From The Contest Queen

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!