Top Six Myths about Online Sweepstakes

1. You're just asking for an inbox full of spam

This may be true if you're clicking on any flashy popup ad that you come across.  But if you rely on a reputable prize games directory like Win.ly, then you'll only be playing legitimate prize games.

These games are run by brands who care about their reputation and who follow national laws such as "CAN SPAM" that prevent them from emailing you unless you check the box giving them permission.  Even if you do give them permission, you will have a chance to revoke that permission in every email you receive.  (Look for the "unsubscribe" link, usually at the bottom of the email).


2. No one really wins

Legitimate prize games post official rules and in many cases file these rules with certain states and post bonds against the prizes, etc.  And they all contain a section in the rules to find out who the real winners were after the game is over.


3. You'd have a better chance winning the lottery

For some that's true.  For others, you'd be surprised how good your chances are of winning a prize.  That's the whole foundation for Win.ly -- knowing one from the other makes all the difference.

4. Automated submission services are the way to go

It's possible you might snag a win or two but these services are not only expensive, they also break the rules of nearly every promotion.  Don't waste your time, you could quite likely actually win, then be disqualified without ever knowing it.  Don't waste those wins, register legitimately to make sure you don't get disqualified.

Besides, modern browsers like Chrome come with auto-complete functionality that makes it very quick to enter and still be be very safely within the rules.

5. You can't trust the companies running these games

Again, if you are using a reputable games directory like Win.ly, you are only playing legitimate prize games.  The sponsors are spending a lot of money to try to provide you with a good experience with their brand.  And the administrators live and die by running smooth promotions.  They both have a lot on the line.

6. You have pretty much the same chance of winning on one as the other

You might be surprised at the difference in odds.  There are games out there with such a small chance of winning that you are literally wasting your time by playing them.  And there are often games out there that if you play every day for a month you are almost guaranteed a prize.

This is why Win.ly is so useful.  Free members get sneak peaks into the odds every day.  If you've opted for our email updates, you'll get the Number 2 and Number 3 best odds games delivered to your inbox each Monday morning.

And of course premium members get access to all the rankings all the time, including a nicely sortable list of the games with the best odds.

One thing never changes--you have to play to win.  Go to Win.ly right now and get in the running for cool prizes.  Good luck!

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. :)