You’ve heard the buzz. You’ve caught a glimpse. Now it’s time to start earning profits from matched betting.

But where do you start?

The tips we’ve included here are tried and tested, proven strategies to allow you to make the most profit from matched betting for the long haul. We don’t want this to be a flash in the pan, do we? We want to keep on making tax free profits from bookmakers. These tips will guide you on your way like presents from an Elven prince before we embark on our epic adventure.

Set up a Different Bank Account

New Bank Account

What? Why do we have to go all James Bond? Do we need to have different aliases and passports, too? No. That would be fraud. Or, if you happen to be a part of a government agency, work.

Opening up a different bank account allows us to keep track of all our matched bets, for they will be several. There are hundreds of bookmakers out there. New ones pop up all the time. Having a separate bank account means we can use the Yesbets Matched Betting Guide to its full potential and, crucially, keep track of everything. Initially you might only complete one sign-up offer per day. But the longer you go on, the more your profits increase. You might find yourself matching several bets every day, especially during the football season when the games come thick and fast.

Get Yourself Another Email Address

New Email Address

Much like a matched bettor’s need for a separate bank account, having a separate email address allows us to keep track of the extra offers the bookies are sure to fire our way. Some bookmakers also send us reminders if we have free bets that are due to expire. We wouldn’t want to lose our free bets, now would we?

Bookmakers’ free bets are our means to making the most profit from matched betting. Imagine how miffed you’d be if you let a £50 free bet with a potential profit of £40 skip through your fingers because it got mixed up with Groupon offers. Don’t let that happen, get yourself a separate email address. If you’re on gmail, bag an outlook address, or similar.

Make Like a Real Punter

Real Punters

Bookies keep their eyes on us. They know full well there is a matched betting phenomenon in full swing at Yesbets, affording regular Joes the chance to make legal tax free cash on the side. If they suspect us of making profits out of them, they are well within their rights to “gub” us and restrict our accounts.

But, by appearing like a regular betting Joe, we can avoid this happening and keep our accounts open. Open accounts make us fresh in line for the scores of offers they like to chuck at punters on big race days or high-profile football matches. To this end, one simple trick is to place “mug bets”. Mug bets are bets that most people would make. Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs to win. Especially at home. That said, we want to make sure that our odds are at least 1.5 - anything less and we might also appear unattractive to bookies for being too frigid. It’s a fine line between promising to put out and not ever going through with it. Yesbets suggests we make two mug bets for every bonus we take up as a useful strategy to appearing normal.

Stay Regular

Stay Regular

I don’t mean eat prunes to maintain a healthy disposition. I’m talking about regular betting. It might not be possible to begin with, but when you’ve built up a healthy profit margin you can bet regularly to take advantage of the numerous free bet offers that bookies send your way. The more we bet, the more offers bookies will ping us. As this process snowballs into an avalanche, the more regular bets we can place.

Always Back And Lay

Always Lay

To truly achieve no risk matched betting, we must always back and lay. Always. The minute we decide to punt a free bet on a “sure thing” - which, by the way, doesn’t truly exist in sport - we are falling straight into the bookies’ hands and falling into the trap that is the first step on the journey to becoming a gambler and a bookie’s dream.

Conversely, we do actually want to appear to be a bookie’s best customer, as that’ll encourage them to keep on increasing our tab of free bets. We want to place plenty of mug bets, always match every back bet at a bookie with a lay bet at an exchange. This minimises any losses while still qualifying us for the free bet bonuses that are our tickets to profit street.

Stay Away From Arbs

Stay Away From Arbs

Arb bets are matched bets that are laid at lower odds than they’re backed at to achieve instant profit (8 minute arbs!). The OddsMonkey OddsMatcher finds arb opportunities and highlights their profits in green. The top bookies keep on top of the potential for arb bets, adjusting their odds to stay under the betting exchanges like Betfair and Smarkets and therefore making fewer arb bets possible. But some bookmakers don’t update their odds so regularly, and it is with these bookies that we can match bets to rinse arbs.

But, that said, Yesbets does not advocate constant arb betting as a long-term profit making strategy. Sure, it might make short-term profits. But those bookies that aren’t so quick to update their odds to rule out the possibility of arbs are usually twice as quick to gub or restrict accounts of those constantly making arb bets. It might be fine to scoop a cheeky arb once in a while, but making a habit of it is likely to lose you bookie accounts. Free bet offers provide bigger profit margins than arb bets, so long-term we should stick to these.

Use Your Free Bets

Use Free Bets

It might seem obvious. And it is. What would be the point in placing a qualifying bet at a bookmaker for a 50p loss if we then don’t land the £16 profit from the £20 free bet they’ve offered us? When we’re talking about free bet bonuses being our avenue to maximum profit, we’d be kicking ourselves if we missed out on any.

Qualifying bets often have a decent expiry - Betway’s 100% deposit-match sign-up bonus, for example, doesn’t expire for 60 days. Paddy Power and William Hill offer 30 days to redeem our free bets. Coral, on the other hand, only gives us four days to use them. If you use the daily offer calendar over at OddsMonkey, they normally list the expiry time of each offer, but it’s good practice to match our free bets as soon as they appear in our bookie accounts. Then it’s done, dusted and our exchange balance builds, allowing us to place bigger bets with bigger returns. After all, like the Onceler from The Lorax, we’re figuring on biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering.

Enjoy It

Enjoy!

You might not have the slightest interest in betting, or even the slightest interest in sport. But your matched betting adventure is precisely that. An adventure, an experience, a way to boost your income. You get a good feeling knowing that you’ve just made £15 of legal, tax free cash in 10 minutes. And imagine that feeling multiplied to the nth degree when you enjoy your first holiday made from your Yesbets profits, gleaned from the proceeds of free bet offers from bookies. Can you taste the pina coladas already? If you haven't started matched betting yet, or want to learn more, take a look at this nifty guide from OddsMonkey, learn matched betting in 1 minute.

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