Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Holiday Instant Wins and Sweepstakes are Heating Up

The holiday prize games are starting to come in and there are some really good ones this year.  Big brands are really trying to outdo each other with big prize numbers.


Here's a sampling of some of them we've come across the last few days.

27 Days of Giveaways Contest is giving away 1,602 prizes over 27 days, worth $200,000!

Bake Sweet Memories Game (Bake Your Holidays Merrier) is giving away 10,000 free product coupons.

Chevrolet and Conan O'Brien are giving away Twenty Pine Tree Air Fresheners in Twenty Nights (oh, each one "wrapped" in a 2011 Chevy Cruze).  That's 20 cars being given away, worth over $580,000 in total!

American Express Season of Surprises is giving away one $100,000 check, ten $10,000 checks and 2,000 $25 gift cards.  That's over 2,000 prizes with a total value of $250,000.  (See the "more info" button on Win.ly for the secret to getting a free code without purchase).

Wow.  That's over thirteen thousand prizes worth over one million dollars in just those four.

There's plenty more and new ones are coming in each day.  Now is a good time to really get in the habit of playing every day to get the most out of this fun time of year for prize hunting.

Don't forget to sign in to Win.ly and mark these as your "Likes" to remind you to play each day.

Good luck!  Let's see how many Win.ly members take a home one of these prizes!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Top 5 Craziest Sweepstakes Prizes

The world of sweepstakes prizes sometimes gets repetetive.  Another trip?  Another gift card?  A car or motorcycle?  The latest Apple products?  Join the group.

Here's to the brave and brazen who take a risk with their prizes and make things a bit more interesting.

5. Swarovski-Encrusted Gotchi Figure

I know very little about Swarovski crystal outside of I think it's expensive and used to "encrust" things to make them expensive.  I know less about Gotchi Figures.  But I guess put them together and there's someone who really wants one.

http://win.ly/prizes/sweepstakes/prize-game-3115

4. Nothing

This is a clever prize description to support Jones' "Zilch" soda, with the tag line "Win Absolutely Nothing".

The trick?  The prizes are actually having various bills paid for you for a month by Jones, so you pay "nothing".

http://win.ly/prizes/searchprizes/prize-game-2817

3. Bacon

Ok, it's not actual bacon.  They advertise it as bacon, but the prize ends up being groceries (which you could buy bacon with).

But, the second prize is great.  A bacon-shaped USB drive containing Farmland® recipes.  (There's a picture on the site).

http://win.ly/prizes/sweepstakes/prize-game-3018


2.  Underpants

You don't actually win underpants, but you win a trip to run in the "BVD Underpants Run in Kona".  Who knew there was such a thing?


http://win.ly/prizes/searchprizes/prize-game-3081

1.   A Corpse

Well, almost....

Just in time for halloween, Fear.Net is running their "Halloween Hung & Skinned" Sweepstakes.  The prize?

From the Creature Corps' Haunted Attraction Catalog comes "HUNG & SKINNED", a highly-detailed life-sized corpse, suspended from the very wooden rack on which he met his demise. On the rack you'll find implements of torture and pain, while a metal tub sits firmly at the bottom, waiting to collect the victim's bloody entrails as they drip from the lifeless body.

http://win.ly/prizes/searchprizes/prize-game-3172

Hurry, this one ends on 10/22.
 
For more fun with prizes, visit Win.ly

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Multiply Your Odds of Winning: Play Early and Often

This rolls up in to one of the big themes here:  "Don't get discouraged."  Winning prizes is all about perseverence.

The great thing about Win.ly is that it can really cut down on the time this would otherwise require.  But you still have to keep at it.  Games that give prizes to nearly everyone who play do come along from time to time, but they're not the norm.

Take an example of a highly rated game on Win.ly and let's pretend we know the exact odds of winning.  In this case, let's say it's one in one hundred odds.

This would rate as a "green ball on fire" on Win.ly so you'd certainly be seeing it towards the top of the list and be interested in playing it.

