For most people, the concepts of matched betting only really start to make sense once they have completed a couple of bonus offers. Hopefully that is the case for you now.

If not, don’t worry. Just go back and re-read the earlier course, or ask for help on Discord.

If you feel like you already understand things, our main piece of advice is this – don’t rush. Take your time and always make sure that you have sufficient funds available before diving into an offer.

Here are some simple practices that you can follow that will make your matched betting experience simpler, safer and more profitable:

USE A SEPARATE EMAIL ADDRESS

If you haven’t already, now is the time to set up an email account specifically for your matched betting activity. It only takes a minute or two to open one via gmail or outlook. This will stop your main email account from being swamped by bookie emails.

You can choose any email address that you like, but we’d recommend not using any words/terms that relate to betting.

If you want to go one step further you could also set up a separate matched betting phone number by buying a prepaid sim card. Bookies regularly send out offers by text message – so you want to opt-in – but they can also send a lot of spam. Having a separate sim would stop your personal number being inundated.

USE A SEPARATE BANK ACCOUNT

It is best to separate your matched betting bankroll from your day-today finances. It will make both of them easier to manage.

If you are planning on applying for credit in future you should consider opening your MB bank account at different bank from your main account. Although matched betting shouldn’t impact your ability to get credit, having the account at a separate bank reduces the probability of having to try to explain matched betting to a loan officer.

You should use the new account for almost all MB transactions, but there are two that we recommend keeping separate. Your Bonusbank subscription, and any Betfair transactions, should be kept apart from bookie transactions. This is so that, if you ever have to provide bank statements to a bookie, it is not obvious you are matched betting.

PICK A UNIQUE PASSWORD

You can never be too careful when it comes to online security, especially when depositing large sums of money. For that reason you should be using a different password at each bookie.

That might seem like an inconvenience but it doesn’t have to be. Password manager apps like 1Password make it easy.

OPT-IN TO ALL PROMOTIONAL EMAILS

Opting-out of newsletters and promotions is something most people do instinctively. Everybody hates spam.

With bookies it’s different though, we want every email that they send. This is because the emails will tell us about all of the promos that we can take advantage of.

By opting in we’ll receive lots of bookmaker emails – especially at the weekends – but this is why we set up our new email account.

SET A DEPOSIT LIMIT

To protect against problem gambling, bookmakers are now obliged to ask if you would like to set a deposit limit when you open a new account. This is a limit on the amount that you can deposit in a single day. It is designed to limit your exposure if you start making bad decisions.

If you stick to the rules of matched betting you should never find yourself in that type of situation. We lay our bets to remove risk, so you should never be in a situation where you feel the need to chase losses by placing bigger and bigger bets. However, it doesn’t hurt to have a safety net.

As a beginner, you should never need to deposit more than $1000 into a bookie on a single day (and that would only be if they offered a very generous welcome bonus), so you should set the deposit limit at a maximum of $1k.

An exception to that rule would be Betfair. If a bonus bet wins at high odds it could wipe out your Betfair balance (while increasing your bookie balance), so there is more chance that you will need to make a large deposit at Betfair. You may want to set a $2000 deposit limit at Betfair. This can be changed as your experience and bankroll grows.

By doing all of the above you will make sure that you make as much money as possible from each bookie, with the least inconvenience and the minimum amount of risk.