Matched Betting Guide - Part 1 - Meet The Concepts

Table of Contents

Matched Betting Guide - Part 1

Learn the core concepts behind matched betting and why it's a genuine path to earning $1,500+ risk free.

Risk Free 20 Min Read $1,500+ Potential

Welcome to the OzProfit 3-Part Matched Betting Guide! Over the next 60 minutes, you’ll learn everything you need to earn over $1,500 in less than 30 days.

Each section will build up your knowledge and share helpful tips & tricks to help you master the science of Matched Betting.

Firstly, I want to share with you a story. My story. I’m hoping that by telling you my story, you’ll find this guide more worthy of your trust. Also, that I might perhaps be a small source of inspiration for you.

I first discovered matched betting in 2012, having searched “how to make money online” in about 100 different ways. Back then, I was a student at university in the UK and the regular costs of my social life were hitting my bank account hard. It’s a feeling that I’m sure is familiar with most of you reading this. I have a healthy scepticism of any “get rich quick” scheme but something about using maths to find an edge with bookmakers intrigued me. Back then, there were very few online ‘guides’ such as this one, so it took months of research to build up my confidence.

Running a few ‘test runs’ and planning out my bets carefully, I happily discovered that matched betting can really work. Having to learn everything myself, there were a few costly mistakes (learnings!) but over the past 7 years, I’ve earned in excess of $30,000 profit and funded months of extensive travel across the world. It’s truly offered me a source of financial freedom in my twenties that few people can enjoy. Now being an ‘older statesman’ of the matched betting world, I want to share everything I’ve learnt so that others can find their own financial freedom.

Here are a few of my favourite matched betting funded travel pictures:

Matched Betting Funded Travel - New Zealand
New Zealand
Matched Betting Funded Travel - Cambodia
Cambodia
Matched Betting Funded Travel - America
America

What is ‘Matched Betting’?

Hopefully you’re excited to learn more and start your own matched betting journey. To start, I want to give a high level overview of what matched betting is:

Definition

Matched Betting

Matched betting is the science of earning bonus bets, from bookmakers, that we can ‘convert’ into real money. We’re able to ‘convert’ these free bets through a clever technique called matching. This is where we bet both for and against an event happening.

I know that probably doesn’t make a huge amount of sense right now, which is totally ok! I’m here to guide you through what that all means and exactly how it works.

The key to matching your bets is betting on both sides of an event. By doing this, you can guarantee the same profit regardless of which player or team wins, it’s completely stress-free. I talk about this concept in full detail during Part 2 - Master the Fundamentals.

I hope you find it useful.

Your potential earnings from Matched Betting?

You’re here and reading this because your interested in making a bit of extra risk-free income, right?

On our homepage, we make the bold claim that you can make up to $2,000 from simple bookmaker sign-ups alone then a potential $1,000+ income per month. I know this is entirely possible, because I’ve done it myself. In fact, this guide is going to teach you all the fundamentals you need to do that yourself.

$2,000+

Sign-Up Offers

Guaranteed earnings from bookmaker welcome bonuses alone. Simple sign-ups, no experience needed.

$1,000+/mo

Ongoing Income

Potential monthly earnings from reload offers, promotions and advanced techniques.

I’ll have to be completely honest with you though, the top earners actually spend a lot of time each week doing research, placing the right bets and applying complex techniques to earn money. Some people even make a full time living from matched betting. Note: I’ve tried this before, it quickly stops being fun. So, let’s talk about the reality.

Does this sound like you?

  • Busy life, with lots of commitments.
  • Existing part-time / full-time income, or studies.
  • Saving small amounts of money each month, or nothing at all.

So, I bet you don’t want to spend 40 hours each week on matched betting. The good news? You don’t have to!

You can still earn a minimum guaranteed $1,000+ from bookmaker sign-ups. Investing just a few hours each week, mainly on a weekend, can then see you easily earn an ongoing $500 each month. You get to choose how much time you invest and how much profit you make.

I’ve gone into detail around how much you can expect to make from matched betting in a separate article.

There’s an interesting concept in matched betting where the more time you spend, the less valuable the ‘free bets’ are because there are only a limited number.. and we always tackle the most valuable ones first!. That means you can earn a majority of the income from just a few hours of effort.

Profit Per Hour Spent Matched Betting Profit Per Hour Hours Spent Matched Betting 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425 These are the hours we want to spend matched betting

Just a few hours of effort each week can get you that TV you’ve always wanted, build up your rainy-day fund, buy your plane tickets or pay for all your day to day expenses. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Is matched betting too good to be true?

This all sounds too good to be true. I’ve learnt that whenever you can get money for nothing, it’s normally fake, or worse, a scam. So how can you decide whether to trust matched betting or not?

Try before you commit

All our guides are free. Test your understanding with paper trading before risking a cent — covered in Part 2.

Government regulated

We only use reputable, government legislated websites that follow strict Australian gambling rules.

Learning is the hard part

Once you understand the basics, everything becomes easy. Most people don’t get past this hurdle — that’s their loss, and your gain.

The worst case scenario is that you read this guide and decide not to do anything about it. You lose an hour and gain nothing.

The second worst case scenario is that you try matched betting with a couple of bookmakers, earn yourself $200, then decide it’s not for you. No more effort needed and you’re $200 better off. Risk Free.