So let's start with player one, who gives it a try, doesn't win and just marks it as a "dislike" and never comes back.

Now let's compare to player two, who notices that you're allowed to play every day and so, comes back every day for the full two months of the game.

These are the odds that the two players have enjoyed:
  • Player one?  One in one hundred chance of winning, or about 1%.
  • Player two?  Better than one in two chance of winning, or about 62%.
Quite a difference.  Player two will more likely win a prize than not win one, where player one would have to get really lucky.

So keep it up.  And remember, it's not work, it's fun.  Once you start winning prizes it's exciting and addicting.  And Win.ly allows you to not have to invest hours a day.  But don't get fed up too early, give it a chance to work for you.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Site Refresh. You like?

We gave the site a little refresh.  In a word, everything is a bit bigger.

Bigger fonts, bigger buttons.  It's all much more easy on the eyes and feels a bit lighter and easier.

Let us know what you think. 

Win.ly prize directory

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Want to win an iPad? An iPod? A Cruise?

We just updated our search to also include the entire rules of all live games.

So now you can search on specific prizes (gift cards?   iPads?  iPods? Cash?  Cars?  Trucks).  This is a pretty powerful way to pick the games you want to play.

And combine with a full membership and you can cross reference to see what your odds of winning are.

Try it out and see if you win the prize you want.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Thought for the Day: There's a lot of prizes out there waiting for someone to win them

"Win.ly is currently rating 310,073 prizes worth $11,115,712.00"

That's the banner across Win.ly today. That's not just an estimate either, it's calculated exactly each time you load the page.

Think about it, most of these games run for about two months. 

So over the next two months, almost a third of a million people are going to win prizes worth over $35 on average.

The prizes are out there.  Get out there and win some.  If you haven't won yet, prepare yourself for a thrill you could really get used to.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

What's the Single Best Tip for Winning Prizes Online?

Whether you're a hobbyist who enjoys playing online sweepstakes and instant wins for the thrill of winning prizes, or simply a casually interested internet user looking for a fun diversion for a few minutes a day, winning prizes is fun and it's why we do it.  Filling out registration forms and seeing "Sorry, try again tomorrow" is not fun, that's the "other" part that we put up with while waiting for the next "Congratulations!  You're a winner".

So it would seem that we all want to spend less time with the "try again" and more time seeing "You've won!".  But how can you do that?


Recently we examined the difference between two very different games to show how much more often you'll win playing a game that has high odds vs. playing a game that has bad odds.

Let's take that a step further and pick five games at random vs five games from the top of the Win.ly rating.

Of course, Win.ly doesn't know the exact odds of winning (nor does it need to) it just knows close enough.  For example, if you join a church raffle in the morning and then go to a sporting event and drop your name in a box for a prize there, you know you're competing against a few hundred people for the church raffle and tens of thousands for the sporting event.  You don't know the exact odds of winning, but you know the church raffle has hundreds of times better odds.

So, taking a rough estimate of the top five Win.ly rated games, you have about one in twenty chance of winning a prize at the top rated game down to about a one in 200 at the fifth.  That means for every twenty times you play the first game, you'll most likely win a prize and for every 200 times you play the fifth game, you'll most likely win a prize

Taking all five together, it comes to an average of 1 in 100 of winning a prize on each.

Assume you play each game each day, so that's 5 plays a day.  If you do this for 20 days the odds say you will have won a prize by then.  That's less than three weeks!

Taking the five random games we picked, the average of winning is about 1 in 23,000 on each.  Doing the same math, you would need 4,600 days or just over 12 years to win a prize.

So how do you make sure you're playing the games with the good odds so you'll win?

We know of only two ways.  Join a traditional sweepstakes directory and spend hours each day playing a huge number of games hoping to get a prize.  This works for many people, but is very time consuming.

Or join Win.ly and start at the game with the best odds of winning prizes and work your way down.  You'll hit all the best games and most likey win as many prizes, for just a few minutes a day.

A few much more pleasant minutes.

