"Up In The Air"

A curious thing happened today.

When I opened my door to go out to check the mail I was greeted by a fair sized padded envelope left behind by my friend the UPS delivery person. Now, finding a package on my doorstep is nothing new but what was inside... that's where the mystery started.

Checking the return address as I opened the package I found a rather un-helpfully vague "Deluxe Media Management PHE Publicity c/o Deluxe". Okay, so, I know it's almost entirely likely to be a win from... SOMETHING. I don't get mail from publicity companies unless that's the case... but what did I win?

Inside I find a DVD of Paramount's "Up In The Air" but that's not all, there's also a CD of the movie soundtrack as well as a metal... thing. (I don't know what it is, check the pictures if you'd like to venture a guess)

But that's it.

No congratulatory letter, no self promotion... nothing.

Well crap, how am I supposed to credit this on MaybeAWinner? I never got an email notification of winning... So I check the return address again, looking it up on Google doesn't lead me to the answers I'm looking for, both companies are invovled in too much. So I went ahead and called the number on the return address, was connected to the specific person listed on the return address and talked to her about my dilemna. While she seemed a bit confused as to why I specifically wanted to know she was quite pleasant about things.

As it turns out the company sending the package doesn't even know where I won this particular prize set. They just had it handed down from Paramount. So this one remains a mystery, possibly from the movies website, possibly from somewhere else... no one knows.

Hopefully I like the movie... or the soundtrack... or the metal... thing.

Ghosts of Wins Past (2) - Socks.

I've been entering sweeps and contests for a lot longer than I've been blogging about it... there was a period of time when I thought I was doomed to a sweepstakes life of nothing but winning socks. I have actually won socks on three different occasions through three different sweepstakes.

Now, don't get me wrong, in the normal world 3 of anything isn't a lot... but in the world of sweepstakes it's not often that one sees socks as a potential prize... and to win the same basic oddball prize from 3 different sweeps is a bit ridiculous.

I've been making an effort to get into running more (my girl is a runner and would like me to join her). These days any time we're apart and I decide to hit the treadmill to stay on top of things and get in my practice run I find myself reaching for these most ridiculous winnings. these socks.

If memory serves one pair came from the NBA online store, one pair from one of the major cell phone companies and the other pair... I don't even remember anymore. All three pairs are really comfortable and nicely padded, probably better than I would have otherwise ever bothered buying for myself and besides the NBA socks they are all just white classic looking socks which suits me just fine.

So today, as I get ready to go for a good run, I say horray for the odd, the unusual, the out of place runt of the prize litter - Even you have a place my friend.

I'm Full of Lies

I said no more Microsoft Club Bing updates for a while but I had totally forgotten about one last prize:
It was so quick and easy to get that I had overlooked it... Having forgotten about that one I realized there's actually one more prize I'm still missing too. This one I think has really gone M.I.A. though seeing as I ordered it way back on October 18th. I already complained about it being missing once but now I'll have to complain again. The missing prize is just a little multi-tool, no big deal but still.

I'm starting to worry that I'm going to run out of good ticket making games to play... they have caps on how many times you can play each game and I really dislike how slow some of the other games are/how little they pay out. Boo.

Farm Winnings

I enjoy winning prizes, it makes the long days seem shorter when you have a win, when you come home to find a little surprise in your mailbox or on your stoop. I enjoy winning prizes even more when it's something I have a real use for... the best however is winning a prize you can share.

Today after a long day I came home and found an envelope waiting for me, I knew right away what this one was from the return address. Bob Evans had a sweep stake running (the Bob Evans Dream Machine Sweepstakes enter through March 31, 2010) that I only caught onto a week or so ago but with great luck I already won AND received my prize (possibly record time from a win to a delivery):

Now this is great because my folks really enjoy breakfast at Bob Evans. My dad is in a wheelchair most of the time and doesn't get out as much as he'd like so this will be a nice excuse to get together one morning and enjoy some time together, just my folks and I.

Does this sound like a cheesy ad? Yeah, kind of, but every once in a while a simple win can be more than it's monetary worth.

A Gift From The Planet Of Soy

When you enter sweeps as much as I do opening the mailbox becomes equivalent to scratching off a lottery ticket... will today be a winning day? Is there a prize waiting for me? Must... find... out!

Opening the mailbox the other day I found a long, thin box addressed to me. Before even looking at the return address I can't help but wonder "did I win some sort of bracelet or necklace or something?" The box is about the right size for such a thing and they aren't terribly uncommon prizes but as this thought is passing through I read the return address. Ah, no, not likely to be a necklace as Kikkoman is hardly a fine jeweler.

