Matched Betting After Sign Up Offers: Transitioning To Reloads

There comes a point in every beginner’s Matched Betting career when they reach the end of the available sign up offers and think, ‘what now?’ They’ve made a good amount of profit so far, and they want to keep going - but it seems like it’ll be next to impossible to continue to make decent profits without the easy, generous sign up offers they’ve got used to.

Fortunately, it’s not only possible but relatively easy to continue to make sizeable, regular (and tax-free!) profits through Matched Betting even after you’ve completed all the sign up offers. In this article, we’ll talk you through everything you need to know about moving on to ‘reload’ offers - the offers bookies make to existing customers - and before you know it you’ll be making hundreds a month in profit with ease.

What Is Matched Betting?

Matched Betting works by taking advantage of the offers and bonuses offered by bookmakers, designed to lure in new customers. By betting both for and against the outcome of an event, you’re able to turn a free bet into guaranteed profit.

Most offers run along the lines of ‘Bet £10 and get a £10 free bet’. By matching the first bet, you break even - and you’re then able to make a profit on the free bet.

If you’re not already familiar with the principles of Matched Betting and you want to know more, check out our complete guide for beginners, or sign up for our free trial to get started.

If, on the other hand, you already understand the basics, keep reading to find out all about reload offers and how to take advantage of them.

What Are Reload Offers?

Reload offers are what we call the offers bookies make to existing customers. They aren’t usually as profitable as the initial sign up offers - but on the other hand, they also aren’t only available once. Most bookies have at least a couple of offers running each week, depending on the events going on at the time.

Reload offers come in all sorts of forms, from the very basic kinds you’ll already be familiar with (e.g. bet £5 and get a £5 free bet), to much more complex reloads that will take more effort to get your head around. But it’s usually possible to extract a guaranteed profit from the majority of offers you encounter - and as you become more accustomed to each type of offer, you’ll find you become much quicker at completing them.

Main Types Of Reload Offer

There are a few different varieties of common reload offers, some more straightforward than others, but it’s worth your while taking the time to learn how to complete each of them, as it’ll significantly boost your profits in the long run.

Basic Bet & Get

You’ll be familiar with this kind of offer from your sign ups - simply bet a certain amount to get a free bet. These may be restricted to certain sports or events, but they’re an easy way to make a quick profit.

Reload bet & get offers are often for smaller amounts than sign ups - e.g. bet £5 to get a £5 free bet - but they don’t take long to complete, so you can do plenty of them and come out with a solid profit.

Bet Builders

Bet builder offers are often just a slightly more complicated version of a bet & get. You’ve probably come across them while going through sign up offers, so hopefully you won’t be too intimidated by them.

A bet builder involves betting on multiple selections within the same event, so for example that Team A wins their match, that both teams will score, and that there will be over 2.5 goals in the match. Creating a lay market for a bet builder can be tricky, but it can be done! Our bet builder helper is a handy tool that lets you know which selections match up to certain lay markets, making it pretty straightforward to take advantage of bet builder offers when you come across them.

It’s rare to get a very close match between your back and lay odds for bet builders, but they’re usually still profitable and therefore well worth doing. Your free bet may have to be a bet builder, but it might also be another type of free bet, depending on the offer in question.

Accas

New matched bettors are often quite intimidated by acca offers as well - which is more than understandable, as they’re another type of offer that’s tricky to lay.

It’s possible to use Smarkets to create a custom acca lay bets, though, meaning that for a straightforward acca bet & get it isn’t too tricky to make a profit - simply use the Oddsmatcher to find several close matches and create your betslip from those selections.

You’ll also see ‘acca insurance’ offers on a lot of bookies, which give you a free bet or refund if just one leg of an acca lets you down. The acca catcher, available to all Outplayed Platinum, Diamond and Pro members, tracks down suitable combinations to let you take advantage of these offers and lock in guaranteed profit.

Refund IF

Refund IF offers allow you to claim a refund, usually in the form of a free bet but occasionally in cash, if your bet is unsuccessful (or sometimes as a bonus if your bet wins).

By using the bonus lock-in calculator, we can lock-in a profit from these offers - and once you’re comfortable with them, you’ll find they’re one of the easiest reload offers to complete.

Racing Refund

This works similarly to the refund IF offers, except you receive a refund, either as a free bet or cash, if your horse doesn’t win but comes in a specified place, e.g. second or third.

By laying both the win and the place markets, you can lock in a guaranteed profit no matter what happens, so long as the odds are close enough. Our racing refund calculator works out your lay stakes for each to ensure that you end up with a profit whatever the outcome.

Price Boosts

Price boosts are one of the very easiest ways to make money from reloads. Bookies regularly offer enhanced odds to encourage bettors to place their money on particular markets, and often this makes those odds high enough to make an instant profit simply by laying the bet.

You can track down price boosts manually, or check the Outplayed forum, but our Price Boost Tracker, available with an Outplayed Pro membership, will locate profitable boosts on your behalf.

Free Spins

You’ll also come across offers to make a bet and get free spins as a reward.

These won’t usually guarantee you a profit (as you’ll make a small qualifying loss on your qualifying bet, and you can’t be certain of winning anything from your free spins), but on average you can expect to profit from them, depending on the average RTP of the slots game in question. The reloads section of the Outplayed site will let you know whether a free spins offer is likely to be worth doing or not.

