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.

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...

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.