12 Days of Speedy Delivery

12 days, all it took was 12 days for the folks over at Honey Nut Cheerios to pay out the five dollar reward I had won on my first day playing their Sweet Rewards Giveaway. Now, it may not seem like anything special and, quite honestly, it may be a fluke but a payout of a reward in less than 2 weeks is incredibly fast turn around for any sweeps. When I went out to check the mail today I was not expecting to find a check waiting for me but there it was:

Most contests, giveaways, sweepstakes etc tell you to expect your reward in anywhere from 4 weeks to as much as 18 weeks from the time it is rewarded to the time it actually shows up at your address. Months after moving out of my old place my roommates received a package for me (ended up being a CD I wasn't wild to have anyway so I told them to keep it) but I suppose it just goes to show you just never know. So thank you to the lovely people over at Honey Nut Cheerios, you already had my approval for making the best of all the Cheerios but your quick pay-out is much appreciated.

Didn't exactly win anything today but a check in the mail is always welcome and Microsoft's Club Bing updated their list of available prizes early this morning. I quickly turned over those hard earned tickets (28,600 of them) for a brand new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W230 Camera, here's hoping the folks in their rewards distribution center are as efficient. If luck is with me I might be able to gather enough tickets up in time to order the Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender they are offering as well (only 16,500 tickets).

Pay Off

Just as soon as that feeling comes down, that feeling that I'm about to hit a big dry spell as far as my luck goes here come 2 more wins within minutes of each other. First off comes one from CSI: Deadly Intent of all places. It turns out they have made a video game based off of their hit television series and are giving away Nintendo Wii prize packs as well as a variety of CSI: Deadly Intent gear.

A drawstring backpack wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, maybe I can use it to store all my other "who would want this" wins.

My second win for the day was a bit better and more useful though. The folks over at Wendy's are at it yet again... another 5 free entries per day contest this one themed around home improvement with sponsorship split between Makita Industrial Power Tools, Home Depot and Coca-Cola. Today I won one of their third place prizes; a $10 gift card to Home Depot.

Now what's excellent about this contest is that while I can't win another $10 gift card I can still come back and keep entering my 5 times daily in hopes of winning 1st, 2nd, 4th place prizes or even the grand prize in addition to my 3rd place win.

Persistence

As with most anything the key to winning sweepstakes is persistence. Even with a huge number of entries per day I don't walk away with a win every day, heck sometimes it can even be weeks between wins. The past few days have been nothing but disappointment day after day, entry after entry. Every instant win game I've played I lost, every contest that sent me notice of ending I had not won.

Still I power through the entries day after day because, for me, it's part of my routine now. If I have time in the morning I enter while eating breakfast, if not as the night falls and Im starting to wind down I'll take the time to enter anything I missed earlier. Either way persistence pays off in the end, I know this from playing so much and talking to others who do the same.

During a dry spell it's always helpful when something I know I've won finally shows up. Opening the front door and seeing no package isn't the best sign, opening the mailbox and finding no small boxes or padded envelopes doesn't seem good either but that old proverb rings true good things can come in small packages - a business sized envelope for instance.

Yesterday I received an envelope from SmartEdge by GMAC:

My $25 Exxon Mobil gas card has arrived which makes excellent fuel for the sweepstakes fire. (I can buy gas at early 90s prices again!)

WilliamPaid + PCHMatch3 Widget

No wins that I'm aware of yet today but there's two things to share:

First, and this is really welcome right now with everyone's budgets being so tight, Williampaid is running the Your Expenses At Our Expense Giveaway (referral link) it will give $1,000 to the winner and $250 to the person that referred them (so obviously if you're going to sign up I'd appreciate the referral). As always is the case with anything I promote, this is not a scam to get people to buy their product etc... just a good ol' fashioned free sweepstakes.

Secondly, as it turns out there are a few other competitions that have widgets including one sponsored by one of the most famous of all companies as far as sweepstakes go: Publishers Clearing House. Now, I will say, I personally haven't heard of anyone that I know winning a single thing from PCH, not even one of the small prizes... still this particular game is so easy to use that I play it every day.

