Archives for September 2020

A Complete Matched Betting Guide – What Is Matched Betting?

09.22.2020 by admin //

Matched betting is by far my most lucrative side hustle I have ever taken on. In just under two years it netted me £49,518 in profit! Why I stopped just short of £50,000 I do not remember but there was certainly more value to be eked out. Matched Betting is my number one recommendation as a way of generating a second income, its simple to learn, doesn’t require much capital to get started and has a lot more depth to it than most people think.

For those that want to embark on this journey this will be a regular series starting with the basics of Matched Betting before going through the more complicated techniques and offers out there.

For me Matched Betting contains the standard Matched Betting (sports offers), Casino Bonus Bagging (online casino offers) and Bingo offers (think you can figure that one out). To start with the focus will be on the sports offers of the traditional Matched Betting.

What Is Matched Betting?

Matched betting is a no/low risk form of gambling, mainly via sports betting, that’s used to make guaranteed profits. It centres around using a ‘back and lay betting’ technique to turn free bets and other promotions into cash no matter what the outcome of the event. While standard sports betting requires you to predict the right result, Matched Betting removes the risk (or gamble) of you getting the result wrong.

Backing & Laying

The way you eliminate needing to pick the winner is through backing and laying.

Backing – The back bet is the most traditional form of bet, essentially you’re saying “I think this will win”. If the selection you bet on goes on to win, then you’ll win your bet and collect your winnings.

Laying – A lay bet is a bet against an outcome — you’re betting that something will not happen. You can think of this as the opposite side of your back bet from the bookmakers point of view. If you back a selection winning with a bookmaker essentially the bookmaker has layed the bet and wants the selection you have backed to lose. You can place lay bets through online betting exchanges like Betfair or Smarkets. These work by matching up users who want to place back bets, with users who want to lay bets. The exchange makes money by charging a commission.

Betfair can be used to back or lay bets — Betfair can be used to ‘back’ (blue) or ‘lay’ (pink) bets.

So when you place both a ‘back’ and a ‘lay’ on the same event no matter the result one of the back/lay bet will win and the other one will lose. As such you don’t care on the result of the event as it makes no difference to you. Either way you neither win nor lose any money. Now of course none of this is actually making us any money yet. So the real answer to the question of what is matched betting is the next section.

So Where Exactly Does The Profit Come From?

The answer to this question is ‘via bookmaker offers’. Often when you first sign up to an online bookmaker they will offer you what is called a ‘sign up offer’. These offers are how they get new punters through the door in the hope that you will use them regularly and overtime become a profitable customer them. They are in effect loss leaders that they know are profitable to the customer. So using Matched Betting we can lock in this profit then walk away or wait for more offers from them.

When we ‘back & lay’ an event using a free bet as our ‘back’ bet and our own money as the ‘lay’ bet then again the bets cancel each other out. This time however we only put in one side of the bet and we make money by collecting the free bet value that the bookmaker contributed. We just have to choose a specific lay amount so that we collect equal profit no matter what the result.

And that is Matched Betting. Backing and laying the same event to lock in profit from free bets independent of the result.

This was just a description of how it works. The next post in the series will go into the mathematics behind Matched Betting (it’s very simple I promise), as its good to know exactly how we extract the value and why it works. Plus how exchange commission and differing odds mean we can usually only extract roughly 80% of the free bet amount as cash.

Get Paid To Watch YouTube Videos via UpVoice

09.18.2020 by admin //

Now there is a click bait title if I ever saw one but the statement holds true. Read it as ‘Get Paid To Watch YouTube Videos’ then imagine me muttering ‘but not a lot’ under my breath straight after. That’s the disclaimer that’s required here. I will say though, you might not get paid a lot for using UpVoice but you also have to do next to nothing. So the effort to reward ratio is really quite nice. Let’s break down what exactly it is and what you need to do to claim the rewards.

What exactly is UpVoice?

UpVoice is a market research project conducted by BrandTotal. This company is committed to analyzing the so-called “dark” marketing – that is, advertising efforts that are usually invisible to anyone but their creator, as well as the consumer. To do this, BrandTotal came up with a browser extension that monitors the personalized ads those consumers are being served.

