Tips to Improve Your Odds of Winning Sweepstakes and Contests
The costs for entering most sweepstakes has fallen considerably from the days of costly first class postage to the virtual no cost world of internet online and email entries. For those with the time and inclination to spend hours in front of their computer screens, the potential for considerable gains is in the offing. At the same time, one needs to proceed cautiously. While the majority of sweepstakes are run by honest manufacturers, advertisers and marketing companies of the highest standing, there are scammers and dishonest people that create tempting websites and offer prizes aimed at obtaining valuable personal information from you as a step in identity theft or to bombard you with unwanted and unsolicited emails, telephone calls or even worse, spreading and infecting your PC with online viruses.
Whether you have just begun entering sweepstakes or have been entering them for years with mixed results, the information provided will at worse be worth reading and at best help you avoid some of the pitfalls and improve your chances of winning some of the great prizes being offered.
Vary Your Submissions - Whether you have just 15 minutes per day to enter sweepstakes or dedicate 8 or more hours a day to entries, you will increase your odds of becoming a winner by varying your entry times. Most sweepstakes promoters and marketing firms use a variety of statistical methods to level the playing field for entrants such that no one person can gain an advantage in entering their contests. If you tend to enter sweepstakes in the morning, try switching to the afternoon and then to the early evening/late evening. This suggestion applies to all the various limits on entry from single to daily and 24 hour submissions.
Duration of Sweepstakes - The shorter the duration of the contest, the greater your odds are of winning. Simple logic in that the longer the duration, the more entries the sweepstake promotion will receive. The trade-off is often that sometimes, the bigger prizes are found on long running contests. Very few sweepstakes will provide you with any useful information on number of entries while the contest is running. We did find an exception to this recently on a contest offering a single prize worth less than $1,000 Approximate Retail Value. The contest had been running for 9 months and will continue to run for another 3 months. It is a daily entry and through the first 9 months, more than 42,000 entries had been received or approximately 4,600 entries per month. There are many different way to view this snapshot of information. If a given entrant submits just one entry for the year, then that entry will have one chance in 56,000 (assuming a continued 4,600 entries a month) to win the prize. In other words, don't change your vacation plans to wait for the postman... On the other hand, if you are an avid sweepstakes player and submit a daily entry for a total of 365 entries, probability of winning has certainly increased over the single entry. If one takes it to the extreme, consider that there may be 152 other avid sweepstakes entrant, also submitting daily entries and therefore together they represent all the entrants. So the odds of you winning would improve to 1 in 153. This is all hypothetical of course but the take away from all this may be to focus your time on fewer contests and more entries.
Enter Global Contests for Fun, Enter Local Contests to Win - In a ideal world, one would enter every contest with the maximum allowed entries and then sit back and wait for the win notifications and winner's affadavits to arrive by email, UPS or FedEx. But of course, time is limited and it is virtually impossible to learn about every contest being run and to submit the maximum number of entries allowed as specified in the contest or sweepstakes official rules. With a fixed amount of time available to you for entering contests, pick carefully and wisely. Consider whether you would like to enter a contest open to everyone in the world or one that limits entries to the state or country you reside in.
Focus on the Types of Prizes You Want to Win - With so many prizes available and a limited amount of time to submit entries to win them, focus on the kinds of items you would like to win. Generally speaking, it takes about the same amount of time to submit and enter a contest to win a CD or lipstick as it does to win a new refrigerator or car. Prioritize the sweepstakes you enter such that you are maximizing the number of entries for the prizes you most would like to win. Discipline is important and the next time you are entering a sweepstakes offering a music CD, ask yourself whether you are missing a sweepstakes offering a prize that would be of greater interest or importance to you.
While You Aren't a Winner Today - Instant win sweepstakes can be fun and help to keep you going when waiting for the day the "big win" comes to your door. Again, with the limited time you have to enter sweepstakes and contests, limit the number of types of instant contests you enter and keep the amount of time you spend on any particular entry to a minimum. The sweepstakes promotion is aimed toward having you spend a longer period of time on their entry pages in order to get you familiar with the particular promotion. Your objective should be just the opposite, to spend as little time as possible to enter the contest, see if you are an instant winner and move on to the next sweepstakes. The number of total instant win prizes should always be considered before you start the entry process. Multiple instant winners each day is a reason to continue. One or less instant winners a day is a reason that you may want to move on to greener pastures. The majority of "instant win" webpages will have a line in small print that says "Click here if you can't see the game". While it may seem cut and dry, click on the link and you'll immediately know whether you have won rather than spending 30 seconds or more matching pairs or playing a game you have no interest in. Your odds will be exactly the same as if you played the game but the time you saved can be used to enter several more sweepstakes. The more sweepstakes you enter, the high probability you are going to be a winner!
Minimize Key Strokes - Whether you are an experienced data entry professional or a two finger hunt and peck for the right keys, the amount of time you spend on a sweepstakes entry will have a direct bearing on the number of sweepstakes you can enter in a given period and in turn your odds of winning prizes. While there are a number of software products that purport to simplify the entry process, care must be taken that the sweepstakes allows for partial or full automated entry (it will be stated in the sweepstakes rules), none of these products are 100% accurate for every sweepstakes and contest. The sweepstakes rules are KING and you must abide by them to prevent your entry from being discarded. There are almost as many entry form variations as there are sweepstakes. Some entry forms require manual input in part or all of the entry. Many will be very specific on the form that telephone numbers and date of birth are entered and with what type of punctuation is permitted. Use a slash when a dash is asked for and your entry may well be discarded. Neglect to provide all the information "required" and your entry is likely to be thrown away by the promoter. Email address is almost always asked for, so keep your email address as short as you can to minimize key strokes. Data entry time will likely be the biggest limitation you have in the number of entries that you can submit during a given period of time.
Keep Track of Your Entries - Perhaps the single greatest and most tedious issue you will have is keeping track of your entries if you are a serious sweepstakes player. While all sweepstakes promotions vary in their actions when an entrant violates the stated rules, you should always assume the worse. If the rules state one entry per day, adding a second entry will likely get you disqualified from the sweepstakes unless the rules specifically state that duplicate entries will be discarded. You don't want to spend all your available time reading the fine print of the rules and thereby losing valuable time that could be spent entering more contests. There are plenty of variations including single entry per person, single entry per email address, single entry per household, single entry per IP address etc. With contests usually open for at least 30 days and many open for upwards to a year or more, one needs a way of keeping track of what you have entered and when. There are many sweepstakes sites that offer various tracking mechanisms, some for free and others for a monthly or annual charge. Whatever you choose, do choose well as it may well be the difference in winning or wasting your time.
Know Your Fellow Sweepstakes Entrants - The numbers and types of sweepstakes players are as diverse as the world's population. The occasional entrant is probably the most common. This type of entrant enters one or more sweepstakes for the fun of it and may or may not follow the stated rules and probably enters less than 25 sweepstakes in a year. The next group is what I"ll call the average sweepstakes entrant that is likely to enter up to 100 sweepstakes per month, either all at once or spread throughout the month. The next grouping is what I call the serious players and they are likely to be entering upwards to 100 sweepstakes a day. Then for lack of another term, I'll call them the professional sweepstakes players who may be entering up to 1,000 sweepstakes a day or more and may consist of teams of two or more people in the same household with multiple computers each with perhaps multiple screens for maximizing the number of entries that can be submitted on a given day. Don't be discouraged or deterred but be aware that your single entry into a contest will have pretty long odds against a player that has submitted the maximum allowable for any given contest.
