Just looking into this, it seems very straightforward and losses appear to be minimal, if you did matched betting all day, what sort of profit could you get?
I've been doing this full-time for 7 weeks now as I was made redundant recently. Overall, I've been matched betting for just over two years.
Here's a few things I've learnt:
Earnings are highly inconsistent, both day-to-day and week-to-week. There were weeks in July where I made less than £100 against a target of £350. There was a day during Goodwood last week where I made £2.63 profit. I started betting that day at 7:30am, and placed my last bet at 5:00pm. It can be demoralising. On the other hand, there were two days during Goodwood where I cleared £200 profit. And yesterday I made £65 profit from about an hour's work on a "day off".
The inconsistency means you need some sort of living costs buffer if you want to do this full-time. It's no good to be relying on July's winnings to pay July's bills, or even June's winnings for July's bills. What happens if you have a bad month or two?
The inconsistency also means you have to be careful you don't get carried away. There have been days where I've made £350+. It can be tempting to treat yourself after such a good day. But what if that's the only day that week you turn a profit? Or what if next week you only make £40? Across a week/month/quarter, maybe you find you couldn't afford those treats?
Multi-accounting. In hindsight, it would be better to have a few sets of accounts early on if you want to do this full-time. Making money during the week if there are no big events on can be grim. A lot of the time there's only mid-week horse racing, and hitting those offers too hard will get your accounts restricted pretty quickly (I know this from unfortunate experience). But if you have half a dozen accounts, you can potentially make a lot more over the weekends and over big events, meaning you don't need to generate much income from mid-week racing. You can also spread your mid-week racing bets over a bunch of accounts, allowing you to do a few bets per day per bookie, with a lower risk of losing accounts.
Bank. You can get started on about £500. But the minimum practical amount once you've done the sign-up offers is a grand. With a grand, you're going to spend a lot of time moving money around. And you will miss offers due to a lack of funds. £3k would be better, but a big horse racing event will chew through that really quickly and you'll still be spending significant time managing money. I'd say £5k is the sensible minimum amount to do this full-time to be honest.
Mistakes. You will make them. And they can potentially cost a lot of money. Over two years, I'd estimate mistakes have cost me £1500. If you have limited funds and are relying on this money for income then you need to be really, really careful. Even then, you will lose money. You'll place a £50 bet three minutes before the race starts, only to see the odds move, preventing you from getting a good match on that bet. You'll panic. And you'll either lay it off correctly and lose £10-£20, or you'll fail to lay it off and have a genuine £50 bet running, or you'll panic and lay the wrong amount costing you hundreds of pounds if the horse wins. Most of us have done it at some point.
I would like to tell you how much I've made over the past 7 weeks, but I've never been very good at tracking this. The bit on YesBets that tells me is completely corrupted by me editing balances a few weeks ago. What I have done is counted up everything this morning and compared the total against my bank balance four weeks ago (when I received my last pay packet from my employer). The amounts are roughly equal, so I've certainly made enough to cover my bills, regular expenditure, and a little bit more (I went on holiday for a week this month). So probably around £1,200. Not bad.
WH have been a bit disappointing this world cup though, it's a shame they aren't doing 4MM.
