Almost every online casino has some sort of welcome bonus to help try and persuade you to sign up and use their website rather than their competitors. With a little bit of thought and cleverness, we can take these new-player casino bonuses and convert them into withdrawable cash.

Switch to a High-Yield Online Savings Account. Do you have money sitting in a savings account. Stop second-guessing yourself. Every casino game offers you a fair chance of winning.

But before we delve into casino bonuses, let’s talk about sportsbook bonuses. Making money from them is known as matched betting and is pretty easy and may be where you started off?

But right now because of the COVID-19 coronavirus most sports aren’t running so there aren’t that many matched betting offers available. But to try and keep customers casinos are offering better bonuses than normal. Now is a great time to try some casino bonus bagging – especially as we all need to make some more money!

Contents

Unlike Matched Betting, Casino Bonus Bagging Isn’t Risk Free

Unlike matched betting, making money from casino bonuses is not risk-free. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be profitable and worth doing.

We call this notion EV (expected value). By using maths we can work out how much money we will make on average from the bonus. So why is that not risk-free? Because of variance. Each time we make a slightly different amount, but over the long term it averages to the EV.

If you understand what I mean then feel free to skip straight to the how casino bonuses work section.

Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £17.99 a month service.

The Maths – How Casinos Make Money

Let’s say that we are playing a game of flip the coin, and because we’re fun people we’re also betting on it.

If we bet £1 a throw.

• I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
• You win £1 and I lose £1 if the coin comes up tails.

That is what we call a fair game.

There is risk – we could play 100 flips and I might lose money, or I might win money. But either way, it is just down to luck. Statistically, I am not more likely to win than to lose.

There is a 50% chance of me winning each throw, and a 50% chance of me losing each throw.

That is not what it is like in a casino. The casino has an edge.

Let’s change the rules slightly:

• I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
• You win £1.10 and I lose £1.10 if the coin comes up tails.

That is not a fair a game.

There is still risk – we could play 100 flips and I might make money. But I am more likely to lose.

On each coin toss I expect to lose 5p. We use this word “expect” a lot when it comes to making money from casino bonuses. It means the average in the long-term.

Here is a very simple tree showing you how we worked out that expected loss of 5p.

(0.5 x £1) + (0.5 x -£1.10) = -£0.05

That number becomes what is called the house edge. For every £1 we bet we expect to lose 5p.

If we play 1,000 flips, I will have bet £1,000 and expect to lose £50 (1,000 x 5p).

The More We Play The Closer To Expected We Get

Now we get a bit more complicated. The longer I play, the more likely I am to lose money.

I am not going to explain the maths here (email me if you want to know), but over 1 coin flip my chance of walking away with a profit is 50%. The coin can either come up heads or tails.

Over 100 coin flips my chance of making a profit has dropped to 31.7%, that’s almost a 1/3rd chance which still is quite high. I might decide that I’m feeling especially lucky and take that 1/3rd chance. But over 6,000 coin flips my chance of leaving with a profit drops only 1%.

That is how a casino makes money. If there are 60 people playing at your casino and each plays the coin flip game 100 times, then each person has a 31.7% chance of leaving with a profit. But as the casino is playing 6,000 total flips it only has a 1% chance of not making a profit overall. A pretty clever business model.

What Are The House Edges Of Different Casino Games?

Now you can’t actually play our coin flip game in a casino so let’s apply this concept to two real casino games.

Roulette. Is a very basic game which almost everyone understands.

There are 36 numbers not including the zero. Of those 36 – 18 are red and 18 are black. The number zero is not red or black. Each time the wheel spins there is an equal chance that the ball will land on any of the numbers 0 – 36.

If you bet on red and it comes up, you win your stake back. So a £1 bet would win £1.

There is an 18 out of 37 chance of a red colour coming up. That means that you have a 48.6% chance of winning, and a 51.4% chance of losing.

Let’s draw that same tree we did earlier but this time for roulette:

(0.486 x £1) + (0.514 x -£1) = -£0.028

For ever £1 bet we expect to lose 2.8p. That’s the house edge.

That’s pretty low. But roulette is not the casino game with the lowest house edge. That award goes to….

Blackjack. Forget card counting or anything you’ve seen in the films, your basic blackjack is the casino game with the smallest house edge.