Fujitsu Uncover the Possibilities

Now here's a convenience I wish more sweeps would let me have, a widget I can post on here that allows me to play without going to their site.. it also allows anyone coming here to play. How nice... oh yeah and it's a great prize, sweet.

Team Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola strikes again, this time with their Twist Txt Get promotion. This is one of those instances where persistence is key, I've entered this one twice a day for what feels like ages now. There was tale going around that they paid on on the 5 minute marks exactly... well, it seems like it was true.

While not exactly the 2010 Ford Fusion or the $10,000 scholarship they offer as their grand prizes I'm still happy to take a pair of free movie passes (up to $12 a ticket). This is my second win from Coca-Cola in less than a months time which almost makes me feel bad for only drinking Dr. Pepper, almost.

Sticky fingers? Bing to the rescue...

Everyone who gets into sweeps knows the sound of a delivery truck rumbling down their street... slowing... is today the day? Did I win that Microsoft XBox 360 finally? Maybe it's the gas card I've been waiting for...

Dropped there on the front step is todays package with the oh-so recognizable Microsoft return address but it's a bit small for an XBox 360.

Oh yeah, Club Bing. They offer such a huge number of prizes and some time ago I had turned in a few tickets for their first aid kit... today it arrived and in classic Microsoft style it's full of very little that would be useful if you were looking for a first-aid kit. Yes bandages and eyewash are great but the 10 "Fresh Lemon Towelette" Clean Naps? I'm sorry I don't see "sticky fingers" on the list of things that require a first aid kit.

In the end I'll likely remove the towelettes and pack in some more goods of my own - some gauze, adhesive tape, some sort of anti-itch spray, bandage scissors, tweezers... ya know useful things. At least the individual pain reliever packages, eye wash and the water safe bag will come in handy (though it'd be handy if the bag said "First Aid Kit" instead of Bing or if it was the classic red instead of blue but really, it's a prize for playing games so I'll stop complaining. Hopefully the "Mini tool set" I ordered will be a bit more handy, it should arrive soon so we shall see. No other wins that I've been alerted of recently and now that December 1st is here there's a slew of new contests for which I may already be a winner.

Wins that may help lower your cholesterol

Even those of us who follow sweeps on regular occasion miss some from time to time, this morning I found one that I've been missing out on for months now. As luck would have it though this instant win game Sweet Rewards Giveaway run by Honey Nut Cheerios allows for 10 entries a day.

I played for the first time today and won my first prize:

I say my first prize because Honey Nut Cheerios is being generous enough to allow up to 10 instant wins per person (1 win per day for a total of $50 possible). Not only that but it has an easy free entry method as well.

Word has it that the payments are done in batches, many people got multiple checks in the mail on the same day that pay out a couple weeks worth of wins. I look forward to seeing if I can get more than just this one win from this one.

I also look forward to some cereal for breakfast... I haven't had Honey Nut Cheerios in quite some time.

Update: Looks like I won't see the checks from this for quite some time - got my confirmation e-mail which included this little tid-bit:

Once we have verified your eligibility, you
will receive your prize on or about July 7, 2009 (for prizes won during the
month of June), on or about August 7, 2009 (for prizes won during the month of
July), on or about September 8, 2009 (for prizes won during the month of
August), and at the conclusion of the Promotion Period (for prizes won between
September and the conclusion of the Promotion Period). It will be sent to the
address you provided.  The promotion ends on March 16, 2010.

And now, a word from our sponsors

As you can see I've opted in for Google AdSense, I wasn't sure I wanted to let ads on my blog here but I read up about AdSense and decided that it's quite worthwhile for a number of reasons. Sure, I might make a buck or two from it in the long run but honestly the real reason I chose to use it is even more appropriate: It makes finding/linking to sweepstakes easier.

