Winning At Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes and Contests can be a blast to enter, and even more fun when you win. The tips below will help you make the most of your time, and hopefully win more. If you do win, let me know in the comments, I want to celebrate with you!

1. Never, Ever send money for a prize. Almost anytime someone asks you to do this, it is a SCAM. You will have to pay taxes on your winnings, but you should not need to send money first before collecting a prize.

2. Read the rules carefully and follow them to the letter. You don’t want to spend a bunch of your valuable time entering a contest just to have your entry discarded because you didn’t follow the rules. Rules to look out for include requiring handwritten entries, or a specific size postcard.

3. Only enter contests for prizes that you want to win. Again, this comes down to time. If you spend time entering contests you don’t care about you have lost time you could have spent entering contests you REALLY want to win.

4. Smaller contests sometimes have better odds of winning. Sometimes entering many smaller contests is more worthwhile then entering one large contest that everyone and their mother will be entering.

5. Enter as many sweepstakes as possible, but keeping rule #3 in mind at the same time. There are many tools to help you with this, both online and off. See out reviews section for some recommendations.

6. If possible according to the rules, use postcards rather then envelopes. They will be cheaper to send and you can save yourself some money on postage. Again, read the rules. Many times postcards or envelopes need to be hand addressed. There are services that will do this for you if you are unable to for any reason. I talked about them in this article.

7. Enter local contests. Many times these contests follow rule #4. These local contests include raffles at carnivals and fairs, or even dropping your business card in a bowl at the restaurant you just had lunch at. If you don’t have business cards I have a great tip for how to enter those types on contests here.