It's always nice to pick up a prize you didn't know you had won. In the past I've won a coupon or two from some of the various Kikkoman promotions... which have been great I mean, I like soy sauce just fine but I enjoy some of their other products even more. Today though I was rewarded with this lovely little silicone baster. That's cool, I actually don't own a good baster and I'm a big fan of silicone kitchen utensils as they clean up so nicely. It smells a little fresh out of the box but with a quick wash we'll be set to jet. Thanks Kikkoman!

A Good Winning Pace

I've been lazy about updating. Oops.

I'm a big fan of secondary or otherwise "low-worth" prizes. They are very often the main product of the company doing the giveaways or sweeps and in most cases there's a reason why it's the companies bread and butter... or in this case salsa and queso.

Pace, best known for their salsa and queso dips has been running a giveaway promotion for a good long while now... the Pace Hand Pick & Win 2 promotion is run as a sweepstakes and, from what the claim on their site, 1 in 20 wins. The prize is simple but useful a $4 off coupon for any Pace brand product. This is really quite the deal, it can be applied towards the gigantic containers of salsa some grocers sell or it can be used to get a free product altogether if the total is under $4.This is actually the second time I've won a coupon from them... when I went to use one my grocer rang it up as the full $4 off my total grocery bill which was extra nice since the salsa didn't cost the full $4. Now if only I could win some chips.

Signing

Last weekend I took a trip to go see my fantastic girlfriend... her birthday was just 2 days before Valentines day so, with a bit of planning and penny pinching I made it from PA to CA to celebrate with her. We had an absolutely fantastic time and I still have to say if I never win another sweeps, another contest etc... I am still the luckiest guy there is. She just rocks.

But as luck would have it I *am* still winning things.

The day I got back I found a UPS sticker waiting on my front door. I had missed a package that required a signature.

Signature packages tend to be the best packages. If a signature is required it generally means the value of the package or the size of the package is considerable. Thankfully the very next day the package was signed for.

It was fairly large and had a bit of weight to it, I wasn't sure what it was at first. Club Bing was listed as the return addressee but I'd honestly forgotten what it could be, what had I ordered of this size? This weight?

I cracked the box open... ah ha:

I had entirely forgotten but some time back I had ordered the Cuisinart Hand Blender from Club Bing and it has finally arrived. As it turns out it has a whisk, chopper and a measuring cup too. Nice. Now all I need to win is a nice big house with a big kitchen to put it in.

D.I.Y. Rewards?

Design It Yourself, that's part of the catch behind Marlboro's recent reward program. Sometimes being on email lists and mailing lists can be a huge pain, it's really something I don't recommend for people without much experience in knowing how to skim through those obtrusively long fine print documents but if you can put up with it sometimes it pays off.

Marlboro has some pretty good incentives for people who qualify and sign up for their lists. Besides constant coupons etc. every so often along comes a nice little reward like the one I received in the mail not too long ago:


This T-shirt is simple enough but it's exactly what I wanted... the rewards program allowed you to chose your initials, size them, place them and then add any of the additional elements pre-designed by Marlboro wherever you wanted them, if you wanted them. I kept things simple, just my initials but it was what I wanted and even better than that it was totally, 100% free. No charge for the shirt, the design or the delivery. A big padded envelope with a nice big T I designed? Yes please.

Shameless 2 - Shameless...er

So, the last post titled "Shameless" (here) I talked about 3 different sites that gave some sort of daily incentive for using them; ClubBing, Swagbucks, and Lockerz. Today a quick recap plus an additional topic Pogo.com:

Now, I've already talked about ClubBing in excess (missed it? click here) so I'll just leave that one at a simple "it's worth it if you have time to play a few games each day". Seriously worth it.

Swagbucks has actually pulled up in the ranks as well, just a few days back I turned in another 45 Swagbucks in exchange for what is now my second $5 Amazon.com reward code. It's been easy to just use their search bar in my toolbar... while they do have more sponsored ads in their results than Google seems to they've generally done alright for my searching needs (and a little trick... when they don't fill my needs I search for "google.com"). Racking up Swagbucks has been easy as can be and they offer loads of rewards (for me the Amazon.com reward code is the best deal). If you are interested in signing up with them, again, feel free to use this referral link. Again, worth it.

Sad to say that Lockerz seems to be striking out. It's an amazing site as a social experiment... see how many people you can get to visit a site on a daily basis when there's really not much in the way of content (and next to no interesting content) while offering rewards that never seem to become available. Of the three this is the only one that has yet to pay out... at all. Boo to you Lockerz.com, boo to you. Not worth it.

