Free Cash Sweepstakes. For Real?

Millions of people join various sweepstakes everyday. Free cash sweepstakes are among the most popular. Why? Simple. Instead of regular prizes, you win cash which you can withdraw by purchasing various items, gifts or even pay the bills with that money. These attract enormous amounts of people all the time.

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never participated in any lotteries or sweepstakes. As long as a chance to win is so small, I never even bothered to enter and actually win something. But many people do and that’s great.

How Sweepstakes Work?

For those of you who are not very familiar, let me introduce you to sweepstakes and explain how they work.

Sweepstakes are usually run by companies with some kind of promotion to build awareness of the product. People entering sweepstakes are chosen randomly. It is called a contest. You do not need to use any skills or knowledge. Chances to win depend on how often, how many prizes there are and how many people join. With hundreds of thousands of participants, it’s hard to expect to win a lot, but some people do win small amounts and are happy users of such contests.

After saying that, I have to mention that sweepstakes companies do offer “guaranteed” prizes. What that means? You are guaranteed to win one of lets say 5 prizes listed. First prize may be a brand new car, seconds prize an LCD TV, 3rd to 5th prizes some kind of smaller gift items. No one wins the good prizes and you are guaranteed to get a cheaper prize. If you have nothing to lose, but your time then this might sound great. Unless, it’s a ripoff and a scam. Let’s see how to spot these:

Cash Sweepstakes Scams

As much as I’d love to believe in everything that sounds too good to be true, I have to be aware and always prepared to get scammed. Sweepstakes is not an exclusion. There are many cash scams involved and I’m going to mention just a few ways to protect yourself.

• Never Pay Upfront – Just like with work at home jobs, the company pays you and not the otherwise. If they ask you to deposit some amount of money in order to participate or receive your cash, it’s likely a scam. Legit sweepstakes are 100% free.
• “You’ve Won” Emails - How many times you’ve visited a site and saw a banner ad saying: “Congratulations: You’re the one millionth visitor and you’ve won.” It’s a lie. Later there are tons of hidden fees and requirements to go through. The same is here. If they claim you’ve won when you haven’t even participated, don’t click on any links.
• Suspicious Sweepstakes Notifications – If you get emails from some free email providers like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and so on, most likely it’s a scam. If they don’t use your personal name and say “Dear Sir/Madam” it’s fishy. If there are typos or language seems as it’s written by someone from the East, ignore and don’t interact with any links in email.

Sweepstakes or cash sweepstakes are a great way to get free money for doing nothing and be able to pay the bills, taxes and so on. While this cannot be called a business, some people do win good prizes and if it only takes few minutes of your life, go ahead and join the contest. However, as with everything free and dandy online, there’s scam to it as well. Follow these tips to avoid getting ripped off.