Not a Contest – A Sweepstakes

I have been advised that what I have in mind for my giveaway is not legally a ‘contest’ but a sweepstakes.  In a contest, you have a winner based on some sort of performance, like the ‘best’ entry, or the most entries, or the highest number of some sort of significant event (such as an affiliate sale, which doesn’t apply here). In a sweepstakes, you are just getting people to enter your contest by performing some action (which must not cost any money!), and the winner gets chosen by a random draw from all of the entries. Contests have lots more legal pitfalls than a sweepstakes. In a sweepstakes, you mainly just have to make sure you really deliver what you say were going to deliver, and make the choices the way you say you are going to make them.

I have come up with the first prize: A student model violin, with free shipping to anywhere in the US. That deal is worth about $200. I already have the violin, so I won’t have to obtain one for this. I also have a 2nd prize, but I have to get some work done on it first, so I will wait until that is done to announce it. It’s used, but once the work is done, it will be better than it was new. It will be worth about $125. And I have a possible 3rd prize, but I have not yet received it. When I do get it, I will test it and review it, and then, if it is as good as I hope it is, I will finalize my sweepstakes and publish the rules. If I decide I don’t like it, I’ll substitute something else of approximately the same $30 value. The rules will be similar to last time, but I may also throw a requirement to post on Facebook and/or G+ in addition to commenting on this blog and tweeting. That’s because the whole point of the sweepstakes is to get more traffic, and more visibility to my blog. It boils down to buying traffic indirectly. Instead of paying for advertising, I’m asking you to spread the word for me, and I hope it’s more fun that way.

I think that I have chosen prizes that will appeal to the sort of people that would be interested in my blog. I did have a few suggestions (mostly by email instead of comments, which I would have preferred), and I took one of those suggestions for the 2nd prize (which I will announce when it’s ready). A couple of folks suggested that I offer some other books. I might try that in a later give-away after I get more traffic, but I suspect that most folks just aren’t all that excited about the possibility of winning a book (I could be wrong about that; maybe I just didn’t choose the right book last time). I also have some possible 4th and 5th prizes.

I should have everything in place in 2 or 3 weeks, and I will run the sweepstakes for either a set period of time (TBD) or a minimum number of entries (also TBD). Probably something along the line of, say, 60 days or 2000 entries, whichever happens first. When I announce the sweepstakes, I will post the rules, time limits, etc., along with photos of all the prizes.

Since I haven’t set everything in stone yet, I’m still open to suggestions. If you have a suggestion about what you would like to see in this sweepstakes, please leave a comment on that below.

Stay tuned!

(Edit Sunday night, 11/6/2011)  It appears that something about this post attracted the attention of some major spambots and malware sources located outside the US. It may have just been a coincidence, but I got an enormous traffic spike in the half-hour or so after I posted this, from some strange IP addresses that were reported as spambot and malware attack sites by Project Honeypot. I have currently shut down all access to this site from outside the US. As I find out more about this possible malware attack, I may adjust those settings, but for now, this site should be invisible outside of the US.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2011 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Giveaway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.