There are many different rule sets for blackjack, and the house edge depends both on those rules and also on how close to perfect strategy the player is playing. But most games of blackjack have a house edge of about 0.5p per £1 bet (0.5%).

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Let’s just think about that, 0.5%. That’s so low! It’s the equivalent of playing the coin flip game with the rules:

• I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
• You win £1.01 and I lose £1.01 if the coin comes up tails.

If we played 1,000 hands of blackjack at £1 a bet, we would have staked £1,000 and expect to lose just £5.

How Casino Bonuses Work

Thank you for sitting through all of that. Now that the basics are out the way let’s talk about the juicy stuff. How we can actually make some money from casino bonuses.

Just like with matched betting, most casinos offer new players an incentive to sign up and play at their casino.

Unfortunately, unlike with matched betting, there is no way we can hedge out our bets. But we can use this knowledge of the house edge to turn things in our favour. Provided the bonus is good, we can expect to make money.

Let’s take a look at one bonus that is currently offered by William Hill on their live casino.

To get the bonus, we need to deposit £25 and then place a series of bets that total at least £200. When we have reached that target and we contact customer service, a bonus of £25 will be added which we are then free to withdraw along with whatever is left of our initial deposit.

How We Make Money From Casino Bonuses

£200 sounds like a lot, but after what we’ve learnt about house edges and blackjack it shouldn’t sound so bad. Remember blackjack has a house edge of 0.5%.

Over £200 staked we expect to lose only £1. That means we expect to keep £24 of the bonus!

This is what we expect to happen.

• We deposit £25 into William Hill Live casino.
• We place 200 £1 bets. At the end, we have lost £1 and have £24 left.
• A £25 bonus is added to our balance.
• We withdraw our balance of £49 (£24+£25).
• We have made a profit of £24.

But, there is risk.

There is a chance we will lose more than just £1. There is even a chance of us losing more money than the bonus is worth. If we use up all of that £25 we would need to deposit more in order to finish the staking.

We won’t go into the maths on variance. But understand this. Blackjack has a house edge of 0.5% and a standard deviation of 1.15.

That means that at a £1 bet size there is a 95% chance we will make somewhere between £7.75 and £40.25. But it also means there is a 7% chance of making a small loss.

That is the essence of making money from casino bonuses. You are simply moving the odds to your favour.

Websites like Oddsmonkey and Profit Accumulator (more on them later) have calculators for working out your variance and house edge from different casino games. They also have strategy calculators to help you play the games optimally.

Whew. So after all that explaining, the actual steps were very simple.

But we had to go into all that details because it will enable you to look at more advanced offers and take advantage of them as well. Every casino bonus has different terms and you need to be able to work out what strategy to follow to get the highest ‘expected profit’ or ev from the bonus.

Which brings us on to the hardest part of making money from casino bonuses.

Where To Find The Best Casino Bonuses

You can only do that William Hill Live casino offer once, so to continue making money you need to find some more offers.

And the unfortunate truth is for more casino bonuses it is not profitable to make money from them. You need to find the diamonds in the rough.

You can do this in exactly the same way as you would when sports matched betting. And in fact, if you have done matched betting before you will probably already know the following two choices:

• Look through casino terms and conditions manually.

95% of people pay for a service. Compared to the EV you can make the services are cheap, they give you a curated list of offers to work through, and they point out any dangerous loopholes in the terms and conditions.

My two favourite paid for services for casino bonuses are:

• Profit Accumulator. Free for your first few bonuses, then £19.99 a month.
• Oddsmonkey. Free for your first few bonuses, £19.99 a month.

Nowadays they are both pretty similar with largely the same offers but different communities, website feel and customer service. They each have free accounts you can try out so I suggest signing up to both and then choosing which one you like the most.

Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £19.99 a month service.

There Are Lots Of Different Types Of Casino Bonuses

Wow what a beast of a post!

Let’s just finish on saying that there are lots of different types of casino bonuses and all have slightly different best ways to exploit them.

By now you should understand the concept of expectedvalue and therefore making money from casino bonuses. You have a guide to tackle your first bonus and you have plenty of resources to help you research and find new offers. Good luck!

USEFUL LINKS

• More details on casino wagering requirements.
• My summer betting diary where I made £250 a week throughout the summer holidays.

FAQ

What happens if I lose all of the £25 before completing the wagering requirement??

This is a very real risk and is also the reason why there is a chance of losing a small amount of money while completing the wagering requirement.