Lastly I'm going to talk about a long running play for points site - Pogo.

Pogo is great if you are just looking to play any of the games they offer for the heck of it. They offer a number of popular, brand name games as well as some of their own making. In theory it's totally possible to take the tokens you win in game and turn them in for chance to win a daily, weekly or monthly cash prizes. If you check their self-affirming ads it happens to regular people all the time. Additionally people actively playing games are often awarded Pogo themed prizes (mugs, shirts etc).

That being said I'd like to note that if you are playing in hopes of actually winning something you seem to have better odds in Vegas. There are an excess of auto-playing programs made available by individuals for many of their games, some of their games are exclusive to paying members only (or folks like me who tried out a free month of club membership via some incentive program) and there's just not enough time in the day to play enough to gather enough tokens to have any chance against the millions and millions people have gathered already. I'd imagine Pogo is doing just fine as a business but as far a site that actually pays out? Don't bother, not worth it.

Bing, Bing, BingBingBing... Bing. Bing.

So over the holidays the one thing I did keep up with relatively well was collecting my ClubBing tickets from Microsoft. ClubBing, like its predecessor ClubLive, has continued to provide some of the most worthwhile prizes available. (see what's available now, click here) They offer a lot of simple little things but stuff that's worth having.

I've started to get a second sense for when my ClubBing packages are arriving as well. One day I was thinking about how the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W230 Camera I ordered should be due any day/time I went to check to see if I had missed any package drop-offs and just as I was going to look up rolled my favorite brown truck (many of the people who are big into sweeps talk about getting to know their local UPS drivers due to the number of packages they get sent to their homes).

It's nice to finally own a pocket-sized digital camera... it has a lot of nice intuitive features, pretty easy to use from what I can tell... sad to say that right now I can't actually tell much. The darned thing uses a memory card that, as far as I can tell, is exclusive to Sony. The Memory Stick Pro Duo is the official name; used for many of their cameras as well as their PlayStation Portable, which does me little to no good. I'm a photographer, I have memory cards all over the place but I've never owned a Sony camera so Ive never had need for this particular type. Boo to wins that require purchases to function. Boo I say.

Still a camera is a camera, who am I to complain?

Other recent ClubBing turn-ins include a DVD copy of Up, a present for the girlfriend (but I can't say which just yet), an Ogio half dome bag, and in the next few days I'll be turning in for my own copy of The Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. CD, and they've brought back a variety of American Airlines' AAdvantageFlyer Miles, which I will work on collecting any time there isn't a larger prize worth aiming for.

All in all, ClubBing still has my loyalty (even if their search engine still sucks).

Wendy's Follows Through

Wendy's has been a favorite source for some minor, yet consistently good prizes in the past. Over the holidays I got two of those fantastically plain white envelopes... the ones that look like nothing, look like a solicitation, look like a bill... the ones that have that odd, slightly raised stiff feeling right smack in the middle... a credit card? some sort of unnecessary membership card?

Ahh... it's my good old friend the gift card. The one shown above is good for $5 at Wendy's which is not too shabby, especially given their rather fair prices.

At the time of scanning I wasn't able to find the second of the two cards a $10 Home Depot gift card, lost in the piles to be found at a later date I suppose. I think that may go towards a little something for me, maybe a Ryobi auto-nailer (for those who haven't seen one - check it out here) or perhaps just some more sandpaper so I can get back to refinishing these great chairs I saved a while back. (edit: found the card... obviously)

In the end, I won't lie, when my family was trying to decide where to buy burgers for dinner one night I totally threw my hat in for Wendy's, if they're gonna be good to me by letting me win stuff, sure, I'll be good to them by giving them that much more business, why not? ($15 in gift cards received... $3o-some spent on dinner for a fair-sized family... I'd say it's worth it for the company)

Out of hibernation

Holidays have a magical way about them... of eating up time I had planned to use to post about recent winnings.

Marlboro sent out the free T-shirt I put in for, the lovely folks over at Wendy's sent out both the $5 Wendy's gift card as well as the $10 Home Depot gift card that I won through 2 different contests of theirs.

I shall update this post with photos and specific info sometime in the next few days.

I finally reached my ticket goal on Microsoft's Club Bing and turned in for an immersion blender. More info on that to come as well.

Biggest win over the holidays - started seeing an excellent woman. Cheesy? Yes. Don't care, she's great.

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!)

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.

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)