bet will net me £3.54.
I'm now going to start a new account with Grosvenor. Now their advertised offer is place a qualifying bet of £10 and get 2 x £10 free bets, I have kept a screenshot of this offer as when I came to place the first bet it gave me a 100% odds boost. The odds boost means I am in effect getting a massive arb, so guaranteed to win £7.67. I'll log in later to see if I get any free bets.
I've also set up a new account with Mr Play - now they are a bit cheeky as they charge you 25p to deposit with them, so I doubt I will use them much but their offer of a free £15 bet after placing your first £10 bet means I will take that hit just this once. The qualifying bet will lose me 79p and I will check back later for the free bet.
William Hill 'Spin and Win' comes up with another £2 bet if I place a £5 accumulator on two selections, will look at the odds and decide here. I came back a bit later and placed the bet, it loses 17p so all good. I got the free bet straight away so placed that for £1.67 profit on a horse this evening.
Nice little bonus as someone on the Profit Accumulator forums posted an 'Odds Boost' - this is a bet where you make a profit straight away due to the odds. It was for the Barcelona game tonight and I put £8 odd that I had in my Betway account and it is locking in profit of £1.35 - now it's not much but if I'd had the money in the right place for example I could have put £100 on it for about £15 profit, you can see how the money adds up the more you make.
It's a good idea to log into your accounts every so often to check them, glad I did today as there's a £10 free bet with Novibet so I placed that and it's profit of £8.20.
The William Hill 'Scratch of the Day' promo yields its usual £2 free bet but a bonus today as there's no qualifying just place the bet. Made £1.66 from this.
Logged into the new Grosvenor account to see if my free bets were there, nothing showing yet. Now some bookies take 24 hours or more to credit them so I'll check tomorrow and see if they appeared.
Setting up a Paddy Power account today as they have some good offers, their free offer is a 'risk free' first bet of £20 - now using the Profit Accumulator calculator I can ensure a profit of £9.24 which I duly do.
After that I placed a £10 bet on a horse running in the 14:20 at Gowran Park as Paddy are offering a full refund if the horse finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th. I lose 50p on this bet but a good chance (10 runners) of getting a refund which will be pure profit. This also counts towards the Paddy Power bet club which is a free £10 bet every week if you place 5 x £10 bets, so I need to remember to place these before the end of the week.
I also set up an account with Livescore, they give 2 x £10 bets when you place your first bet of £l10 at odds over evens, I've stuck this on Liverpool to win tonight for a loss of 29p.
Someone on the Profit Accumulator forum has posted a clever little bet that takes advantage of a SkyBet offer in an 'obtuse' way. Sky are offering evens (price boosted) on Frankie Dettori riding a winner (or more than one) at the meeting in Dubai today. If you put £10 on that (max stake) and lay one of the horses he is riding (it's a hot favourite, can lay at 1.81 odds) then you lock in a profit of £1.69 but the clever bit is if he wins any other race today (4 races he's riding in) then BOTH bets will win - so profit will be £11.60 - fingers crossed! It's clever little tips like these that make being a member of Profit Accumulator so attractive, easily pay for the membership alone. If Detori ONLY wins that one race today it's still a profit but I'll work that out later!
I've gone back to the Betfair offer where you get a £5 free bet if you place a £20 double, this time on horse racing. My qualifying bet will lose £1.70 so let's see how this goes.
Also back on the Coral inplay offer, lost 37p on the first bet, 33p the second and finally 38p giving a total of £1.08 which is acceptable for a free £5 bet. The bet resulted in profit of £3.77.
The first leg of the Betfair double lost which is actually good news as it means I get the free bet with no more work required, this is placed for a profit of £2.96.
SkyBet were doing an offer last night that I didn't add to the blog so will put it on today's entry, it was a free £5 bet if you placed a £5 inplay bet on the Liverpool game. The qualifying bet cost me 19. and I cannot place the free bet yet as they have technical issues but I will do later today.
William Hills 'Scratch of the Day' was good today, I've realised I can use their price boosts on the qualifying bet so I made a small profit on that of 11p and then another £1.88 on the free bet.
