If you are like me, you love a good contest or sweepstakes. But with
so many online, how can you tell them all apart? I find it easiest to
break them down into three categories: national brand contests, website
contests, and affiliate program contests. While not every online contest
fits into one of these categories, most fit nicely.National Brand
Giveaways
National brand giveaways are my favorites. They tend to have the
largest payouts with the least chance of your information being sold.
Prizes often include vacations, automobiles, and large cash prizes. In
addition, there are usually multiple smaller prizes in addition to the
grand prizes.
Various contest websites collect these national brand contests and
sweepstakes and earn no income off of your participation. The national
brands sponsor these contests mainly in an effort to achieve brand
recognition and publicity. Some will begin sending you coupons or
promotions, but only if you check a box that you allow it. Aside from
the contest directories, you can find these contests yourself by
visiting your favorite national brands online.
The national brand giveaways may also be in the form of recipe
contests or essay contests. Often they are tied to big events such as
holidays, sporting events, movie premiers, or awards shows. Examples of
sponsors of national brand giveaways include Procter & Gamble, Oprah,
Kraft, and Disney.
Website Freebies
Smaller companies will often feature low budget contests on their
websites as a means of getting website traffic. The website freebies are
also a way of getting you to sign up for a newsletter or company
distribution list. That is not to say that the contests are not worth
entering. In fact, your chances of winning are likely to be much better
than with the national brand contests.
Contest websites directories that feature national brand giveaways
will often include many of the smaller freebie contests as well. A good
example of the smaller website freebie is Usborne books. You can find
these contests by visiting contest directories or merely by searching
for your favorite types of products in a search engine with the word
"contest." Chances are good that you will stumble across these on your
own.
Survey Signup Contests
Survey contests are a different animal altogether. Although these
will sometimes feature a national brand as the prize, they are not
affiliated in any way with that national brand. You have to read the
fine print on the website carefully.
As far as I can tell, the motive behind the survey signup contest is
to gather your data for use (usually) by third parties. The down side of
these is that you can get added to lists where you will receive a lot of
spam (email junk mail). The up side is that you will often receive the
opportunity for free samples or discounts from vendors. The motivation
on the part of the website directory where you find the link is
generally that the website gets paid per number of entries.
You will predominantly find these listed in contest directories or as
part of advertisements. You can also search for the word "survey" and
your particular area of interest and you will find hundreds of them
quickly.
Contests in General
The bottom line with all of these contests is to know what you are
getting into. Read the print of every checkbox on the screen before you
decide whether it is worth it to enter a contest. All of the types of
giveaways listed above can be legitimate when done properly. One tip
that I give everyone is to set up a separate email account for your
contest entries. In the event that you get placed on a spam list, you
will protect your personal or work account for too much traffic or even
viruses.
At Helping Moms Connect, we carefully screen through all of the
different types of contests. Our main Contest sites
contain only
national brand giveaways with an occasional smaller website or survey
contest that we have personally taken and find to have true merit. The
remainder of the small website freebies and survey contests are placed
on our Get Paid pages so that you know to be more careful with your
information when you enter those.
If you have any questions or comments, we welcome your feedback at
contests@helpingmomsconnect.com!
Contest and
Sweepstakes Listings at Helping Moms Connect
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