One thing that has never made sense to me is playing the lottery. The odds against you are astronomical, and it’s nearly impossible to win. So why even bother?
Instead of playing the lottery I’ve started doing something with slightly better odds. In my free time I like to enter online contests – usually ones found on smaller sites and blogs. Instead of having odds of 300 million to 1, your odds are often closer to anywhere from 200:1, down to 50:1.
In the past year or so I’ve won the following things through blog contests:
- Nice 18V Cordless Drill
- $100 Amex Gift Card
- $50 Amazon Gift Card
- $50 Smarty Pig Gift Card
- 2 Books
Now granted, I did enter a lot of contests, but that’s not half bad for leaving a few comments, and subscribing to a few sites via RSS. You can do the same thing!
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Where Are All These Contests?
So how do you find these contests? I’ve found an easy way to find a ton of contests and giveaways to enter, and I’m going to share the secret. Twitter! All you have to do is go to twitter and search for contests using hash tags. For example, two of my favorite keywords to search for are:
When you do those searches you’ll almost always find tens of contests and giveaways to enter. Got a free 15 minutes? Go to twitter and you can easily enter 4-5 contests in those few minutes. It isn’t too long before you end up winning one of them like I did (5 times)!
Enter This Contest Now!
To get you started on entering all these contests, here’s a great giveaway currently being hosted by Elle over at CoupleMoney.com. To celebrate her blog’s 6 month anniversary she’s giving away a netbook computer! We bought a netbook for my wife a year ago, and she loves it! I’d love to win one of my own now!
Here’s what she’s giving away:
Asus 10.1″ Netbook – Crystal Black
- Windows 7 Starter
- Processor Type: Intel Atom
- Hard Drive Capacity: 250 GB
Netbook Kit
- Black neoprene bag with pockets for flash drives and small accessories
- Optical mini mouse with USB interface
- Self-powered USB hub distributes power equally among four ports
Contest Rules
All you have to do to get a chance to win is simply subscribe to Couple Money either with email updates or through RSS and follow Elle on twitter. Head on over to the site and there are additional ways to get entries to win!
There will be a drawing to pick the winner on Friday, March 26, 2010, so enter now for your chance to win! Last I checked you had a better than 70:1 chance of winning!
Even More Contests
Elle’s contest isn’t the only one going on right now. Here are some other contests you can check out, enter and hopefully win!
- This site is giving away $50! $25 will go to email newsletter subscriber #500, and another $25 will go to one random subscriber once we’ve reached 500. Subscribe now to win!
- Steve at My Wife Quit Her Job is giving away an HP iPaq Glisten Smartphone.
- Get Rich Slowly is hosting a video contest to celebrate the site’s 4th anniversary and the release of JD’s book, Your Money: The Missing Manual. Head over to read the rules. There are some pretty good prizes.
- Jenn at Frugal Upstate is giving away a copy of $3 Low Calorie Meals Cookbook by Ellen Brown.
As always you can also head over to twitter, and search for contests as well.
Do you have other ways to find contests to enter? Have you won any contests this year? Tell us about it in the comments!
I appreciate the contest mention! It’s a lot of fun so far and I’m discover some great new sites with it.
Elle´s last post ..And the Winner of the iPod Touch is…
Those are some nice giveaways, I’m headed to check out that netbook now.
I’m also giving away 3 copies of the Total Money Makeover at my site, check it out if you haven’t read it yet, or if you have a friend that needs it!
http://www.christiancommoncents.com/2010/03/15/total-money-makeover-giveaway/
Derek – ChristianCommonCents´s last post ..By: Christian Common Cents Launch
Or you could come to my site and have even odds or better of winning, depending on whether both my readers actually check in to read me!
I’m not joking. Well, maybe just a little. ;-)
Best,
Len
Len Penzo dot Com
Len Penzo´s last post ..Should I or Shouldn’t I? The Definitive Extended Warranty Litmus Test
lady I work with enters online sweepstakes all the time and wins nice stuff. Cash, vacations, electronics, all sorts of neat stuff. Not junk.
Thanks Peter. I have won some contests as well – it pays to focus on those contests that you have the greatest chance of winning. Once at an office party there were drawing buckets for giveaways. Everyone wanted the iPod, so there were a ton of tickets in that box. There were very few tickets in the Microsoft Office box, even though it was more valuable. I opted to go with Microsoft Office, and won! I sold it on Amazon or eBay (can’t remember which) and ended up having enough to buy an iPod if I so chose :)
John @ Wise Finish´s last post ..When will I get my federal income tax refund?