In our members' opinion, it is more than possible to start Matched Betting with as little as £25-50.
The only thing you'll need though is a little bit of patience.
If you have a starting bankroll of £50 or less, you can only complete 1-2 offers at a time.
You won't have to wait for long though, because as soon as you've completed the first 3-5 sign-up offers and made your first profits, you can re-invest them into your bankroll so that you can start to complete multiple offers at once. Doing multiple offers at once means you can make money faster.
5 Tips For Starting Matched Betting With Less Than £50
1. Do One Matched Bet At A Time
You will see in your free trial that most Matched Betting offers are done in two parts:
The first is the Qualifying Bet, which is the Matched Bet (or back and lay bet) that unlocks the free bet from the bookmaker without risking your own money.
The second is the Free Bet, which is the Matched Bet (or back and lay bet) that extracts a guaranteed profit from the bookmaker's free bet.
If you have a small starting bankroll for Matched Betting, we'd recommend completing the Qualifying Bet first, waiting for that to settle and then moving on to the Free Bet to make your profit.
Depending on how small a bankroll you have, if the Qualifying Bet wins in the bookmaker, you may need to withdraw the money and move it into your betting exchange before completing the Free Bet and making your first profit.
So, the steps would be:
1. Set up your Smarkets Betting Exchange Account.
3. Complete your Coral Qualifying Bet. Ideally, you want to select a bet on an event that is happening within the next day or so as you want it to settle quickly. Do not choose a game that is 5 days away! Horse racing can be good to bet on if you want your bets to settle quickly. But, just be careful to do your bets at least an hour before the race is due to start, as the odds can start moving around otherwise.
4. Wait for your Qualifying Bet to settle (i.e. the game or race you've bet on to finish). If the bet wins at Coral, depending on how much bankroll you have left in Smarkets, you may need to withdraw from Coral and move the money to your Smarkets account in order to complete your free bet. Remember that your free bets at Coral are only valid for 7 days, so make sure you have enough time to move the money over and place your Free Matched Bet before the free bets expire.
5. Complete your Coral Free Bet. Again, it makes sense to select a bet on an event that is happening soon. The quicker your bets settle, the quicker you can move onto the Betfred offer and more profits.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 with the Betfred Offer. As with Coral, the Betfred Free Bets are also usually valid for 7 days once you receive them - but double check their T&Cs when you sign up to be sure.
2. Use Lower Odds For Your Free Bets
When using the Oddsmatcher Tool to find a suitable Matched Bet to do to profit from your Free Bet, choose one with lower odds.
Lower odds require you to have less liability (balance) in your betting exchange account to be able to place the lay part of your bets. This will lower your profit extraction slightly, but only for the initial few offers whilst you build up your bankroll.
Here's a handy table which gives a rough guideline of odds, approximate liability required and estimated profit amount for a £20 free bet.
| £20 FREE BET BOOKIE ODDS | EXCHANGE LIABILITY (BALANCE) | PROFIT EXTRACTION |
| 2.0 | £11.00 | £9.00 |
| 3.0 | £30.00 | £12.00 |
| 4.0 | £50.00 | £13.00 |
| 5.0 | £65.00 | £14.00 |
| 6.0 | £30.00 | £15.00 |
Useful further reading: What is liability in Matched Betting
3. Focus On Building Up Your Bankroll For Profiting From The 'After-Signup Offers'
In terms of making money, the sign-up offers are considered to be the 'warm-up' to the 'main event' with Matched Betting.
The main event, or most of our profits, actually come from the promotional offers the bookmakers give to their customers AFTER they've signed up. These are called after-signup offers, existing customer offers, or more commonly in our community "Reload Offers".
Therefore, instead of focusing on the extra £1-£3 profit 'you could have made on signup had you had a larger starting bankroll', instead focus on the fact that you are building up your bankroll, ready to make the most from reload offers.
It will only be for a few of the initial signup offers that you have to use lower odds for to get your profit. When you're 200+ offers down the line you won't even be thinking about that anymore - just when you're going to hit your next £1,000 in profit!
You can read hundreds more member stories like these in our epic Facebook Group commmunity
4. Learn About Shared Liability To Make The Most Of Your Bankroll
Once you've got hang of the basics of Matched Betting and completed your first offers on the free trial, learn about shared liability.
It will help you to profit faster from the 50+ signup offers and 100's of reload offers available once you upgrade to Platinum.
5. Don't Compare Yourself To Others
In Matched Betting it's easy to start comparing yourself to others and to start wondering why you're not making as much as they are or making money as quickly as others 'seem' to be.
Please keep in mind that you don't know their level of experience, the size of their bankroll, how much time they have available for Matched Betting, or if they do casino offers as well as sports offers etc. etc.
Run your own race.