Now the natural concern here is if you are using this browser extension what other data are you handing over? You aren’t it turns out as it fully complies with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the data is anonymous and non-identifiable. This was enough to give me the piece of mind to sign up

How does it work?

Getting set up for UpVoice is a simple 3 step process.

Have a Facebook account – This is the only way to sign up, you require an active Facebook account
Go to UpVoice and sign up by filling in a short form – Nothing major, name, DOB, gender, country, and city.
Download their Google Chrome extension – has to be Google Chrome currently.

And that is it, you are now ready to get paid to watch YouTube videos! The extension runs in the background automatically and anonymously collecting information on the ads that you see on Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter.

What is the payout structure?

You get paid out for collecting tokens. When you sign up you get given 300 tokens, then every day that you visit one of the sites (ad block must be off) you get given an extra 10 tokens. Get to 600 and you can cash them in for a $5 amazon gift card. You can also do the occasional survey or recommend a friend to get extra tokens but the daily visit is the bread and butter.

Is UpVoice worth it?

For me its very simple. Do you either already use Chrome or are willing to use that as your main browser? Do you visit one of Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter most days? If the answer to both is yes then its worth it. If the answer is no then probably not.

The appeal of UpVoice is that it should just run in the background. You forget its there and every month or so you collect your gift card. If it gets to the point where you actually have to put effort in daily for it then the payment level just simply is not worth your time.

Prolific – Get Paid To Do Online Surveys

09.03.2020 by admin //

In my r/Beermoney post I discovered a lot of sites others were using to make money online that I hadn’t heard of. Armed with this new list I set out to see which ones were worthwhile pursuing. Now a number of the list were sites where you get paid to do online surveys, I knew these existed but I’d always remembered them as being a load of surveys that you get paid next to nothing for and largely was a waste of time. Well it turns out things have developed since then and Prolific is a prime example.

Prolific - get paid to do online surveys — Prolific – get paid to do online surveys

The premise is simple. Prolific is a site where researchers from whatever background can find research participants they can trust. Launch your study to tens of thousands of trusted participants in minutes and recruit niche or representative samples on-demand. Now if you want these trustworthy high quality participants, like with most things in life, you have to pay for them.

As such its not so much that you get paid to do surveys online, its more that you are a paid research participant in an academic study or marketing questionnaire. So far I’ve done surveys ranging from ‘would you buy this product?’ to an academic study on if you can tell if someone is ill just from a picture of their face. Its because there is a genuine need for accurate responses that the lowest you can get paid to do this is $6.50 an hour. Some pay much more and its based on an estimate of how long the survey will take which is often very generous.

Getting Going

Getting going is also incredibly easy.

Sign up
Verify your email
Fill out your about you section . The most time consuming bit of the process is what means there is no post survey screening which is very annoying on other sites.

About you categories help you get more surveys — The about you categories.

4. Install Prolific extension. I use google chrome. Although not a mandatory step is very useful. This extension will audibly alert you to when a new study comes in meaning you will almost never miss a sign up or find that the study is full by the time you get to it.

5. Wait for your first survey!

Now currently this is a small sample size as I’ve only been up and running for just under 48 hours but I’d say its every 2-3 hours I’ve been awake that one has come in. They’ve ranged from paying £0.18 to £3 for the actual survey and in terms of per hour anywhere from the £4.90 minimum to £23. I’ve been offered 7 surveys so far, I’ve done 6 and been paid £8.35 for what was about 30 minutes work overall. I mean you certainly aren’t retiring off it alone, its a nice side earner though. Say I end up averaging half of what I have over this tiny sample then that is still £60 a month for very little work and no outlay. You also get paid through PayPal which is better than some that pay in vouchers.

Summary

+ Easy to use
+ Reasonable hourly rate
+ Pays in cash via PayPal at a low threshold of £5
+ Studies can be quite interesting

– Have to wait for studies to be offered
– Occasional questions planted to check you are paying attention/are a human

All in all I’m very pleased with my limited exposure to Prolific. Even if I stop now I’m £6.35 better off for very little effort.