You’re probably at a stage with matched betting where you understand the concept but you want to know whether it’s worth the effort to dive head first into this side-hustle. I get this question a lot so I wanted to write out a detailed breakdown of matched betting’s potential earnings.
Matched betting requires time and energy to earn profits, so your income is always going to be correlated to the amount of time and effort you put in. To keep this article relevant to must people, I’m going to assume you’re spending around 4-5 hours a week on matched betting.
With just a few hours of effort per week, it’s easily possible to earn $5,800 from matched betting. This amount will depend on where you live, how well you can avoid being gubbed and how much time you spend matched betting.
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Two Money-Making Methods
If you’re new to matched betting, welcome! I always recommend you start with my free 3-part course to understand more about how matched betting can be a great side hustle for you.
My course explains that there are two different types of offers that matched bettors can make profit from:
- Welcome Offers – Although the Australian government have banned bookmakers from advertising any sign-up bonuses, most of them still offer a welcome bonus once you open account. These can be exceptionally lucrative.
- Ongoing Offers – Bookmakers are always competing to make sure you bet with them instead of their competitors. That’s why they offer regular offers that allow you to earn free bets across lots of different weekly sporting events. This includes ‘reload’ offers where bookmakers incentivise you to deposit more money with them.
As a new matched bettor, you’re able to take advantage of all the welcome offers before moving onto the lucrative ongoing offers.
How much can I make from welcome offers?
There are 17 different bookies in Australia that you’re able to sign up to. Whilst not all of them will offer you a welcome bonus, I know that a lot of them will. The chance of receiving an offer, and how big that offer is, depends heavily on which state you live in.
This means it’s impossible for me to say exactly how much you will earn from completing all the welcome offers. Instead, I can provide a rough estimate based on my experience in NSW alongside information from different communities of matched bettors.
You’d expect to earn a minimum of $1,000 from welcome offers.
Some people will earn closer to $2,000 depending on which state they live in.
When you sign up to my email list, I’ll also send you a free guide to all the different bookmakers in Australia. This includes the extensive research I conducted to find out the likelihood of receiving a welcome bonus in each state.
Get your free bookmaker guide
How much can I make from ongoing offers?
Now you’ve made a good chunk of risk-free cash from all the welcome bonuses, it’s time to focus on taking advantage of the various ongoing offers that bookmakers offer.
Here is where it really depends on the amount of time you commit to matched betting. I’m going to proceed on the assumption that you have around 4 – 5 hours each week to place your bets.
The ongoing offers can be split by the type of offer, so I’ll cover the main types:
Early Payout / Bonus If Your Team Wins – These offers apply specifically to sports like NRL and AFL so they are often available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. Using a dutching strategy between bookmakers, it’s possible to guarantee yourself a small profit on each game whilst also having a big payout if your team comes from behind to win the game. Each week, you’d expect to earn around $100 a week on average by placing bets on 3-5 different games.
Bonusbank have a daily plays feature that takes advantage of all these early payout/bonus offers and they average a massive $250 a week in profit.
Money Back if 2nd or 3rd – Applying specifically to Horse Racing, these are only available on Saturday afternoons and rely on placing bets in the 10 minute window before each race. Whilst this isn’t totally risk-free, these offers do have a fantastic expected value. This means you’re very likely to be in profit over a significant number of bets (just like the house always wins at a casino!). 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon can easily net you another $100 a week in profit, often more.
That means your total weekly earnings from ongoing offers is at least $200 a week.
There are other offers you can take advantage of that will boost your profits, such as Multi’s and Arbitrage. You will also find more offers when there are big sporting events that can be highly lucrative.
How long can I earn money from matched betting?
Unfortunately the bookmakers always have the chance to cotton on to your betting strategy and restrict you from getting bonus bets. This is what’s call gubbing!
From my experience and the evidence from different matched betting communities, it’s realistic to expect your accounts to receive bonuses for around 6 months before they get noticed. That is, if you follow the most important strategies from my gubbing avoidance guide.
That means you’re able to earn $200 a week from ongoing offers for an average of 6 months. That’s $4800 in profit. Add that onto your original $1,000 from welcome bonuses and it realistically gives you…
$5,800 profit from matched betting.
If you invest more time into matched betting and work harder to maintain your accounts, it’s absolutely possible to blow this figure out of the water.
What are other people earning?
Bonusbank poll their members 60 days after joining their service, asking how much profit they’ve earned.
In their research, over 50% of their members had earned over $2,500 in their first 60 days of matched betting! That’s a huge opportunity. Some had even managed to earn over $5,000 already.
When questioning people about how much their total matched betting earnings were, it wasn’t uncommon to find people who have made $10,000+ just from risk-free betting profits. Those people are often investing significant time into matched betting but it definitely demonstrates what’s possible.
I’ve also written about my journey in matched betting if you want to learn how I’ve made over $30,000 dollars since 2013.
Matched betting is tax-free income!
Don’t forget that all matched betting profits are completely tax free. This is because the government identifies gambling winnings as ‘luck’ and not as income. This is perfect for us because we know that our matched betting profits aren’t lucky at all.
Most Australians get taxed at around 32.5% for any additional income they bring in from side-hustles, so you’re already well ahead of the game just by earning a small amount through matched betting.
Can you live off matched betting?
It would be very difficult to live off matched betting profits in Australia, you would need to move quickly onto more advanced and risky matched betting strategies that I don’t discuss on this site.
However, if you augmented your matched betting income with a part-time job or even other side hustles, it’s definitely possible to earn enough money to live on. It’s possible to matched bet from anywhere with a good internet connection so in theory you could be earning money from the beach. Living the dream!
How to start matched betting
If you’re excited about the opportunities that matched betting presents, I suggest you start by taking my free 3-part matched betting guide by clicking on the link below. This gives you all the knowledge you need to get started and earn your first risk-free profits.