Is matched betting really risk free?

When we’re matched betting, we cover every single possible eventuality in a sporting event. So, no matter which team wins, which player scores more points or which horse comes first, we’ll be guaranteed a profit.

No gambling - matched betting is not gambling

There are no ‘tips’ or ‘guesses’. It doesn’t matter what we think the outcome is going to be. We always avoid any form of gambling.

Don’t care or know anything about sports? You don’t need to watch the games or even know how the sport is played.

There is no such thing as chance in matched betting. We plan our bets carefully so that they ‘match’ against each other and you receive the same total profit whatever happens.

The only ‘risk’ is Human Error. That is, we’re not perfect all the time and sometimes we make mistakes. I’m going to share with you my best tips on how to avoid these mistakes in Part 3 - Make the Income. This way, you can keep matched betting 100% risk free.

Is Matched Betting illegal?

Matched betting isn’t illegal because all you’re doing is making use of publicly available offers from registered bookmakers.

I actually get this question a lot, so I wanted to quickly tackle this head-on and give you some reassurance.

They use these offers to attract more business and encourage you to place bets with them. If you signed up without intending to start matched betting, you’d be placing exactly the same bets. The only difference is that we can guarantee ourselves a profit.

We can even keep all our profits. Have I mentioned that all matched betting profits are completely tax free? That’s because the Australian Tax Office collect their tax from bookmakers directly. This makes sense because any profits you make are supposed to be purely good luck.

Fortunately, we know it’s not just luck.

Some Matched Betting terminology to learn

This guide does assume you have a rudimentary understanding of how betting works in terms of placing your own money on event and receiving a profit if that event happens. If you want to go back to basics, we have a beginners guide to betting in Australia that’s worth a quick read.

There are 5 core pieces of matched betting terminology that you need to understand everything else:

Back Bet

When you bet on any event to happen, this is called 'backing'. When you call a coin flip, you're backing either Heads or Tails with a 50% chance of winning.

Show examples
  • Sydney Swans to beat the Brisbane Lions
  • Roger Federer to beat Rafael Nadal
  • Australia to score a goal in the first 10 minutes
  • David Ganat to win Australian Survivor

Lay Bet

This is betting on any event not to happen. This is the revolutionary concept that creates the matched betting opportunity. A Lay Bet wins whenever the event you're 'laying' doesn't happen.

Notice how this isn't just the 'opposite' event such as winning or losing. It covers any other possible scenario. This means that if your Back Bet does not win, your Lay Bet must win. And vice-versa.

Show examples
  • Sydney Swans to Lose or Draw against the Brisbane Lions
  • Roger Federer to Lose against Rafael Nadal
  • Australia fail to score a goal in the first 10 minutes
  • Anyone else but David Ganat winning Australian Survivor

Bookmakers / Bookies

These organisations are heavily regulated by the Australian authorities and will allow you to Back any event to happen. Some popular examples of these are Ladbrokes, Neds and TAB.

You'll likely find lots of these with shops nearby, though we'll be exclusively dealing with their online betting capability.

Betting Exchange

Think of a world where your mate John wants to bet with you on the odds of a coin flip. You'd offer him double his money if he calls it right, taking his cash if he loses. By doing this, you've created the world's simplest betting exchange.

By disagreeing with John and putting your own cash on the line, you're actually laying whatever outcome he shouts out. That is, if he says 'Heads', you're betting on anything other than heads.

Add thousands of other people to your bet with John and you've got Betfair, the world's largest betting exchange. They connect people like you and I to bet against each other. No bookmaker involved.

Free Bets

In order to entice customers to gamble with their company, Bookmakers offer free bets. These can come in a variety of flavours, but you'll generally need to complete some sort of action before unlocking these free bets.

For a majority of beginner offers, this is as simple as depositing some funds into your account. Taking advantage of these Free Bets is how we make our profits.

The 5-Minute Concept

In the OzProfit.com 5-Minute Matched Betting Guide, I introduce the concept of matched betting through utilising free ‘coupons’ to buy bread. This gives a nice mental model for matched betting that you can apply to the real world.

I recommend you give that guide a read so you have that conceptual model in your mind. From this point on, I only talk about matched betting in terms of backing, laying, bookies and betting exchanges.

5-Minute Matched Betting Guide

A quick visual explainer using a bread-buying analogy. Great if you’re brand new to the concept.

Read the guide

Master the Concept - Key Takeaways

Congratulations, you’re 30% of the way to developing the skills you need to move towards financial freedom! After this first part. you should:

  1. Know matched betting as a genuine profit making opportunity
  2. Grasp the concept of covering all eventualities so matched betting is risk free
  3. What it means when you back an event to happen
  4. The difference between a bookmaker and a betting exchange

The aim of this part was to get you comfortable with the concept and value of matched betting. Part 2 dives into exactly how we use Free Bets to guarantee a profit through matched betting.

Part 1 Complete!

You've mastered the core concepts of matched betting. You now understand what matched betting is, why it's risk free, and the key terminology you'll need going forward.

Next Step

In Part 2, you'll learn exactly how matching works and how to use free bets to guarantee yourself a profit every single time.

Go to Part 2