Most of the sweeps I post about are relatively well advertised promotions for big name companies. AdSense scans through what my articles are about and posts ads that are relevant to the topic, for instance I've posted about the Coca-Cola MyCokeRewards program before and sure enough google places an ad for that very same program. So yes Virginia, ads worth clicking do exist.

Speaking of the Coca-Cola MyCokeRewards; today in the mail there was an envelope from Best Buy waiting for me, sure enough it was my Best Buy Pitch-In card I had won from the MyCokeRewards instant win game. Way to go Best Buy with your quick turn around on sending those out... I've yet to check and see if the company running the promotion has loaded it yet though.

With Thanksgiving came the end to a number of the more worthwhile sweeps, no real wins to report I'm sad to say... then again there's always that (fairly large) chance I've won something without being notified so I'll just have to keep checking that old mailbox.

The month of December already looks promising for some potentially excellent (and some potentially great in an awful way) sweeps and promos so we shall see what the future may hole.

Watch where you're clicking

Now, it's not typical but from time to time entering sweepstakes can be the cause for a problem here or there. One example I remember was entering a series of "Win A Trip To _______" which you could only enter if you agreed to receive a promotional packet from the place you may be visiting. My mailman would have had a hernia if they had all arrived on the same day, in the end I had been given packets for probably a good 30-40 locations across the US, small would-be tourist towns mostly. I made the best use I could of them by scouring through to find some possible galleries to show my work in but in the end all I really got was a feeling of guilt and a ton of paper to recycle.

Recently a new mishap has come up.

I should preface this by saying there's all sorts of companies that do promotions, giving away things like ipods and computers, sometimes I can't help but enter even if I'm totally not the intended target audience. Women's magazines hold a huge portion of the market on good potential sweeps... so yeah.

Redbook, the women's magazine constantly has a number of sweepstakes up and running... I've never won one yet but I'm determined that one of these days I'll snag a good win from them. That is if I can avoid repeating my little mishap.

See, I use RoboForm, a fantastic little add-on to my browser, it fills out the basic forms you see on every contest (name, address, email etc etc) and while it makes entering new contests nice and speedy you really have to be careful that you look things over before submitting them. Well, one day I missed something, I glanced the page over, clicked submit and just at that very moment realized "Oh no, I forgot to uncheck the subscribe box". Super, a subscription to Redbook is not on my list of things I need to have.

Still, like most companies Redbook had a email notifier sent to me, I checked it and followed the directions to immediately unsubscribe. "Easy enough" I thought. Sad to say a couple days go by and I get an email invoice for my new subscription. Again I hop on their site, try and unsubscribe but the system doesn't find any info for me.

Another email invoice.

I proceed to contact the customer service center online, write to them to tell them I signed up accidentally, immediately cancelled it, never received an issue, don't want to etc etc...

Yesterday I walk out to check my mailbox for any new wins...

Shameless

Not all that glitters is golden and not all that gives wins is sweepstakes.

There's a number of "participate in our _____ and get a free ____" (fill in the blanks yourself, I'm sure you've seen them all) but for the most part I have to say they are almost always outright scams or awful deals I simply don't bother with the things.

There are, however, what I'll call "daily usage" participation programs that, to me at least, seem worth while. I'm gonna touch on a few of them (very few) and if you're interested you should do me the favor of joining via the referral option if there is one. As is always the case every little bit helps.

First off let's talk about my current favorite - Club Bing (link)
Club Bing is Microsoft's best invention yet. Ideally it's used to help them promote use of their search engine Bing (I personally hate the search and see it as no better than their previous system but to each his/her own). What it REALLY is though is games - plain and simple. They have word searches, letter scrambles, crosswords and they constantly have new games coming and going. Every time you play a game you earn "tickets" with a max of 1,000 tickets a day.

Tickets can be turned in for prizes - of which there is a great abundance and various levels. It reminds me of playing skiiball at the old arcades... save up your tickets or spend them right away, whatever you'd like. They update the prizes constantly (ranging from silly things like lip balm to kind of great prizes like air miles, the GPS system or portable hard drives now available. It's entirely free to play, I've never had any spam from them, you can play as little or as much as you'd like, they even have double ticket days where you are rewarded with twice what you'd normally get, raising the daily limit to 2,000 tickets. (there's a double ticket day coming up in just 4 days!) Free games, free prizes (yes even the shipping is free)

I've hauled in loads from this and it just keeps coming. Easily the best out there.

