The Sweepstakes

When it comes to sweepstakes it probably brings to your mind Publisher Clearing House Sweepstakes. They have been around for years and years and when they first started it was devised as a way to help sell magazines and increase circulation for the publishers of these publications.

The plan was that they wanted you to think (I might win) or be enticed by the sweepstakes offer to also order a couple of magazines, thinking this would increase your chance of winning. Then when your subscription expired you would keep on renewing the magazines. They still mail and offer this sweepstakes today but they have also moved into area where the are offering a large variety of products besides magazines to increase the sales and profit of affiliate companies that they are involved with.

Then in the early 1970's a few companies sprung up that used telemarketing to help the publishers increase their circulation. The bigger the circulation was for the magazine publishers, the more advertising dollars they could obtain. These Tele-Marketing companies would call on people and offer them these package deals on a variety of magazines and very often include a sweepstakes pitch to enter to entice the people to order.

I know this to be true because from 1991 until 2001 I worked for a magazine company that did just that. While not naming the particular company, I will say that I started out as a sales person, one that calls people to offer them a so-called deal on a package of magazines and enter them into a sweepstakes. Sometimes we even sent them a cheap watch just to entice them to order. After a few months I became the sales manager, the company was grossing about $300,000 a year in sales, and after ten years of managing this company our sales and revenues were slightly over 20 million dollars per year. We did all this just by calling people up and entering them in a sweepstakes and selling them magazines.

Magazines, sweepstakes and Tele-Marketing were a very great way to make a lot of money. Then came along all the "Do Not Call Lists", caller ID and privacy rules and regulations that pretty much put an end to making a profit with the tool of Tele-marketing. It was a nice ride while it lasted.

Which now brings me to the point of sweepstakes. Offering people an entry into a sweepstakes is still very much alive today but mostly and great profit, they are offered over the Internet. By offering these sweepstakes over the Internet these companies avoid the do not call rules and other privacy rules and restrictions. They simply use a disclosure and information form and the user or people who wish to enter do so at their own risk.

Absolutely ingenious! You can go online and search for sweepstakes to enter and you will never run out. You also do not need to spend any money to do this. However, it will take up a bit of your time and for the unsuspecting, the enticements of being offered good prices on products or service that you may or may not need is the reason why these sweepstakes exist in the first place.

So enjoy entering your sweepstakes but keep your money in your wallet!


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Casey Trillbar is the co-editor of 101waystomakemoney.com, a website aimed at supplying resources to people looking for ways to make money including affiliate marketing, building websites, paid online surveys etc, for more information visit: http://www.101waystomakemoney.com