In between working and saving, it’s a nice idea to be able to win a little extra money, or a large amount of extra money. Luckily, there are systems and organizations in place that gives us the chance to win some money with little to no effort. Here’s a list of scam-free sweepstakes along with tips on how to find good sweepstakes.
Sweepstakes are Safe
There are entire websites dedicated to compiling and organizing information on sweepstakes, so make use of them! These websites include SweepstakesLovers, Contestgirl, and Publishers Clearing House at PCHsearch&win. There are also organizations that list their own sweepstakes, such as HGTV with their Sweepstakes Central. Other options include paying for membership, most often to a newsletter. These newsletters include Sweeties’ Sweepstakes, SweepSheet, and Sweeping America. This article from The Balance Everyday includes more than 15 listings as well as reviews of each website.
Find the Focused Sweepstakes
In addition to sweepstakes for money, there are also sweepstakes for books and cars. Part of your search for sweepstakes should include looking at what the awards are. Along with being knowledgeable about the types of sweepstakes, a post by The Balance Everyday also suggests having a mixture of of sweepstakes—enter some that are single-entry along with some that you can enter daily.
Search for Sweepstakes
Use your resources to do your research for you. Some sweepstakes don’t directly tell you if you won the sweepstake; they’ll just post on their website. Well, Google actually has a handy tool to help you scan your entries to see if you won the sweepstake. This article from, you guessed it, The Balance Everyday takes us through a step-by-step to set up Google alerts to notify us whenever our name pops up on the internet (which is a useful tool for not just sweepstakes!)
In addition to saving time by not having to check every one of your entries to see if you won, The Everyday Balance offers seven more tips on how to save yourself time in your quest to win some money. The first tip includes finding a safe program to help you automatically fill in your information, such as Roboform or Last Pass. Unfortunately, these programs aren’t free, so it’s a personal toss-up on the benefits of spending some money to potentially win quite a bit of money.
Odds
Again, with sweepstakes, we’re playing with chance, so The Balance Everyday breaks the odds down for us by analyzing the different factors, which includes looking at the number of entries each participant is allowed and the total amount of entries to the type of prizes. Toward the end of the article, it even includes good alternatives for what Sandra Grauschopf calls the “long-shot” sweepstakes, such as HGTV’s Dream Home sweepstake. These alternatives include unlimited entry sweepstakes, and Creative Presentation sweepstakes.
The Balance Everyday is a whole hub of information pertaining to sweepstakes, how to win, how to find them, and it even has its own updated list of new sweepstakes and contests. If you need any help from getting started, to increasing your efficiency in applying for sweepstakes, there are plenty of articles that offer tips and tricks and more.