I'm having a go on the Betfred 'Geryhounds Bet Club' today - this only runs on a Thursday and Friday but I will get a free £10 bet if I place three £10 bets on the dogs. My first bet cost 38p, it's quite hard to find matches on the dogs as the Profit Accumulator oddsmatcher doesn't have greyhounds, so I have to check manually. Plenty of races on today though. Second race costs 16p on the qualifying bet, just one to go.
Someone tipped an 'arb' on the Profit Accumulator forums, this is where the odds are high on the bookie side (the back bet) and low on the lay side to the extent you get an instant profit. I put £25 on a horse running in the 16:10 at Navan and it's an immediate profit of £4.10 - now you have to be careful with horse racing as if a horse withdraws and is a non-runner you can find the winnings are reduced, I will check this after the race finishes to see.
The SkyBet webiste is back up so placed that free bet for £4.41 profit.
Another tip from the Profit Accumulator forums, SkyBet are doing a refund on the 13:35 at Doncaster and if I bet on the 2nd favourite with the correct stakes I lock in £2.48 profit. Again, these small sums soon mount up.
Final qualifying bet on the Betfred Greyhound club has cost me £1.16 so overall cost to get that £10 free bet is £1.70 which isn't too bad, the free bet should be available tomorrow.
Livescore have given me my two free bets so placed those for a profit of £7.60 and £7.78 respectively.
SkyBet have a price boost on a three-fold on Saturday, by laying this off on Betfair I've made £1.76. Another tip from the Profit Accumulator forums, again with SkyBet is for the price boost on Calvert Lewin to have a shot on target, this is worth £1.93.
The Oddsmatcher website was giving a promotion if you linke their site to your SkyBet account so I have done that for a free £5 bet which netted me £4.08.
Overall a pretty good day taking me over the £300 mark so far this month, in three weeks basically.
Betway have a good offer on today on Esports, if I place a bet of £10 on the first match today they give a free bet worth £10 -my qualifying loss here is £1.04. I could have placed this one to get a guaranteed profit but as the free bet is regardless of outcome there's no real benefit to doing that.
I've placed another £10 bet with Paddy Power to finish the qualifying for their free bet club this week. I should get the free £10 bet on Monday, this bet cost 73p loss but it's on a horse race where they are refunding losing bets if your horse finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th. You can guarantee a profit with these but the odds weren't great and I wouild have only made a couple of quid so I've not done that and am just hoping the horse finished in those places - it's one of the favourites and there are 10 runners so a fair chance I think.
Got the usual £2 free bet from William Hills 'Scratch of the Day' the qualifying bet cost me 12p and free bet makes £1.55.
Another tip on the Profit Accumulator forum for the Everton match, William Hill are offering enhanced odds which see a profit of £1.73.
Betfair are doing an offer of a free £10 bet if you place a 'Same Game Multi' for the same value, I stuck this on Everton to win and BTTS no for a loss of £1.28.
Another tip from Profit Accumulator, Betfred are doing a £5 free bet if you lose a bet using their 'Pick Your Punt' bet-builder on the Arsenal game today, this locks in £1.83 profit.
And another from the forum, a Betway boost locks in £1.51 on a horse running in the 14:05 at Doncaster.
Got my first £5 free bet from the Betway bet club, placed this on a League 1 game this afternoon for return of £3.87 profit.
Today might seem like a lot of effort for not much, the above was about an hour's activity (the blog is taking longer to write than the bets) but although it's barely a tenner profit, I've £30 worth of free bets to come from it, so the true value is closer to £40 for barely an hours work. There's a lot on most Saturdays and still another £30 or so to make from offers I am aware of, no doubt more opportunities will arise as the day unfolds.
Unibet have a lot of offers today, basically a free £5 bet on all the premier league games (6 in total). The trouble with Unibet is you need to place a qualifying bet of £10 and their odds are not great. On the first game (12:00 kick off) I lost £1.44 on the qualifying bet and made £3.57 on the free bet so net just over two quid. But over the six matches it's worth doing.
