I want to make, what I feel is, an important comment here. I believe Mike is the exception to the rule. I have met hundreds fellow contestors and sweepers all over North America and I have never meet anyone else as addicted to entering and winning as Mike.
To me, the purpose of taking up contesting as a hobby is to have fun. Entering is fun. Winning is fun. Including friends and family in the prizes is fun. I usually spend 1-2 hours per day entering and many days I may only spend 10-30 minutes. I remember one rare luxurious lazy Sunday where I spent 6-7 hours organizing and catching up on my online entries. What a treat!
I have never put the hobby before my family. They are involved so we enter and win as a family. My daughter does colouring contests. My husband likes late night walks and on recycle night comes home with heaps of PIN codes for me to enter. We all enjoy the fun of entering, the thrill of winning and the sharing of the prizes.
I hope people interested in becoming contestors realize there is more to the hobby than spending days or weeks filling out entry forms. The best part of the hobby (Yes, even better than winning!) are the wonderful people I have met and the life long friends I have made.
Dell Enterprise Server has a new promotion called Are you an IT Hero? There are heaps of prizes to be won on a weekly basis including an Xboxes, home theatre systems and digital cameras.
Launchfire is the company behind the design and execution of the contest. They are very good at building viral marketing into every promotion they create for their clients. You gain entries in several ways. You can visit every day, play a game and gain an entry, up to 51 entries. You can invite friends and gain entries, up to 10. If those friends visit the website you gain entries, up to 10. If they enter the contest from your referral, you gain entries, up to 30. You can post a referral link in instant messages, personal web pages, blogs, message boards, email, etc. and for each person that enters from your link, you gain an entry up to 50 entries. If you opt-in to receive email from Dell, you gain entries, up to 15. If you participate in IT challenges you gain entries, up to 50. So if you were able to gain every possible entry into this contest, you would have a grand total of 216.
I love how Launchfire designs its promotions because they encourage the participant to interact with their client’s product or service on multiple levels. What I am questioning with this one is, what do I care about being an IT hero? I understand that, by law, contests in Canada need to be free to enter to anyone of legal age in their province, plus I would love to win one of the great prizes being offered, but I will never buy or implement any of the products or services being featured in this promotion. I wonder what Dell is gaining by running this contest vs. the similar promotions they run for their notebook and desktop line of computers, to the general public? Contests like this are fairly expensive to run. I hope Dell achieves their marketing goal.
Whatever happened to the National Contesters Association? As recently as 1982, they had chapters in 45 U.S. states and an annual convention. How can a group so large just disappear off the radar?
The 19th Annual National Sweepstakes Convention will be in San Antonio TX this year, but it is not being run by the National Contesters Association. It is being hosted by The Lone Star Stampede Sweepstakes Club.
For the past few years my husband has been buying me copies of every book on sweepstakes and contesting he can find. I now have an entire shelf of them dating as far back as 1932. It has been very interesting to read books from different eras, from different perspectives and see how the hobby has evolved and changed over the decades. Over the next several weeks I will review each of the sweepstaking books in my library. Almost all are out of print but used copies can be found on eBay or Amazon.
The first book I will review is The Prize Winners Handbook by Jeffrey Feinman published in 1980. What makes this book a very interesting read is that Jeffrey was the President of Ventura Associates. I was lucky enough to interview Al Wester, the current General Manager, for the American Edition of my book so it was really neat to glance backwards and see how they used to run sweepstakes vs. how they run them now.
I really like the fact this book was written from the perspective of a seasoned marketer. Someone who had created and managed sweepstakes for years. Here are his tips to the Secrets of Winning:
1) Enter often.
2) Follow the rules.
3) Know where to spend your time, money, effort and postage.
4) Judges are human.
5) Be on the lookout for sweepstakes.
6) Set aside a certain amount of time each day to enter.
7) Read the rules.
Some points may not make too much sense in this short list, but he does go into greater detail in the book. Jeffrey’s full explanation of tip #4, Judges are human, I think is the most fascinating because he describes what entrants can do to increase their chances of winning including using colourful, decorated envelopes as the judges can be swayed!
Yesterday I received a copy of the press release for The Doc Zone documentary, Winning for a Living, to be aired on CBC March 6th.
The PR company reviewed an advanced copy of the film. They said it is very good and our hobby is presented in a balanced manner showing contesting from many different perspectives. I can hardly wait to see it!
Over the next few weeks I will be doing interviews promoting the film. If you know anyone in the media that would be interested in doing a story on the documentary, please have them contact the PR company listed in the press release. So far, I am booked to be on CIUT 89.5FM Friday February 22nd on CareerBuzz, 11am-Noon.
Found this rant on YouTube. This fellow doesn’t understand quite a few things about how PIN code contests and sweepstakes work, and why companies run them. Firstly, companies run sweepstakes to sell more products, plain and simple. PIN codes are a way for the company to interact on another level with the consumer. Many of the PIN code promotions have games and activities attached to them designed to make the promotion fun and exciting.
Yes, not everyone has a computer at home, but many can use their computer at work to enter on their lunch hour or visit their local public library.
He also wants to know who regulates games of chance in the United States. Sweepstakes are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission, the United States Postal Service, the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Justice. Ensuring sweepstakes are fair and run correctly is taken very seriously by the U.S. Government.
He rants that even McDonald’s tried to cheat its customers. It did not. One of its employees, a Vice President, tried to cheat both the consumers and the company giving away the winning pieces to friends and family. He was caught. That type of fraud usually comes with a very stiff jail sentence. Since then McDonald’s has implimented further measures to ensure their sweepstakes are run properly.
If you visit YouTube, you can read the comments others have left and I really like the one posted by fitchalfitchal.
Michael Horta creates a very interesting music podcast called Hortaculture. Enjoy yesterday’s new addition (You can listen while you enter your online sweepstakes!) and let’s encourage him to post them more often.
There is a contest for just about everything. ROCK 105 in Charleston WV decided Valentine’s Day isn’t always all about love. They are holding a promotion to win a free divorce.
Thankfully this is prize I never want win. I came downstairs this morning to find a bouquet of papercraft calla lilies in the kitchen. (Calla lilies are my favourite flower.) Then I was covered in hugs and kisses from my daughter.
I hope your life is filled with love from family, friends and even pets.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
“Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows!”
When people create a blog, they want people to read it. One way to entice people to subscribe to your blog is to have a contest. How you usually get entries is by: 1) subscribing to their RSS feed, 2) posting a blog entry about their contest on your blog, and then 3) go back to their blog, posting a comment linking back to your blog as proof of entry. Got all that?!
Marketing Pilgrim is holding such a contest. You can win an iPod Touch.
Blog contests and sweepstakes are the fastest growing subset of the online method of entry. I have yet to win a prize from one of these promotions, but I have just started. What do you think about blog contests vs. other methods of entry (in-person, phone-in, mail-in, form-based online sweepstakes, text messaging)? Have you won a prize from a blog contest?
Another favourite daily inspirational email I receive is the Dream Manifesto. Here is a great quote from Follow the Spiritual Laws of Money and Abundance, an article written by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, authors of Creating Money, Attracting Abundance.
You may be hoping that your wealth will come from winning a lottery. To win, be ready to receive the money. While many of you hope to win, you don’t truly expect to win. People who win are committed to winning, and have dealt with their beliefs that say getting money this way is too easy, or too good to be true. Even more important, if winning the money would stop you from doing your life’s work, your higher self will keep you from winning. Winning a large sum of money can create more challenges than you think. It is important to have the right amount of money, and if a huge windfall would put your life out of balance, your higher self will most probably keep it from you.
Recent Comments