Thinking of Starting Matched Betting? Here’s What You Need to Know…

Thinking of starting matched betting? You should be!

Matched betting is the easiest and fastest way I’ve found of making money from home. It has the potential to earn you £100s or even £1000s each month!

Oh, and it’s NOT gambling – don’t let the name put you off.

Matched betting uses special calculators to ‘match’ your bets (for and against an outcome) so you should not lose money. The profit comes from the free bet special offers.

If you follow the instructions, carefully, you should make money every time!

I earned my first £1000 in just under three months. Believe it or not, this is quite slow going in the matched betting community!

You can read more about my experiences with matched betting here and here. 

If you’re ready to get started, here are my best tips for beginners:

Need-to-know tips for starting matched betting

• Take it slow. It can be quite confusing in the beginning – especially if you’ve never placed a bet online before. Take as much time as you need with the first few offers. It’s worth investing the time to really understand everything in the beginning. You’ll make money as long as you don’t make any mistakes, and I promise you will get faster the more offers you do.
• Start with football matches. I don’t recommend betting on horses until you are more experienced. This is because the odds can change quite quickly with horses, especially nearer the time of a race. If the odds do change while placing your bets, don’t panic, you can easily fix it – but it’s just easier to avoid the fuss if you’re new.
• Don’t choose matches that are in play or just about to start. Again, the closer you are to kick off, the more likely the odds are to change. This is fine once you’re more experienced, but it’s easier to choose matches starting in a day or two if you’re new!
• Don’t be put off by all the jargon. Matched betting does have its own lingo which can be quite confusing at first, especially if you’ve never done any sports betting before. I created my own matched betting glossary for that reason. I hope it helps any clueless newbies like me! Anything else you don’t understand can usually be solved by a quick Google, or ask on the Outplayed.com forums.
• Set up a new email address just for matched betting. You will get a LOT of promotional emails when you sign up with the bookies. However, you don’t want to opt out, because you will hear about a lot of good free bet offers there! Best to keep all your matched betting emails in one place which you can just skim through every couple of days to check for new offers.
• Think ahead if you’re planning to apply for a mortgage or anything else where people might examine your bank statements. Matched betting does not directly have an effect on your credit rating. However, most bank staff will not understand matched betting. If they see a lot of bookie transactions on your bank statement, it might look like you’ve got a gambling problem! Some people use a separate bank account just for matched betting, but be warned that some mortgage providers may want to see bank statements from all current accounts, not just your main one. It might be safer just to take a break for a few months.
• Consider using a separate bank account. Regardless of whether you are applying for a mortgage or not, it is a good idea to keep all your matched betting transactions in a separate account. This will keep your earnings separate from your everyday money. It’s easier to keep track of your transactions and will help you work towards a savings goal. It’s also very motivating to see your balance going up and up each month! Update: I used to use PayPal for matched betting but recently many bookies will not offer bonuses if you make a deposit using PayPal or other money transfer services such as Skrill etc, as opposed to an actual bank. Be sure to check the T&Cs of each offer if you’re using a non-traditional banking service.
• Save up your earnings to make a matched betting fund. You only need about £60 to get started with matched betting, but things will be quite slow in the beginning because you’ll have to wait for each bet to settle before you get the cash back to place the next back. The more money you have in your matched betting fund, the more offers you can do –  and the quicker you will make money! For this reason, Outplayed recommend that you work up to a matched betting fund of about £1000-£3000. It can be tempting to treat yourself once you see the cash coming in, but then you’ll be back to square one. My plan is to keep a float of around £1500 for matched betting in my PayPal and Betfair accounts, and then ‘pay’ myself anything above that at the end of each month.
• Don’t be scared of matched betting! And don’t panic! Sometimes things go wrong or you’re not sure you’re doing the right thing. Most things are easy to fix. If you’re an Outplayed member, you can contact their customer support or ask on the forums or Facebook group. There’s official customer support 7 days a week, and also a huge community of other matched bettors who like to help each other out.
• Get started! I probably sound a bit over-excitable here, but it’s no lie to say that for me, matched betting has been life-changing. I don’t even mean the money. (I’ve made about £1,500 so far, which is a huge amount for me, but not life-changing in itself). The real game-changer for me is that this is the first time I’ve ever made real money through a side hustle. It’s opened my eyes to so many other possibilities, and given me a lot of confidence in my ability to make money and in my future! If you haven’t signed up to Outplayed.com yet, why not?

Any questions? Ask me below. I really would love to everyone succeed with this! And for anyone already doing matched betting, do you have any more tips to share?

Related post:

• Matched Betting for Dummies: Your Questions Answered!

See all matched betting content here.

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