Matched Betting is a relatively simple way to guarantee yourself a profit from taking advantage of the free bets on offer from the bookmakers to entice you to join them. To start the process you need a Betfair account, the reason you will need Betfair is to lay your qualifying bets.

For those not familiar with this, your qualifying bet is the bet you place with the bookmaker to entitle you to your free bet. The idea of having the Betfair account is to lay your qualifying bet to ensure you don’t lose your hard earned cash on the qualifying bet, as this would totally defeat the object.

Once you have placed your qualifying bet (with the bookmaker) and layed your qualifying bet (with Betfair), your free bet is yours to claim and do what you want with.

Personally, I would rather use my free bet in a way that guarantees a return. For example, if I had a £50 free bet, I would find a bet at about Even money, back it with my £50 free bet, and then lay it on Betfair for £25. That way I would ensure a risk free return of around £25 (give or take a quid or two for commission).

As there is now literally hundreds of pounds worth of free bets out there, a nice tidy profit can be bagged from doing this.

There are subscription services such as Bonus Bagging that will walk you through the process of matching your free bets stage by stage should you wish to get expert help. Bonus Bagging will also help you with reload and refund offers (money back specials), as well as help with Casino bonuses.

Another way of raising funds doing this is to open your bookies accounts using Cash Back Sites, Top Cash Back and Quidco are the main two. With both these sites, you can earn cash back just for opening bookies accounts and placing a qualifying bet. Again, you can do this and just lay the bet on Betfair, and take the free cash back. On some occasions free bets are also on offer, which makes it a win, win situation as you can claim both.

As a well travelled gambler I’ve already got just about every bookmakers account there is, in order to be able to claim the free bets needed for ‘Matched Betting’ again, I need to get my Missus to open new bookies accounts in her name (in other words, do it myself in her name).

So for starters I’ve managed to persuade my her to open a Betfair account and now I’m ready to go. As and when I start to claim the free bets I will write blog posts describing what I’ve done.

Matched Betting Blog Posts

How I earned £20 cash back for opening a Betdaq account.

Nice Profit of £49.10 landed with Ladbrokes free bet and cash back offer.