Reload Offers To Try Next

Once you’ve got to grips with all of the above kinds of reload offer, there are even more possibilities to explore. The following kinds of offer don’t allow you to lock in a guaranteed profit with each bet, but they do give you the opportunity to make significant regular profits in the long run. If you’re still quite new to Matched Betting, though, we’d recommend sticking to the kinds of offer listed above for now.

Extra Places

There’s normally a standard number of paid places in horse racing, which depends on the number of runners. However, bookies will often increase the number of places available on certain races - and this gives us an opportunity to make a profit.

If we place an each way bet (i.e. a bet on a horse both to win and to place in the race) and lay both the win and the original number of places, we can potentially win both our back and lay bets if the horse lands in the extra place. Of course, in any particular race the chances of this happening aren’t high, but if we place a fairly large number of bets in this way, with only a small qualifying loss if we’re unsuccessful, we’re very likely to end up in profit overall.

To find out more, check out our complete guide to Extra Place offers, which talks you through everything you need to know to start profiting from extra places.

2UP

2UP offers work on a similar principle to Extra Places, and rely on the fact that a lot of bookies have a ‘2UP and win’ offer, where your bet will be paid out before the end of the match if your team are ahead by 2 goals at any time.

This means that we have a chance to win both our back and lay bets if our team goes ahead by two goals and their opponents manage to catch up, with a full time result of either a draw or a win for the other team. Again, for any match this is a pretty unlikely outcome - but your qualifying loss is small enough, and the potential profit large enough, that in the long run you should end up making significant profits by taking advantage of these offers.

Casino Offers

While you can make good long term profits from sports Matched Betting alone, a lot of people find that branching out into casino offers really takes their profits to the next level.

It’s important to make clear that casino offers aren’t usually risk free, so you need to be aware that you’ll be very likely to see upswings and downswings, and you’ll need to have a large enough bankroll to weather any downswings comfortably.

That said, in the long run casino offers can unlock enormous value, and we definitely recommend trying your hand at them. Most casino offers will require you to wager a certain amount in order to receive free spins - and on average, the profit you make from your free spins should outweigh any losses from your initial wagering for any offers we recommend completing (full guides are accessible for all Outplayed Diamond and Pro members).

If you’re keen to find out more about casino offers, take a look at our ultimate guide to casinos, which tells you everything you need to know about casino offers and how to get the most out of them.

Advanced Strategies

As you gain more experience, you can also consider expanding your activity into value betting. Again, this isn’t risk-free, so we wouldn’t recommend it to newer matched bettors, but these strategies offer the potential to make very significant profits in the long run.

Lucky 15s

Lucky 15 bets are a combination of several bets in one across four different horses, and the right selections can offer excellent profits. Our Lucky Finder (available to Outplayed Pro members) is a tool that tracks down combinations of horses for Lucky 15 bets where the chances of at least some of your horses winning or placing are higher than the odds would imply. This means that you’re statistically very likely to end up making a profit over the long run when using this tool.

Steam Chaser

This tool takes advantage of the fact that odds sometimes change suddenly and simultaneously at multiple bookmakers. This sudden change is known as steam. There can be numerous reasons for the change, including team news, player injury, weather, insider knowledge, or sharp bettors having differing opinions to the bookmakers on their odds.

Following these sudden changes of odds is called “steam chasing”. As long as there’s a sound reason for the change of odds, one way to capitalise on it is to place a bet with a bookmaker that is slower to respond and hasn’t yet cut their odds. Outplayed’s steam chaser tool identifies suitable bets for you, allowing you to consistently place bets at odds that offer positive value, giving you the chance to make consistent long term profits.

How Much Can You Make After Finishing Sign Ups?

We’ve established pretty firmly that there’s no shortage of ways to continue your Matched Betting journey after you’ve finished the sign up offers, but how much can you really make? Well, that does depend on how much time and effort you put in, and whether you stick with risk-free sports Matched Betting or branch out into casino and advanced value betting. As a rough guide, though, these are the typical figures for our members:

• From Matched Betting alone. Depending on how much time they devote to Matched Betting, most Outplayed members are able to make £300 - £1000 from reload offers each month.

• With casino offers. The sky’s the limit! Because of the nature of these offers, monthly profits can vary significantly, but the typical Outplayed member can make a further £300 - £1000+ from casino reloads.

Tips And Tricks For Successful Matched Betting With Reloads

• Keep a sharp eye out for offers! Outplayed members can access our daily top sports reloads, plus a full list of all reloads on offer, so make sure you check in to see what’s available.

• Opt in to marketing. Yes, it’s a pain being bombarded by emails and texts from bookies, but you’ll miss out on offers if you don’t accept marketing communication. To avoid cluttering your main inbox, we recommend using a dedicated email address for your Matched Betting accounts.

• Don’t panic if there doesn’t seem to be much on offer. Bookies time their offers to coincide with sports events, which means that there’ll be slower patches from time to time. There’ll almost certainly be the odd offer to exploit - horse racing takes place all year round! - but if you’d prefer to wait for a juicier offer, there’s sure to be something available before long.

• Take steps to avoid being gubbed. Bookies do notice if you do nothing but place bets on profitable offers, so it’s wise to place a few ‘mug bets’ every so often to stay under the radar - and keep your Matched Betting sustainable. Check out our guide to avoid gubbing to find out the best strategies to keep a low profile and prevent or delay account restrictions.

• Finally, stay in control. Matched Betting isn’t gambling, but extensive exposure to betting sites can be dangerous for some people. If you’re finding yourself tempted to start gambling for real, take a step back - and seek help if you need it.