Give it a try.  It works.  Play the top five or ten Win.ly rated games each day for a month and we'd be amazed if you're not hooked on the thrill of winning prizes

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Anatomy of a high ranking sweepstakes (and a low one)

Looking at two promotions on either end of the Win.ly Rating Engine scale gives good insight into the advantages that the automated ratings give.

First let's look at the Sobe "Heads or Tails" instant win, which is currently at the top of the rating list by a wide margin.  Actually one of the highest ratings in the history of the engine.  [The engine has been running since the summer of 2009]

What are the key factors?

First of all: number of prizes.  Wow!  Over 490,000 prizes worth just short of $2 million in total.  (And that's not even counting the BOGO coupons).

Second: duration.  Only three months.  That's over 16,000 prizes given away every day.

Third: traffic.  Although the site has moderately high traffic estimates, it isn't high enough to effectively diminish the odds.  So there are relatively few people competing each day for those 16,000 prizes.

That's a recipe for a really good chance to win prizes.

Now compare this to "Game Z" [name withheld for politeness] with one of the worst ratings on the list.

This is a sweepstakes for one prize.

It runs for nearly eight months.  Average prizes per day?  Less than .005 (that's "five one thousandths").

And it lives on a site that is getting HUMONGOUS amounts of traffic.

Rough estimate of traffic is about 20 times more than what we are seeing with Sobe Heads or Tails.

Simplifying quite a bit for a rough estimate, you have (approximately) one twentieth the number of people competing for 3.2 million times more prizes (on average per day).  So that's (shockingly) 64 million times better chance of winning a prize on Sobe Heads or Tails.

Yes, you read that right.  64 million times better chance of winning a prize.

This, my friends, is the value of Win.ly.  Are you wasting your time on "Game Z"?

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Do coupons count as prizes?

Do coupons count as prizes?  In a word, "no".

Legally speaking, they certainly don't.  Win.ly follows the same guidelines and for the same reason.

It's not really anything of value unless you buy something from them, which is a pretty big condition.

So when calculating chances of winning prizes, Win.ly ignores coupons and other things that have no legal ARV (average resale value).

A good example is the Shop, Play & Save Instant Win (click to take a shot at winning their prizes) promotion.  It's a great promotion, with a very respectable 2,057 instant win prizes to be given away.

But Win.ly ranks it as having only 257 prizes.  Why?  The rest are all coupons with no inherent resale value.  So it won't rank nearly as high as it would have had all 2,057 been pries of actual retail value.

But it's still a good game.  And it's still giving away prizes worth over a half million in resale value so give it a shot and let's see how it ends up in the ratings.

Edit:
Keep in mind we are talking about "coupons" meaning a partial reduction in price.  Like the kind you get in the Sunday Paper.

"Coupons" that are redeemable for completely free products (often referred to as "vouchers") are in fact acceptable as prizes and do contain value.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Some Quick Stats on Sweepstakes and Instant Wins That You Actually Have a Chance to Win a Prize On

Wondering what percentage of major sweepstakes, instant wins and contests out there really provide a decent chance to win a prize?

We just ran some quick summary stats.  Based on the Win.ly ranking groups:

Green on fire (best chances to win a prize):  less than 3%
Green (good chances to win a prize, worth playing): 6%
Yellow (probably not worth playing): 35%
Red (don't waste your time): 56%

(Numbers don't add up to 100 due to rounding).

Wow.  Goes to show how crucial it is to know the odds.

Also kind of makes you feel bad for the poor folks who are wasting their time on games that that they'll never win a prize from.  Knowledge is power.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Why does Win.ly have a "Purchase Component' marking when it's illegal to require purchase?

It's because of something generally referred to as "Alternate Means of Entry" or AMOE.

What this means is, someone can run a sweepstakes or instant win that effectively requires purchase (requiring you to enter a code that is printed inside a label on the product, for example) as long as they also provide an AMOE.

But the kicker is that these AMOEs vary quite a bit.  Some games are nice and allow you to email in for a code, or even just "click here" to get one.

