As always if you need a reminder of the reasons and rules behind this challenge have a read of the about me page. To see last month’s matched betting profit visit July’s results post here.
Well I seem to be developing quite the talent for cursing myself. Remember at the end of my last profit update when I said it would take something quite disastrous to derail my bid to turn £500 in £5000 within 12 months?
Well…turns out disaster struck.
THANK GOD for William Hill for getting me out of a deep hole.
Matched Betting Gets Put On Back Burner
Two events combined to completely throw my matched betting off course. The first was a family holiday in the middle of August. This is denoted by the flat line from the 12th until the 21st of August. I actually really enjoyed my time away from it all, it was nice to not be spending any free time I had spinning reels or looking at betting exchanges.
The second event was work related. I launched a new service for my company and I after a slow start I suddenly had a massive influx of orders to deal with. Which is obviously a nice problem to have since more orders equates to more money coming in.
Except more orders also equated to 12 hour days, with no time to do any meaningful offers. There were several missed days and it is no surprise that this is by far my lowest number of active days since I started the challenge.
The pattern I followed is reflected in the graph, make next to nothing most days and then once I had a few hours spare, smash everything in sight. Hence the vertical lines representing the days where I could actually get something done.
Total Profit: £270.83 Average Transaction Value: £3.81 Days Active: 18
Cumulative Percentage of Overall Target: 77.32%
Cumulative Profit: £3,865.92
Under/Over Monthly Target: – £145.84
William Hill Saves the Day
I used what little time I had to use and abuse Hills more than any other bookie. I reckon you could easily make £1k+ from them alone if you had the time, they often have cracking casino offers on and great sports offers, without even getting into high 5 or 2 clear.
They had a daily wager £10 for £5 bonus on in the live casino (I’m now capped at £20 winnings!), daily scratch cards with decent “Bet and Get” offers, and their spins giveaway towards the end of the month in the Games section was kind to me.
The rest of my extremely limited time was spent qualifying for the £10 “refunds if” for Paddy Power and Ladbrokes on both football and the horses, of which nearly every one I placed came in. Incredibly handy when you’ve got an average of 30 mins spare a day!
I also took Betfair up on their weekly “Wager £10 for £5” offer which netted me at least £20 a week.
Add in a few easy £10 deposit bonuses from Gamesys sites such as Starspins and Virgin Games and that’s it, all of my profits pretty much covered by less than 10 websites!
I suppose it illustrates why some people struggle when they lose one of the big bookmakers although losing Sky Bet doesn’t seem to have hurt me too much yet, I was too busy to even think about it!
Moving Forward Into September
As I writing this I already know I have made an extremely poor start to September. However, the good news is orders have begun to slow down giving me more time to attempt of all the individual offers on a more consistent basis.
I am increasingly aware that I only have about 15 bookmaker accounts and even less casino-only accounts. If I am struggling to find offers to do with my finite time, there are some easy £10 – £50 free bets to be picked up and if I find myself in the same situation as I have this month I will not hesitate to just do a few sign ups to bolster my income.
I’ve also been doing a lot of behind the scenes work on this website, so you may notice a few things changing here and there. I will endeavour to keep to my schedule of one new blog post or guide per week, but work has to be prioritised since I make nothing from this website as of yet.
I am a smidge still ahead of my target of hitting £5000 before December 31st but now the pressure is really on and I’m feeling it a little bit. I feel at this rate will be sat watching the horses with my Christmas jumper on, eating chocolates and screaming for one of them to come in to get the last few pounds of my target.
Here’s to hopefully not having to do that…
View September’s result here.