In order to keep your 0% preferential commission rates with betting exchanges such as Smarkets you will need to be place what is known as an “integrated” bet. In other words, you will need to place the lay side of your bet using Oddsmonkey’s integration feature. Make sure to do this once every 30 days to maintain your 0% Smarkets commission.
Using Oddsmonkey’s integration is actually a fairly simple process, but I found whilst trying to work it out that it wasn’t blindingly obvious so I thought I would put together a quick guide to show you how to do it.
If you are new here you may be best served by looking at my matched betting explainer page, or follow a walk through tutorial in my matched betting guide.
How to set up Oddsmonkey’s Integration
Setting up the integration itself has already been taken care of by the team over at Oddsmonkey. The video guide below will help you get set up allowing to place your first integrated bets to qualify for your promotional commission rate of 0%.
The full video does go on to cover placing the integrated bet but I thought I would break it down step-by-step below.
Although there are no promotional rates for doing so at the moment you may also want to integrate your Betfair account which you can learn to do here:
Placing An Integrated Bet Through Oddsmonkey
The process is fairly simple, just follow the steps below:
1. Open up the Oddsmatcher from your Oddsmonkey dashboard
2. Find the bookmaker and exchange you wish to use for your selected offer (in this case Coral and Smarkets)
3. Click on the small “info” button denoted by the small blue circle button next to the SNR column.
4. Enter your stake requirements and then place the back bet at the bookmaker.
5. Then place the corresponding lay through Oddsmonkey using the “lay the bet” button.
6. Confirm when it states are you sure using the big blue button that says “yes, lay the bet”.
7. You will then get confirmation of the placed lay bet in a small pop up.
8. Double check by returning to the event, if the “lay the bet” button has gone green and states “already layed” then you’ve done it right.
9. You will also receive a confirmation email stating that you are now participating in the 0% offer for the next 30 days.
10. Place at least 1 bet using the integration to continue to receive the discounted rate.
The Advantages Of Using Integration For Your Lay Bets
Of course there are additional benefits to using Oddsmonkey’s integration feature beyond qualifying for promotional commission rates for betting exchanges.
The first of which is speed. For any of you who have been caught out by placing a back bet only for your exchange to crash and leave you unable to lay it off.
Not only does this reinforce the fact that you should always have at least 2 exchange accounts it also minimises the chance of this happening because the time between backing and laying can be reduced to a few seconds.
Of course you don’t need to use integration to get those speeds if you have both bookmaker and exchange open in separate minimised tabs ready to go as soon as the odds get close enough, but it does save a bit of faffing around.
Secondly, it’s obviously a lot easier. You don’t have to load up another browsing tab to load up the matched betting calculator you can just alter your stakes straight there and then and press lay immediately. No tab-hopping, just a few clicks and you are done.
What To Do When It Goes Wrong
The only real thing that could go wrong here is the odds change on you. You will get a small pop-up message displaying words to that effect. If this is the case, simply close the match information box and select another event that has a good match and repeat the process.
If you have already placed your back bet, I’m afraid there’s not a whole lot you can do other than take the hit. If you are placing a qualifying bet this means you will end up with an increased qualifying loss. If you are using integration for a stake not returned bet (free bet) then this will reflect a slightly lower profit.
Odds changes can also work in your favour and present you with a better match than you had previously so it’s not all doom and gloom, you’ve just got to be quick.
Conclusion
Hopefully this short guide has left you in no doubt about how to place a lay bet using Oddsmonkey’s integration. As you can see, following the easy 10-step process above I managed to qualify for Coral’s free bet club with only a -£0.87 qualifying loss, leaving me an easy £5 free bet at the end of the week.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have about integrated bets, or anything else for that matter!
If you enjoyed this guide you find find the following post on how to avoid gubbing helpful, or you may enjoy this post how to take advantage of price boosts to increase your monthly matched betting profits. Or why see how you can increase your profits by taking advantage of accumulator offers.