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Before I help you in this article on getting started with matched betting, it may be worthwhile heading to the Matched Betting and Advantage Play explainer pages, so you have a clearer understanding of the topics discussed below.

The purpose of this article is explain what you’ll need before you start your matched betting journey. It’s very simple really, you will need a cash float, a subscription to a matched betting software service and you will need to sign up to a betting exchange to lay off your back bets and away you go!

Let’s being with the cash float or “bankroll”.

How much money will I need before getting started with Matched Betting?

The absolute minimum you will need to make a start with matched betting is £100. If you start with this minimum amount you will be restricted to doing one offer at a time, and also you won’t be maximising the possible returns of your free bets because you won’t be able to cover the maximum potential liability when you lay them off at the exchange.

However, fear not. You can quickly progress by using the profits of your first offers to fund more lucrative offers and build your bank gradually. Even starting with £100 you could have a bankroll of over £5000 within 12 months if you continually re-invest your profits.

For me personally I started with a bankroll of £500. I found that almost allowed me to do as many offers as I wanted, the only trouble I had when starting out was winning a long odds horse racing bet at the bookmakers which drastically reduced my money in my exchange account and meant I had to wait a day to get my funds out of the bookmaker and back into my bank account. Having £1000 in your exchange account should see you being able to complete all the offers you need at the same time unless you are completing high stakes offers such as William Hill’s High5/2Clear or Bet365/Paddy Power’s 2UP (more on these in a later post).

Which is the best matched betting software to use?

The next stage of getting started with matched betting is subscribing to matched betting software service. There are a multitude of options when choosing which matched betting platform to go with but my personal recommendation is Oddsmonkey. It is one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) and it scans hundreds of bookmakers and casinos to find you the best offers, so that you don’t have to.

These offer are then neatly organised into a daily offer calendar with the most recent additions at the top (it is updated several times a day). Each offer comes with a specific set of instructions and a discussion forum to ask any questions you might have before starting the offer.

The most important part of the Oddsmonkey software service is the plethora of tools it has at its disposal, none more important that the “matched betting calculator”. You will use this tool at least 10-20 times a day alone! It calculates the correct lay stakes for both your qualifying and your free bets so you can both minimise your qualifying losses and maximise your profits. You then have all kinds of other calculators such as the Odds Matcher, Racing Matcher,Each Way Matcher, Tennis Matcher, Dutch Matcher and dozens more! Those tools might not make much sense to you know but they will in time.

Finally, the most underestimated element of the Oddsmonkey platform in my opinion is the community forum. It’s made up of thousands of like-minded individuals, some of which have been doing matched betting for years. Here is the place to read, read and then read some more, it’s an absolute gold mine of information, hints and tips. The community is also a friendly place to ask questions when you get stuck or think you’ve made a mistake, no one is patronising or condescending, everyone is there to help each other reach a common goal – making as much money as possible!

Oddsmonkey do a great free trial where you can make £40-£45 for absolutely no cost to you. This allows you to get a taste of their service before upgrading to get all the features associated with a premium account. To access the free trial click here.

Which betting exchange is the best?

A key part of getting started with matched betting is setting up an account(s) with a betting exchange. Whilst there will be a full blog post on this topic comparing them all, there are two betting exchanges that in my opinion are better than the rest. These are Betfair and Smarkets.

You will have heard of Betfair but you may not have heard of Smarkets, so what’s the difference? As betting exchanges act as brokers between two parties (backers and layers) their business model is built on taking a commission out of each bet. Betfair and Smarkets differ by having different rates of commission, Betfair charges 5% whereas Smarkets only charges 2%.

So it’s an easy choice then, pick the exchange which takes the lower commission? Well it’s not quite as simple as that. Betfair were the pioneers of this market and as a result they took the lion’s share of the market. More money is matched through Betfair than on all the other exchanges combined.

This creates something called liquidity. With a betting exchange you want as much liquidity in the market as possible (this just means amount of money available to be matched in the market). Smarkets often cannot compete for liquidity in a lot of the more specialised markets and so it becomes difficult to lay off larger bets in the more specific markets. For larger markets (such as football match odds) Smarkets often offers better odds and competitive liquidity so it’s useful to have as a backup.

Matched Betting Record Keeping

This is personal preference more than anything else, but one more thing I would add to that list, although not absolutely essential, is something to track all your offers with. I use a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet to log every bet I do and highlight any free bets in green so I know to come back to them once a bet is settled/qualifying period is over.

Some people do without recording the specifics, others are meticulous record-keepers, writing down every aspect of every offer they complete. I think I’m somewhere in the middle, if I win 2 or 3 pence from some free spins I don’t put it in my spreadsheet. Likewise if I ever lose a few pennies. I also have a general balance sheet just to remind me how my money is spread across accounts (wonderful when I log in and find an extra £50 in an account you had forgotten about!).

Anything Else?

That’s about it. Once you’ve set up the essentials listed above and decided how fastidious you are going to be with your record keeping, you are ready (and hopefully raring) to go. If you are a bit nervous for any reason about completing your first free bet offer (I know I was) then I’ve tried to put together a useful step-by-step matched betting guide in which you should (hopefully) be able to easily follow the steps and come out the other side £25 better off! Even though it’s specifically for the William Hill welcome offer, the principle is exactly the same for any “Bet X get Y Free Bet” style welcome offer (e.g. bet £5 get £20 Free Bet).