Others require you to fill out an entry and mail it in, often with detailed constraints on how it must be filled in and what must be included, in order to get a code back by mail.

So, although technically you can't be barred from any of these games by not purchasing, you may have to go through some extra hurdles beyond the usual "register and go" sort of entry.

And that's why on Win.ly we call it "Purchase Component" instead of "Purchase Required".  It's just a helpful marking so you can better assess the games you wish to play.

(If you haven't seen it, it's the little "dollar sign" symbol next to the promotion name.  That along with a "21" (for age requirement over 21), a black and yellow striped sign (for "other restrictions) or a globe (for foreign language or other international elements) help you to quickly gain additional information about the game.)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Q&A: Should I decorate my mail in sweepstakes entries to get a better chance of winning a prize?

I've seen advice blogs out that there that advise all these silly methods of getting your mail in entry selected in a sweepstakes--like using a big envelope, stuffing it to make it heavy, decorating it, even putting oragami in it.

Well, I hate to tell you but this is a giant waste of time.  The firms that run these sweepstakes do not look at each envelope individually, nor do they throw them into a vat and physically select winners.

Winners are always selected by computerized random number generators that are matched to the entries by id number.  So the only thing you can do to increase your chances is to follow the rules to the letter so you don't get disqualified.

(Note that we are talking about sweepstakes.  Contest submissions are a totally different story.)

Please visit Win.ly for the best chance to win prizes on online games.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Q&A: How often do I need to play to win?

Obviously we can't tell you how often you will win, that will vary based on what games are out there, how diligent you are in playing them, and how lucky you are.

But during an average period of time, if you play the top ten to twenty ranked promotions as often as you can (usually every day, but they vary) you should be seeing a prize at least every couple months if not every month.

The key is that you have to keep at it.  Just because http://Win.ly can tell you which are the best, doesn't mean the best win every time you play. 

It means if you play every day over a period of time you have a decent chance of winning a prize.


We recommend playing the top ten or twenty every day (or as much as possible) for the first month (right now you get a free month of premium for registering, so take advantage of it).  If you had no luck winning a prize, let us know and we'll extend you a free month to see if your luck gets any better.

We love hearing from you.  Reply to this blog, send us an email at feedback@win.ly or send us a direct message on Twitter at WinlyPlaySmartr.

Good luck!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Why not use an automatic form filling service to enter sweepstakes?

Automated form filling services claim to be able to use an automated process to submit your information to hundreds, maybe thousands of promotions a day.  By shear number this should increase your odds of winning a prize, right?

You'd think so, but there's a lot more to it.

Look at the rules for nearly any promotion and there will be a clause in there that says
Use of any automated program to enter will result in disqualification. 
So first and foremost, you're breaking the rules.


But what if you're not concerned about that?  What if you'll take the prize and not feel guilty about it?


Well, it's not that simple.  Nearly every promotional agency worth its salt has many layers of very sophisticated ways to detect and automatically disqualify entries from automated entry methods.


So in the end you're paying a service to submit "hundreds or thousands" of registrations (Do you really know how many they really are submitting and to what promotions?) most of which will never even count.


The registration service gets their money -- they win.  You don't.


There are only two ways to consistently win prizes from these games.  One is by becoming an expert, reading blogs and posting on message boards and spending a lot of time each day on your hobby.  The other is by using Win.ly, which will allow you to spend just a few minutes a day and quickly enter just the games worth entering.  


Of course the experts could also benefit from Win.ly.  :-)

Monday, February 8, 2010

Q&A: What's the difference between a sweepstakes, an instant win and a contest?

A lot of people use the term "contest" (or sometimes "sweepstakes") as a catch-all for any online, rules governed promotion that is giving away prizes.  But there are really three main types of these promotions.  And knowing the differences is very important for knowing which ones to play.

Note we are excluding things like "giveaways" and coupon offers in which everybody who registers and meets the requirements gets something.  We are concentrating on the "many will enter, few will win" type promotions.