Next up SwagBucks:
(link)
Alright, I'll admit, the link for this one is a referral link. Yup, if you sign up with my referral link (which I'd totally appreciate) I'll get some bonus points which would help me out. If not, whatever, still worth looking into.
SwagBucks is interesting, I'm new to using it but have had it confirmed to be fully legit. Basically your goal here is to collect SwagBucks to turn in for any number of rewards. The easiest way to do so (in my opinion) is to set their search engine (which is powered by Google and Ask anyway just do like me and don't click the sponsored results.) as your default. I only search maybe 15-20 times a day and I've been averaging 3 bucks a day. Not bad. You can pull in more for doing some keep up work, some site interaction, facebook and twitter posts etc etc... yes you even pull in points for referrals (hint, hint)
SwagBucks are then collected and you can choose when you'd like to turn them in and what prize you'd like to get in return. They also have LOADS of different stuff from baseball cards to giftcards to full out gaming systems... just all sorts of stuff. Currently I'm just sticking with the 45 Swagbucks for $5 Amazon.com gift cards. I think it's among the best conversion rates available for anything I'd care to win from them. All I do is search with their search engine and I get Amazon.com spending money. Easy, quick, free. Win.

Lastly there's Lockerz
(link)
Lockerz is another collect to turn in style site... currently it looks to be in the beginning stages still and there's really very few ways to pull in points ("PTZ" as they call them. creative eh?) They have a referral system that gives increased rewards once you've had 20 people join under you, and they also have a daily question you can answer for 2 PTZ per day, you can also earn PTZ by shopping through them, but I don't recommend it.
They have a laundry list of rewards but currently there don't seem to be any that are actually AVAILABLE (to a less than 20 invite member at least) except some blah wallpapers. Still, with them being a newer site, it may pay to get on the boat now. Free to join... oh but you haveto be invited by an existing member. If you'd like to join just let me know.

Every Little Bit

So, when I first got into sweeps the one thing I wasn't expecting was the small wins. In reality small wins are the majority in most contests and sweeps, gift cards and product samples galore - when it boils down to it that's why these companies do the work to put out a promotion (or hire someone to do a promotion for them - more on that down the line) they want to promote their service or product.

In the past 2 days I've pulled in some fair little wins:

• $10 Best Buy Pitch-In card from Coca-Cola (MyCokeRewards.com) - It's a simple instant win game and if you check the rules there's a way to snag free entries every day. I played this one daily for weeks now but it only takes a few moments to enter and hey, $10? I'll take it.
• $5 Wendy's gift card from their NCAA Big Score promotion. (http://www.ncaa.com/wendys) - This is a great promotional game, you get entered in the full sweeps everytime you enter (up to 5 times daily) there's a simple way to get the codes for free right on the main page AND you get not one but two chances to win instantly every time you enter a code. That's 5 main sweeps and 10 instant games every day. On top of all that even if you don't win anything they still e-mail you codes good for $5 off a purchase at the Electronic Arts online store - just by playing my max entries for 2 days in a row I have $50 worth of discounts I could use (sadly they cannot be stacked... max of $5 off per purchase). If you need a code let me know.
• Free Febreze Air Effects 9.7 oz. from kmart's Mr. Bluelight's Christmas Countdown Collect & Win (link) - Alright, so maybe I'm not the biggest fan of kmart and sure they misspelled the company name on the print out coupon (Febreeze v. Febreze) but hey, on my second or third day playing their game I already had a win so who am I to complain? I'll use it. Their game has both instant win possibilities as well as a collect and win game.
• Free Pace Salsa from Pace's Hand-Pick & Win 2 instant win game (link) - So, unlike some past free products I've won Pace handles their win in a somewhat odd way... they don't send your the product they send you a coupon for $4 off their product - which generally costs less than 4 bucks. In a way it's nice, I can choose which salsa I'd like to try which, in reality, is much more likely to get me hooked then forcing a particular flavor on me. Now I need to win some free chips.