What you need to do is to deposit more money and finish the betting.

I hear people talking about ‘sticky’ bonuses or doubling up. What does that mean?

You should really join a forum and start asking people there. You are getting into some quite complicated areas with the potential to lose some large amounts of money if you make a mistake.

But in short: A sticky bonus is one that you can never withdraw. You can only withdraw the winnings. This means that the tactics we spoke about earlier don’t work. Doubling up is a technique to make money from them. You basically bet the whole bonus on red on roulette. If the bet wins you withdraw the winnings. If you lose you’ve lost the bonus which you couldn’t withdraw anyway.

What are the house odds of some other casino games?

• Baccarat – 1.06%
• 3-card Poker – 2.01%
• Craps – 0.34%
• French Roulette (you get 50% of your stake back if it lands on 0) – 1.35%
• American Roulette (two 0s) – 5.26%
• Slots – 3-10%. Average is about 5%.

Can I card count online blackjack?

No, you cannot. Card counting relies on the contents of the remaining cards changing as the rounds go on. In online blackjack the cards are shuffled every hand so the contents don’t change. You can do it with live blackjack – but I believe they shuffle regularly to make it more difficult. I have never tried.

I have a question that is not answered here?

Drop me an email at hello@sampriestley.com and I will do my best to get back to you.

Can you make money from casino bonuses while self-isolating or under quarantine?

Yes you can! It is actually a very good time to do it because you can do every step of the offer from your home.

Without a doubt, the number one question we get asked in regards to betting
online is “How do I make money gambling online?” The answer as you might expect
is not a simple answer. While we wish we could just tell you to “do x, y, and z
and you’ll be rich,” it’s just not that simple.

Making money online comes down to game selection and having clear
expectations of what you’re doing. The opportunities are huge, and there are
millions and millions to be made if you look in the right spots. Lucky for you,
we’re going to do our best to educate you and point you in the right direction.

The best way for us to approach answering this question is to answer it
individually for each different type of online gambling/betting that exists.
Specifically today we’re going to look at sports betting online, casino/table
games online, and skill-based online games. There are a few other obscure forms
of gambling online that do exist, but these main categories should encompass
almost all of the major types that are out there.

As a spoiler, I can tell you that it is possible to make money at each of
these, though, some will depend solely on your luck while the others are
sustainable based on your skill and abilities. The difference is going to come
down to whether the game is a luck based or skill based game. Let’s clarify the
difference first before we dive into each individual type of online gambling and
how to make money at it.

Luck vs. Skill

If you’ve ever hung around a casino or talked to gamblers before, you’ve
probably heard someone at least once tell you that they had a system to beat a
certain game. It might have been craps or roulette or maybe even blackjack. The
problem we always noticed when we heard this from someone was that they were
broke or were not rolling in the money. If they truly had a system to beat a
casino game, wouldn’t they be doing it 24/7 and living the high life?

The real reason they don’t do this 24/7 for a living and aren’t living the
high life is that
most casino games are luck based. Luck based games are games
where the house has the edge. This means that there are no super secret systems
out there that can beat these games outside of cheating. Does this mean you
can’t make money at them? Of course not. All it means is that in the long-run
over thousands and thousands of hands, spins, or rolls, the casino is going to
win.

This means you can most certainly make money in the short run. Many gamblers
go months and sometimes years winning at games. The thing to note, though, is
that this is a statistical anomaly that will correct itself. In the end, the
casino will ALWAYS win at luck based games. There is a silly cliché phrase
that explains this:

Spotting a luck based game is easy. If the game is run by a casino (live or
online) and you are playing against the casino and not versus other players,
this is a luck based game, and they are going to have a long run edge. Again,
you can still make money playing these games (and lots of it), but in the long
run over thousands and thousands of games, the casino will ultimately win.

Skill-based games, on the other hand, have no house edge. These games are
ones where players compete against each other instead of against the house (the
casino). The casino will take a small fee for facilitating the game, but
ultimately it is up to the players who wins the money.

Skill-based games are sustainable ways for people to make money long-term. If
you are good at a skill based game and can continually get people to compete
against you, you can make a full-time living playing the game. These games are
easy to spot as they are games where players are competing against other players
and not the house.

Making Money Online Playing Casino Games and Slots

We have some good news, and we have some bad news when it comes to making
money gambling on your favorite casino games and slots. The bad news is that
online casino games and slots are games of luck that the house will always have
a long-term edge on. The good news is that regardless of this, you can still
make a lot of money at them!