The 3 PM kick offs (3 matches) cost a total of £4.79 in qualifying bets which is a bit steeper than I would have liked but I've now got £15 worth of free bets to play with. This deal means they need placing during the matches, I prefer to wait until half time for when the odds have settled down a bit.
Betfred have given me my £10 free bet from their Greyhound Bet Club I qualified for yesterday, that's now on a horse running in an hour's time for a £7.69 profit.
SkyBet are doing a free £5 bet if you place the same value bet inplay (first half) on the Arsenal vs Man Utd game, the risk here is odds can move quickly inplay (if you place a bet at the same time a goal is scored it can be costly) so I very carefully placed the bet at the same time with both the bookie and the exchange using my phone and the computer - qualifying bet loses 22p and the free bet nets £4.20.
Good start today as I used my free £10 bet from Betway from their betclub to see a profit of £8.45 and also the free bet I got from Betfair yesterday for £9 straight. The Betfair profit was boosted as they let me use a boost to get better odds.
SportingBet have given me a 'Backup Bet' which means I get a refund up to £10 if my bet loses. There's a calculator on Profit Accumulator that tells me how to get a guaranteed profit here which works out at £4.54 so I duly place that bet. If the bet wins I'm done here but if it loses (with the bookie) I need to treat the 'backup bet' as a free bet.
A busy day with Unibet today as they are giving a free £5 bet on all 4 of today's premier league matches. First one at 12:00 sees me lose £1.18 on the qualifying bet and then gain £4.13 on the free bet.
So overall I'm not far off £400 profit for my first month, although I didn't start until the 9th and then with a small bank. Pretty confident I can easily do over £500 profit for February and maybe even get close to a grand.
A bit annoyed with myself as I've missed out on almost £4 profit as there's a horse race on and Paddy Power are doing their usual daily refund if it finishes 2nd, 3rd or 4th. However, it's too close to the start for me to risk it as odds move around quickly in the last few minutes before the off so I've decided to give it a miss today, but will make a note to check in future before 12 noon - they have this promotion on most days. Another lesson you need to be on the ball when matched betting.
Paddy Power are doing an offer on the evening game where you get your stake refunded if you have a 'bet-builder' with 4 or more selections, if one leg lets you down. Now this is slightly risky as you cannot completely lay a 4 leg bet-builder but what I've gone for is pretty safe - Liverpool to win, BTTS (which I laid for £1.50 qualifying loss) and over 2.5 goals and Liverpool over 2.5 corners. The over 2.5 goals is superfluous as if it is Liverpool winning and BTTS then there has to be 3 goals minimum, ie a 2-1 win. The risk is the corners element but I've looked at the stats this season and Liverpool are averaging nearly 7 corners away this season and only once failed to get at least 3 and that was against Man City who don't concede many. West Ham are conceding an average of nearly 5 corners at home and only once conceded fewer than 3, against struggling West Brom, so I am happy to risk £1.50 here for a chance at a free £10 bet.
The second Unibet match results in a loss of £1.18 for the qualifying bet and profit of £3.74 for the free bet.
The next Unibet game saw loss of £1.52 and then profit of £3.51 and the final game of the day loss of £
The Paddy Power bet actually won, Liverpool 3-1 so the bet won and I don't get the free bet. I was a bit unlucky as West Ham scored their only goal on 86 minutes, had Liverpool kept a clean sheet I would have got the free bet. Worth a try, I'll be a bit cleverer next time with this type of bet.
Start of a new month, target is to do better than last month, I've got a few extra days as I started on the 9th of January, let's see!
Looks like an extremely quiet day today, Mondays often are. I'm expecting to get some free bets from the various bet clubs but maybe not much else.
As it's quiet I'm going to use today to qualifying for the Virgin bet club, this one is slightly trickier than most as you need to place 2 x £10 accas to get the £10 free bet. I've got an acca picked out that will lose £1.56 which isn't too bad. The problem is the acca is over 3 days as it's tough to find odds that match up well enough as not a huge amount of games on over the next couple of days. I'll need to check these daily to see if the bets win or not as if they win I need to lay the next leg.
