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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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