Addressing the bad news first, you need to realize that there is no system
out there to “beat” online casino games to make a living playing them. You will
never be able to be a professional slots player or a professional roulette
player or anything like that. Ultimately, the casino edge and statistics are
going to prevail, and the casino is going to win. Understanding this is
imperative to have a great time playing these games online.

Regarding the good news, though, this does not mean you can’t make money
playing online casino games and slots. First, the casino edge is only for the
long term. The long term usually means hundreds of thousands and millions of
spins of a slot or roulette wheel or hundreds of thousands of tosses of the
craps dice etc. You may play the games and never ever experience the long term
statistics correcting themselves. The casino edge on most games is only a couple
of percentage points meaning you can totally have major winning sessions and
runs.

An Analogy to Help

Imagine this analogy. There are two bettors, you and a friend, who are going
to bet on the flip of a coin. You are going to take turns flipping the coin with
you allowed to bet on every flip. If the flip is heads, you win your bet. If the
flip is tails, you lose your bet. You do not have a choice; you have to bet
heads every time.

We all know that coins are going to land on heads 50% of the time and on
tails 50% of the time. Let’s say we alter the coin a little bit to make it more
like when we are betting against the casino giving them an edge. Let’s say that
this coin lands on heads only 48% of the time and on tails 52% of the time.
This represents the long-term edge that the casino is going to have.

You and your friend start flipping the coin and placing your bets against the
house. You each get to flip the coin 50 times. If everything happened without
any variance, you both would get heads about 48% of your flips and lose a tiny
bit of money to the casino over the course of the flips. But variance comes into
play. Variance says that over ALL 100 flips about 48% will be heads, but it
doesn’t necessarily say which of you two are going to get more or less of the
heads in the short run.

It’s possible that you get heads 48 of your 50 flips and your friend gets
heads zero times in their 50 flips. At the end of the day in the long-run, the
casino is still making money because it is winning 52% of its bets, but you’ve
made an absolute TON of money. The point here is that most recreational gamblers
will be operating in the short term for most or their entire gambling career.

Jackpots

Part of the way that this variance spreads itself out is through jackpots.
Not all players are going to win jackpots but if you do win one you can bet that
you’re going to be a lifetime profitable gambler (depending on the size of the
jackpot of course). Jackpots still fall in line when it comes to
statistics and house edge, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be one of the players
to fall outside of the statistical norm and strike it rich!

Bonuses

One way to fight back against the house edge and a lot of times turn it in
your favor (at least temporarily) is by
taking advantage of bonuses. Bonuses, as
you may already know, are free money/free spins/free play that online casino
sites will give you to try to attract your business. A lot of times the benefits
of these bonuses will turn the odds in your favor while you are using the bonus.

Of course, they won’t give you the bonus forever because they would lose
money and have to shut their doors. But in the short term, you can definitely
take full advantage of these promotions and clean up some easy cash. It’s also
of importance to note that there is no reason you can’t jump between a few sites
to take advantage of different promotions.

This is a lot like going to a different grocery store for a week because you
have a coupon for something. There is nothing unethical about it, and the sites
actually would prefer you use their promotions. The reason they run the promos
is to get you in the door to try out their product in hopes that you will stay
or make a change from your home site.

Making Money Online Sports Betting

Sports betting is a complete 180 the other direction from online slots and
table games. Sports betting is a skill based bet (depending on the bets you
choose). While you might think you are betting against the house, they are
actually manipulating lines so that you’re basically betting against other
players and they are taking a small fee for facilitating the bets. With proper
skill and a sharp eye, you can make a living as a sports bettor. Is this
difficult? You bet your butt it’s difficult but it’s completely possible, and a
lot of people do it every day.

So how do you make money online betting sports?

Simple. Join a sportsbook and
start making correct picks. Start with a sport that you know well and do
extensive research. If you can come up with a system to properly predict games
and outcomes, you can be a successful sports bettor.

One thing that is extremely important to point out is that you have to choose
the right type of sports bets or you’re going to be placing luck based bets
instead of skill based bets. As you may or may not know, you can bet on a lot
more than just who the winner of a game is going to be. You can bet how many
points will be scored, how many times they will do something, who will score
first etc. Some of these bets will require research and skill to make a correct
pick, and some are just going to be dumb luck.

