Almost everyone likes to earn something of value. These days, with all the contests and special offers being run by major retailers across the country, you don’t need to buy lottery tickets to enter and win valuable items.
With just a bit of searching, you can find many websites that list all kinds of contests you can enter. Participating in these contests is usually absolutely free. Sometimes you will have to complete a survey or answer a series of questions.
Others want you to buy sample packs of products. Those are the kind of contests you might prefer to avoid. If you’re persistent, you can win trips, cars, clothes, electronics, and probably the most popular items these days: gift cards.
Gift cards are popular gifts because they have obvious advantages over other types of products. Gift cards are available in virtually any practical amount, from as small as ten dollars to much larger amounts of hundreds of dollars. That makes it easy for a contest planner to choose an appropriate prize value. They’re also easy to ship, unlike most durable goods.
Gift cards are also extremely practical from a winner’s point of view. They are the next best thing to cash out. They’re easy to use and just as easy to re-gift if you don’t feel like shopping at that particular store.
Most contests that use gift cards as prizes are pretty straightforward. Simply register for a chance to win. But unlike lottery tickets where there is no effective strategy to increase your odds of winning, with online contests there are some important ways to improve your odds.
First of all, you should look for websites where many gift card giveaways are held. The more gift card drawings, and the more frequent they are, the better your chances of winning. Some sites even automatically enter you into multiple drawings with just one entry.
In some cases, you can also increase the number of entries you can make. The more times you participate, the greater your chances of winning. For example, if you can enter twice, you double your chances of winning.
Some online contests accept multiple entries, but many do not. In those cases, the contest generally allows only one entry per email address. The most obvious way to get around this restriction is to sign in with a different email address. Some people even take this to the extreme and open multiple gmail or hotmail accounts.
Contest organizers are not happy when they see this happen, and may even reject multiple false entries of this type. But there may be other ways allowed by the rules to enter multiple times. For example, at least one site runs more than one contest at a time. Each contest has a separate group of entrants, but when a giveaway is held, all the entrants are put together in one group.
Other contests allow you to enter multiple times during the course of the contest. For example, you may be allowed to login once a day or once a week. With a month-long contest, being able to enter once a week for four weeks allows you to improve your chances of winning by 400%.
Other contests allow additional entries to do things like endorse or recommend, “like” a Facebook page, or write a comment on a Facebook page or blog. Taking advantage of these opportunities can increase your chances greatly.
The downside is that you’ll have to spend a little more time reading the rules and completing the entries. But it’s hard to argue against this approach when you consider how much better your odds of winning can be. If you’re serious about entering contests, you might as well maximize your opportunities by taking advantage of all the legitimate strategies available to you.