On top of all those wins I got my email notification that 2 of my orders from Club Bing have been shipped (more on Club Bing soon)

The Ghost of Wins Past (Part 1)

In the first visit of "wins from the past" is actually one of my "biggest" wins:

I've tried my best to make use of all my wins, either using it myself or handing it off to a friend or family member (seriously, everyone likes free) but every now and then there comes something that just doesn't fit. When that happens there's always our good ol' buddy eBay.

Earlier this year Marlboro ran their "Find Your Frontier" Sweepstakes - free to enter (as are all the sweeps I ever enter) they offered a great number of kind of frontier themed prizes; grills, sunglasses, golf clubs, tools, tents and my win... binoculars.

I didn't receive any notification that I had won (as far as I know... one hazard to "sweeping" you have to have a junk email account that you sort of watch sort of trash daily) but all of the sudden a fairly large box showed up on my door. "Marlboro? What the heck am I getting mail from Marlboro for?" The inside of the box was red as can be and there, neatly tucked away was the first "big" win I'd ever won a pair of Canon 10 x 30 Image Stabilizing Binoculars. They had some weight to them and being a photography man myself I knew weighty lenses were often good lenses.

Still, what use did I have for binoculars? At the time I lived in West Philadelphia not exactly a bird watching part of the country. I jumped on the computer, did a little search and found that these had an ARV (Average Retail Value) of near $500.

At the time I wasn't set up to sell on eBay just yet and the site was flooded with the buggers anyway (Marlboro gave away 50 of them surely I wasn't the only one selling mine) so I held on to it and sold them just this past week for $275 bucks plus shipping. The buyer got a fair deal on them and I get something much more useful to me - cold hard cash.

Thank you Mr. Marlboro Man.

Introduction

When I was a kid my sister and her boyfriends used to let me scratch off the tickets they picked up for the instant-win lotto anytime they picked some up from the local gas station, knowing that all that lay between us and our potential millions was a speckling of easily scratchable silver was always a thrill and made the gas station a fun time for a kid. That excitement alone (and I'm sure the ability to keep an other wise whining bored child amused at the gas station) made the dollar ticket well worth it.

Over the years I never did find that million dollar ticket, at least breaking even over a months time between wins and loses, at most winning enough to fund a small party between myself and some friends. I always have enjoyed the possibility, the chance to get something for (next to) nothing it's almost one of the classic American dreams.

Years and years ago I remember someone in the immediate family winning a couple cases of Coca-Cola, everyone was shocked because "no one ever wins those things" but right there in my own home was proof, people DO win.

As the years went on I'd occasionally jot down my info and drop it in a dropbox for a chance at a free car, a trip to Disney or even that old elusive 1 million dollars. I never really won anything as far as I can remember back then but for just a few seconds it allowed me that freedom to think "what if" and actually believe it could happen.

The "what if"s come alot more regularly now, there are more sweepstakes and contests out there than most people could even begin to imagine and yes people actually win them. In the past (let's round up and say) 2 years I've become a relatively active participator in as many sweeps and contests as I could stand to enter at a time. With a little direction from some of the more experienced "sweepers" I've picked up a few tricks, learned to tell what's worth the time and what's not - bringing in some sort of win on pretty regular occasion.

That was the pull, in case you missed it. The "some sort of win" is always curious. Sometimes it's handy ($5 Gift Card to Subway? Don't mind if I do!) sometimes it's not (ooooh a "Christian Sci Fi" book... yeah let me jump right on that page turner). But a win is a win, and everyday I look forward the fact that I May Already Be A Winner. Here I'll be keeping track of my wins (the good, the bad and the... well, "special") as well as throwing in the occasional tip for anyone that's interested in scratching off a card or two themselves.