Thursday, December 6, 2007

With the holiday season quickly closing in, gift-giving is on the forefront of most of our minds. Here is a list of inexpensive gift ideas for the sweepstaker in your life:

Basic supplies:

Someone who enjoys sweepstaking by postal mail will always enjoy having extra supplies such as pens, plain white 3x5 cards, plain 3x5 notepads, #10 envelopes, stamps, and standard size postcards (available at your local post office). For a more personal touch one could create a kit that would contain all of these items in a hand-decorated box for easy storage. This could be done for less than $20.

Fancy #10 Envelopes:

Decorated envelopes, either pre-printed (readily available through your local printshop), or ones you have decorated yourself, will be a welcome gift. Also stickers, or other simple embellishments for envelope decorating, will do nicely for those who enjoy this aspect of the craft.

Sweepstakes Newsletters

Many sweepstakers will enjoy newsletter subscriptions as gifts... (it's the gift that keeps on giving). Some of these would include Sweeping America, Best Sweepstakes Newsletter, Rags to Riches, Winning Ways, and more. Many are available in an online format as well as the usual paper format, with subscription prices starting at about $15.

Return Address Labels

Always handy when contest rules allow them, these are time-savers as well as decorative and functional.

Gift subscription to Club Pogo

I recently received my special edition four year badge for being a member of Club Pogo, started in quest of winning prizes, and continued for love of the site. Pogo has a wide variety of games available, ranging from word games, to card games, to board games, casino style games, and more, with many awarding tokens for playing. Tokens can then be used in exchange for entries into drawings for cash prizes of $50 daily, $250 weekly, and $1,000 monthly along with drawings for various other prizes. Tokens can also be used to "purchase" items for your Pogo "mini" (a character that is displayed along with your screen name that can be personalized in great detail), and for various other purposes, such as playing the slot machines and some of the other casino-style games. Many of the games will also award a jackpot spin after reaching a certain score, from which you can win tokens, Pogo merchandise, and progressive cash jackpot prizes of up to $4,999. Other features too numerous to mention abound throughout the site. Subscription prices are $5.99 a month, or $39.99 a year, with a free-trial offer available.

Text to enter sweepstakes are a fun way to enter sweeps when you are on the go. Though these sweepstakes are still free to enter, standard text messaging charges may apply from your cellphone provider, so be sure to check your cell phone plan before entering.

Here are some quickie text-to-enter sweeps...

Matt Blatt Text to Win Sweepstakes

Grand Prize of one Apple 8g iPhone, valued at $600, OR one Sony Playstation 3, valued at $600. Monthly prize (one left for the month of December) of an iPod Nano 2G, capable of holding up to five hundred songs.

To enter: Text the key word MATTBLATT to MYABC (69222)

Enter daily, ends December 31, 2007. Void where prohibited.

SITV's Music Madness Sweepstakes

Offering a Grand Prize of $1,000 (awarded in the form of a check) which may be used towards enjoying the concert of your choice.

To enter: Text the key word MUSIC to GOSITV (467488)

One entry per person/mobile phone number per day. Ends December 14, 2007.

High School Rock-Off Text2Win Sweepstakes

Begins January 11, 2008, and ends January 31, 2008.

Six winners will be chosen in a random drawing to win two tickets to a "mutually determined Live Nation concert". The high school band with the most votes will win a Motorola Motorizr phone (valued at $229.99) for each band member.

This sweepstakes is open only to legal residents of Ohio who are thirteen years of age or older, though some areas may be ineligible to enter.

To enter: Text the number of your favorite Ohio High School Band to 74974 (though the numbers are not listed in the official rules, you might be able to find this information out from the high school you wish to vote for)

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