Contest

The game is a "contest" when it is based on some sort of skill rather than random chance.  These games usually have you submit something like an essay, a photograph, a video, etc. and then judges select the best entry or entries and they receive the prize or prizes.

These tend to allow one entry during the game.

Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes collect entries during a period of time, then perform a random drawing to determine the winner or winners.

These can vary in their entry frequencies, from "unlimited" to "daily" to "once" to even "once per period".

Instant Win

Instant wins, as the name implies, let you know whether you won immediately after playing.

Most instant wins "seed" winning times evenly throughout the period the game is running and generally the first person to play after that time wins.

Most instant wins tend to be daily entry although other variations exist.

Summary

As you can see, contests can be tough unless a) you are extremely good at the subject matter of the contest or b) you happen to know that there aren't very many entries (because you use Win.ly).

But keep your eye open for contests that might be tough to enter due to the complexity of the subject matter.  They often get very few entries and can be worth the effort.

Sweepstakes are tough for two reasons.  They tend to have more people vying for a small number of prizes, and you're totally at the mercy of who comes in after you.  You might find a sweepstakes that no one knows about and get your entry in without much competition, and then two days before the drawing, word gets out and an avalanche of entries comes in and buries yours.

That's the great thing about instant wins.  If you identify one that has good prizes and few people playing, you can cash in immediately.  Win.ly consistently has instant wins among the highest rated for this very reason.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Q&A: How do I know which games have the best chance for a BIG prize?

Win.ly premium membership provides two main views of the rankings. 

The default view is by chance of winning any prize.  It's our opinion that this is the best way to go.  You'll do better in the long run by winning as many prizes as you can and not worrying about the size of each individual one.

But there is also a "Dollar Weighted" view available.  This will take the dollar value of the prizes into account also.  So for example, a game that's giving away a hundred thousand tiny chocolate bars might rank pretty high on chance of winning a prize, since there are so many of them.  But if you switch to dollar ranking it may show up lower in the list since the dollar value is smaller.

Sophisticated users will access both views to figure out their core list of promotions they want to enter, mark them as "Likes", then play as often as they can using the "Only my Likes" view and the built in last played and total play counters.

Try it out next time you log in to Win.ly.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Get Win.ly Premium For Free With Our Referral Program

A program that is proving very popular with online instant win, sweepstakes and contest players is our referral program.  What's different from many other referral programs is that you don't have to actively recruit people, or send emails to all your friends (unless you want to) or really do anything besides get your link out there and see who clicks on it.

When logged in to Win.ly, just click on My Account at the top and then the Referral Program tab.  You'll see your personal Win.ly tiny url listed.  Take that url and put it anywhere you like.  In your forum signature, on your Twitter profile, in your blog, email it to friends, post it to Facebook, Tweet it out as often as you like, whatever you like.

Anyone who sees your link and clicks on it and then signs up for a paid subscription will get you an extra free month of Premium subscription to Win.ly.  If twelve people happen to come through you could have full access to which Instant Wins, Sweepstakes and Contests are statistically most likely to win you a prize.

Don't miss out on this opportunity.  It really works.

http://Win.ly

Friday, January 15, 2010

Anatomy of a high ranking sweepstakes (and a low one)

Looking at two promotions on either end of the Win.ly Rating Engine scale gives good insight into the advantages that the automated ratings give.

First let's look at "The Dollar General Fresh Start Sweeps", which is currently at the top of the rating list by a wide margin.  Actually one of the highest ratings in the history of the engine.  [The engine has been running since the summer of 2009]

What are the key factors?

First of all: number of prizes.  Holy Moly.  Over 20,000 prizes (Worth almost a half million dollars in total).

Second: duration.  Only about a month.  That's well over 600 prizes given away every day.

Third: traffic.  This site is showing very low traffic estimates.  So there are relatively few people competing each day for those 600 prizes.

That's a recipe for a really good chance of winning a prize.

Now one stipulation here that's an interesting point.  This is a sweepstakes, with a drawing after the end.  So even though your chances are great now, you still have the risk that a ton of people can play after you and reduce your chances before it gets to the drawing.  That's the big advantage of Instant Wins, you are playing against the current traffic, not the total traffic of the entire game period.