As I was placing the bet with Virgin I noticed they're doing an offer on a couple of horse races where you get a free bet if you bet on the winner at over 3/1 odds - I'll have a look at this later, if I can get low qualifying losses I may have a go at that.
Also done the Betway bet club which is similar to the Virgin one but only a 3 leg acca required and only one at £25 or over. Qualifying loss here is £1.92.
I'm not going to start on the Paddy Power bet club until later in the week as they've nothing on today that I like the look of but probably will in the next day or two.
As it's quiet I've opened a new account with Energy Bet, simple offer here, place a £10 qualifying bet and get a £10 free bet. I lost 45p on the qualifying bet and then made profit of £7.45 on the free bet.
Someone posted an 'odds boost' on the Profit Accumulator forum using a Betway odds boost, this nets a profit of £1.20.
I've got £15 worth of free bets in my Betway account, a tenner of that is from their bet club but not sure where the other fiver came from but not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth I place those for a profit of £11.62.
I've also opened an account with LV bet, similar deal, free £10 bet, my qualifying bet costs 31p.
My Paddy Power free bet from their bet club is now available so that's placed with a boost for profit of £8.37 - looking good for such a quiet day!
Also got a free fiver bet from SkyBet as part of their bet club, that's on a horse for £3.57 profit.
I appear to have got a £5 free bet from Betfred, not sure why but it's gone for £4.08 profit.
Unibet are doing a bet club, it's a free £10 bet if you place 5 x £10 inplay bets during the week. I had a quick look and there's a Spanish game underway and it's half time. Using the Uniboost I could back and lay the draw and only lose 8p on the qualifying bet, so that's done and I now need to remember to do another 4 inplays before Sunday to get the free bet.
Sorry for the lack of updates, I was ill for a few days and then had a lot of R/L issues to deal with and I have now started a new job. The job means although I have time to do some matched betting, I don't really have time to write the blog regularly.
My grand total earned from matched betting now stands at £1,167.19. I will try to post a few updates here as and when I get chance.
It's a very good time to start matched betting at the moment if you have considered it as the Cheltenham horse racing festival is just a few days away. Historically the bookies give away a lot of free bets and other offers around this, it's usually the best month of the year. If you are interested then I recommend signing up with Profit Accumulator as they have very useful guides to maximise profits and explain everything for beginners.
It is virtually risk-free. There is always a chance you might make a mistake, which is why I recommend signing up to Profit Accumulator as this reduces that risk.
There is also a small chance that a bookie might go bust with your money, but that is a very rare occurance that can be mitigated by ensuring you don't leave money in the bookies account.
Not much, one of the reasons I wrote this blog was to find out what the smallest total investment would be and it comes out around £30. If you can start with a bigger bank you can turn over the bets more quickly and make money more quickly too.
It depends on how much money you want to make. If you spend around 20 minutes a day you can earn a part-time income of around £300 a month. If you wanted to make a full-time income then you'd need to put in a few hours per day. Of course you can choose exactly when you want to do it and how long you want to spend.
Matched betting is not a get-rich-quick scheme but you can certainly earn up to and around £1,000 a month if you put in the time and effort, some claim to earn over £30,000 annually and it's tax-free!
To an extent yes. The problem with matched betting is that the most valuable offers are when you sign up for a new account. Even though there are dozens of bookies/casinos out there, you will find after a few weeks you have accounts at all those paying good bonuses so income does reduce somewhat.
However, existing customers do get free bets and offers so you can still make a decent income (over £500 a month part-time) by doing these 'Reload' offers. This is another good reason to have an account at Profit Accumulator as they have a daily forum thread telling you what offers are available.
Yes it is 100% legal! The bookies don't like people doing matched betting as they aren't making money from it, but there is nothing illegal about it.
There are a few bookies not listed on Profit Accumulator who give free bets, I'll make a list of them below:
PariMatch
Betclic