Here are two different sports bet as an example. One is a skill based bet and
one is a luck based bet.

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• Will Rob Gronkowski score more or less than 1.5 touchdowns in a game?
• Will the final score of the Patriots be odd or even?

As you can hopefully see, the first bet would require you to have strong
knowledge of how Rob Gronkowski is going to perform in a game. You would have to
look at the defense he is up against and predict the game plan of attack the
Patriots employ. There is a lot of skill that goes into picking this bet and the
more knowledgeable and skilled you are, the better off you will do. This is an
example of a skill based bet that you could profit from long term if you were
sharp enough.

The second bet about whether or not their final point total is odd or even is
really just dumb luck. You could make some crazy argument that you can predict
the exact game flow and how many points they score, but in reality, you are just
guessing. This is an example of a luck based bet that you can still make money
off of but it is not sustainable long term. As long as you’re aware of this,
have at it!

It’s important to point out that these bets are not segregated or separated
at all when you go to the online sportsbooks. The luck based and the skill based
bets are all going to be listed side by side, and it’s up to you to be able to
decipher the difference. Honestly, it should be easy to tell the difference by
just taking a few minutes to pay attention to what you’re betting on. If it is
something that you are struggling to find data and information to support your
pick, it is probably a luck based bet.

The Beauty of Line Shopping Online

One of the easiest ways to make MORE money online with correct sports betting
picks is through line shopping. Line shopping is a strategy that is not possible
with brick and mortar casinos due to logistics and has really only become
popular thanks to online sportsbooks. Line shopping is the process of checking
several different sportsbooks to get the best odds and payouts possible for your
bets.

You just can’t do this in real life unless you live somewhere like Vegas
where you have a ton of different sportsbooks right next to each other. Even
then, most of the books there are interconnected, so the odds are going to be
the same at all of them. Online, though, you tend to see a lot of greatly
varying lines for the same bet.

Let’s say you are planning to bet the Miami Heat to beat
the Golden State Warriors on the moneyline at +150. Let’s say you’re totally
confident on this bet and you think it’s the easiest bet in the world. Is this a
good bet for you to make?

A better question would be, is this the best bet you can make? If you were to
take a few seconds and line shop another online sportsbook, you would see that
one is offering the same bet for +170. This is the exact same bet except if you
place it at the second online sportsbook you will get paid out more money. If
you bet $100 and the Heat win, the first sportsbook will pay you $150 in profit
and the second will pay you $170 in profit.

By simply taking advantage of the technology that comes with betting online,
you can make MORE money on a correct pick just by taking a few seconds to check
a few different sportsbooks. We can assure that this is not a rare occurrence to
find varying lines. It’s actually a fairly common occurrence to find different
lines, and it can greatly affect the amount of money you make betting online.

Making Money Online Playing Skill-Based Games

You may notice that in the title of this section it does not say anything
about “gambling.” This is because gambling refers to placing wagers on a game of
chance that you have no control over. Out of all the different bet types on this
page, these are the ones that you have the most control over. Skill-based games
are games that pit two or more players against each other. Skill-based games are
NOT played against the house, but as we stated earlier, the house takes a small
cut for facilitating the game.

Skill based games can 100% be played for a living as long as you can continue
to get people willing to play against you. While some of these games do have an
element of luck, the majority of the game’s outcome is determined by skill. This
means that a worse player may win a few games in the short run, but the better
player will always win out in the long run.

For example, if you get your money in the middle playing Texas Hold em poker
(a skill based game) with pocket Aces against J-10, you’re supposed to win that
hand based on the statistics. However, it is entirely possible that you lose
that hand in an unlucky fashion. If you continue to get your money in
significantly ahead, though, statistics should even out, and you should make
money in the long run. Though you might lose in the short run, you will prevail
in the long run.

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Some of the most popular skill games you can play for money online are:

For more information on playing these games online, here’s a guide we’ve put
together for you:

The Bottom Line of How to Make Money Gambling Online

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Hopefully, if you’ve read until this point, you have a pretty strong idea of
the different options you have when it comes to making money gambling online.
Depending on whether you’re just looking for some recreational fun or a way to
make a living, we’ve given you several different options in both directions.

Remember, be realistic with your expectations and don’t try and make a career
out of a game that you are not statistically supposed to win long term at.