[Note, between the time we originally drafted this post until this morning, the traffic has already greatly increased.  It's still at the top of the ratings, but now just barely.]


Now compare this to "Game Z" [name withheld for politeness] with one of the worst ratings on the list.

This is a sweepstakes for one prize.

It runs for nearly eight months.  Prizes per day?  That comes to less than .005 as an average.

And it lives on a site that is getting HUMONGOUS amounts of traffic.

Rough estimate of traffic is about 3 orders of magnitude more than what we were seeing with Dollar General.  "Orders of magnitude" is a somewhat technical term, but for simplicity sake we'll call that about 1,000 times more.

Simplifying quite a bit for a rough estimate, you have 1,000 time more people per day competing for 130,000 times more prizes (on average per day).  So that's (shockingly) 130 million times better chance of winning a prize on Dollar General.

Yes, you read that right.  130 million times better chance of winning a prize.

Now, there are a lot of estimates in there.  The broadest is the site traffic.  It's certainly possible that "Game Z", although getting thousands of times more traffic per day is only getting hundreds, or even tens of times more actual game plays.

But even at "tens of times" more actual game plays, we're still looking at 1.3 million times better chance.

This, my friends, is the value of Win.ly.  Are you wasting your time on "Game Z"?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

How to use Win.ly with the free membership

At the free level of membership, you don't have access to the Rating Engine results, but you still can take advantage of the management tools to gain an advantage in your prize hunting.

First a quick summary of the tools available, then a strategy on how best to use them.  The tools:
  • In the main listing:
    • Ability to view by type (Instant Win, Sweepstakes, Contest or Other)
    • Ability to view only your likes, all but your dislikes, or all.
    • Ability to search on keyword.
  • When you're visiting a game
    • Ability to mark contests as "I won", "Like" or "Don't like".
So a good strategy would be this.

On your first day:
  • If you're an experienced player, search for your favorite sites with the keyword search, visit them (and play) and mark them as "Like"
  • For all players, from the main listing, set the type to "Instant win".  Instant wins generally provide the best chances at winning prizes so it's the best place to start.
  • Peruse the listings and play games that interest you. Look for brands that you use and like, prizes that appeal, etc.  Also look for games that are receiving a lot of likes from the rest of the community (as shown in the orange bar graphs).  As you play these games, mark them as "Like" if it's a game you want to continue to play or "Don't Like" if you don't want to play again.  If you're not sure, don't mark either.
  • Return to the listing and do the same for Sweepstakes if you have time (there's generally way more sweepstakes than instan wins) and contests if you're interested ("contests" here meaning games where you have to submit something like an essay or a photo and there is some judging element).
Each day afterword.
  • Return to Win.ly daily, log in to the listings and set the type to "Instant Win" and the likes setting to "Only my likes"
  • In the listings, for each game you'll see a count of how many times you've played plus a date and time when you last played.  This makes it easy to go through the list and play the daily games.  As soon as you visit the site, your listing will be updated to "Today" so you know you've already played today.
  • Repeat for sweepstakes, contests and others if you choose.
  • Then look for new sites.  Set the type to "Instant Win" and the likes setting to "none of my dislikes".
  • Look through the listings.  New listings (added within the last 5 days) have green borders and are marked "Recently Added".  Also review games that you were undecided on before that you may want to add to your likes.
By using this process you can have a really solid routine for making sure you play the games you like (and just don't forget about them) and work new ones in.

Plus you can see some neat statistics. Like when you do win a prize, you can see exactly how many times you played before you won it.

Planned additional features:

We plan on adding a list of your wins to the "My Account" section.  That way you can track them and check them off when they arrive.  (Or follow up with them if you don't receive it).  It's also a handy automated way of keeping a list of your winnings, as many gamers do, instead of keeping a manual list.

Possible new feature:

Display for each game its entry frequency (Once per day, one time only, etc.).  We're interested in feedback on whether this would be useful.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Q&A: Why join Win.ly if I already play lots of online games and win?

