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!

Looking to Win a Ford Focus Sweepstakes Prize?

If you're looking to win a Ford Focus, then now is the time to do it.

Ford is really taking the sweepstakes route with its Ford Focus.  There are no less than seven sweepstakes running now with a Ford Focus as their prize.

The list

http://win.ly/prizes/searchprizes/page1?search=Ford+focus&submit=Search

If you're interested, don't forget to log in (or register) first so you can track your play. And for the daily entries, add them to your "likes" so you can easily get back to them every day.

Click for more info on how to win prizes with Win.ly

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

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.

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.