It's all about time

Remember, Win.ly is not only a tool to win more prizes, it's also a tool to save time.

Just as it makes sense to play the games with the best chance of winning prizes, it's a waste of time to play games that have astronomically bad odds of winning.  And there are a lot of them out there.

Plus, there's bound to be a highly rated game or two that you didn't know of from your other directories.

So think of Win.ly as a way to play instant win games and sweepstakes smarter.  You'll win at least as often, but using only a fraction of the time.  And could quite possible win a lot more.

Plus, you'll play more consistently  The Win.ly tool makes it easy to track when you last played an instant win and make sure you hit it every day.  It also makes it easy to flag a set of games as your favorites and make sure you play them as often as the rules allow.

How many chances to win are you losing because you forgot to play a given day?  Or you forgot that a certain instant win game allowed you to play every hour and you were only playing once a day?

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

An introduction to, and background of Win.ly - Part 2

In part 1, I gave a history of how the initial idea behind Win.ly came about.

Now a little more about how it all came together.  There are really three elements to estimating the chances you have of winning a game.  They are:
  1. Number of prizes
  2. Frequency of prizes won
  3. Number of visitors competing for these prizes.
If you knew all three of these, you'd know the exact odds of winning a prize.

Now #1 and #2 are relatively easy.  All of these games are required to publish rules that specifically state quite a few parameters which can then be used to always exactly determine the number and frequency of prize awardings.

But there is no way to know the number of visitors exactly unless you have access to inside reports from those who run the game.

But in recent years, a number of services have arisen that give some glimpses into traffic.  The challenge for the Win.ly Rating Engine was to gather these diverse statistics from various sources and then arrange them appropriately to gather a close approximation of the traffic.

That, along with the exact answers to 1 and 2 give us a close approximation of the odds of winning any given game.

And that is the magic of Win.ly.  The rating engine runs every night, automatically gathers thousands of statistical points from various services, rates every single promotion based on estimated odds of winning, then ranks them in order from best to worst.

And the difference from best to worst is quite significant.  More on the odds we've found in a later post.  But promotions at the top of the list have proven to win in less than two weeks in some circumstances.

Promotions at the bottom you could most likely play for several lifetimes and never win.

So the value for Win.ly is not only providing a tool that might allow a player to win more prizes, but also one that will save a lot of time that might otherwise be wasted on games that have extremely low odds of winning.

Sign up for a month of premium membership at Win.ly.  It doesn't cost very much.  And then let us know your results.  We're pretty sure that you'll be more than impressed.

Monday, January 4, 2010

An introduction to, and background of Win.ly - Part 1

The initial idea for Win.ly arose several years ago.  I happened upon an instant win game that had a not uncommon issue, the game was up and live prior to when the marketing around it was really able to get organized.

So the end result?  The instant win game was very hard to find, but once you found about it, every play was a winner.


That's right.  There were so few people coming to play the instant win game that everyone won.

The reason this happened has a lot to do with the way most promotion firms run their instant win games.  (More details on this in a later post).  Suffice to say for now that there is generally an allocation of prizes per day.  So if less people came in that day than there are prizes, everyone wins.

This obviously doesn't happen too often and when it does, it's very hard to find about.  But it leads to another conclusion.  What if a game is getting low traffic for other reasons? Maybe not so extreme as the above example, but let's say it's only getting 500 visitors per day and giving away 50 prizes per day.

Every instant win game play then has about a one in ten chance of winning.  That means if you played the instant win each day you would only have to play for about a week and a half (on average) to win a prize.

That led to wondering how many games are the opposite--getting tens of thousands of visits per day for a small number of prizes.  Making the chance of winning almost zero and any time spent paying a complete waste.

In part two, I'll describe how all the pieces came together and the Win.ly rating engine got started.

In the meantime, stop by and visit Win.ly and check it out.  Drop me a note if you have comments, I've been known to give out free Premium subscriptions for valuable feedback. :)