Photo by Simone Ramella
This past weekend my wife and I designated income from a certain source towards travel. It has motivated us to build up this savings account because we know once it gets flush we are able to take a vacation without feeling an ounce of guilt. The source of funds? Giveaway winnings.
Some of you might be wondering how you can possibly make enough money from giveaways to fund a vacation. My wife and I have gotten pretty addicted to entering (and subsequently winning) a large number of giveaways. We even have a weekly giveaway roundup on our website that lists 100-300 giveaways each week. My wife does all the work, so it really doesn’t take me too long to enter them and I know a lot of people are already utilizing our lists, so I expect our giveaway roundups to continue for a long time. Anyway, there are three main giveaways: PayPal cash, gift cards, and products. While it does take some time to enter, you are bound to win one – or many – over time.
Some giveaways are cash giveaways, which are my favorite. Nothing simpler than getting cold, hard cash transferred straight to your PayPal account. Last month I co-hosted a $480 cash giveaway and boy was the person who won excited! I can’t blame her, and I love that she was so blessed by the cash. We are launching a second cash giveaway on Thursday and it’s even bigger than last month’s. Anyway, because it requires no effort to convert the winnings into cash, cash giveaways are the easiest way for us to get money in our travel fund.
Another kind of giveaways are gift card giveaways. The gift cards being given away range in price, but you’d be surprised how many $100, $200, and $500 gift card giveaways there are. Secondly, many of these gift cards are to places that we would actually go. For example, most people would be able to make use of an Amazon, Target, or Walmart gift card. If we do win a gift card that we wouldn’t use it’s fairly easy to convert to cash. I won a $100 Gymboree gift card a while back and sold it at a discount to my Mom since she had some baby showers in the next couple of months. Additionally there are websites like Gift Card Rescue (check out my review of the site) that allow you to sell gift cards for cash.
Photo by Mike McCune
There are also product giveaways. Product giveaways are as good as cash because the product being given away is something that someone, somewhere is willing to pay for. When you win, the product is shipped to your house or apartment at no cost to you. There are quite a few big product giveaways that can be converted into cash or store credit. For example, my wife won a $400 Ryobi Lawn Mower. I knew that Home Depot sells this particular lawn mower so I brought it in the very next day and got store credit with basically no questions asked. Some products are more unique but can still be sold on eBay, Amazon, or Craigslist. I’m a bit lazy so I usually use Craigslist to avoid having to mess with shipping.
Think about how easy the Craigslist process is: product delivered to my door, product listed online with a few minutes of effort, buyer comes to my house or designated meeting area, buyer takes product off my hands and I’m left with cash.
I almost forgot to mention my favorite giveaway: vacation giveaways. People would be surprised just how many vacation giveaways there are. There are vacation giveaways both for locations in the United States as well as all over the world. There usually is at least a few per month. This would obviously be the easiest way to “fund” our travel ;)
The beauty of giveaways is that they seem to only be increasing. As more and more companies look for alternative marketing opportunities, there are more companies sponsoring giveaways. Additionally, giveaways that have incentives (i.e. like this blog on Facebook, follow this blog on Twitter, etc.) have really helped bloggers increase social media followers, as well as their traffic. At the same time, there is a relatively small percentage of people who enter giveaways. This means your chances are pretty good if you decide to enter a bunch of them. I do expect the number of people who regularly enter giveaways to increase once people realize how easy it is as well as how little time you really have to put towards it.
So what do you think of our idea to fund our travel through giveaway winnings? Are we crazy? :P
Many people have asked how much my wife and I have won from giveaways. I understand the reason for the question – to determine if it’s “worth it” to enter or to gauge how much we make “per hour” of effort. To me it’s a bit silly to gauge whether they are “worth it” or not based on a few months of data. A professional poker player who is playing winning poker can easily LOSE money over any given 100,000 hand run. They could go a full year with LOSING money, despite playing winning poker based on mathematic probabilities. I think that’s the best analogy for giveaways; the variance is too high to analyze any one person’s experience in a short amount of time. You could win a $25k cash giveaway one month and not win another giveaway for the next two years. With that being said, our winnings are in the thousands of dollars…which I realize that could mean $1,000 or $20,000…but that’s all I will say at this time ;)
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Sweet! I honestly never really think to sign up for giveaways. Maybe I should!
Holly at ClubThriftyIf you have time! You seem pretty dang busy. I still don’t know how people find time to raise kids.
I don’t think it’s crazy at all! If you can make it work and use the money for something fun like a vacation fund then I say go for it!
FrugalRulesWhen you have a goal in mind it strangely becomes easier to get motivated ;)
haha sounds like a fun plan. I saw one yesterday for a house in VA but then I clicked and couldn’t find it anymore, maybe you can put your housing budget there too lol.
RFIndependence A whole house?!? That would be awesome! I know HGTV does giveaways like that for their “Dream Home” each year.
DC @ Young Adult Money RFIndependence http://www.diynetwork.com/diy-blog-cabin-2013-enter/package/index.html
RFIndependenceOh nice! Thanks for sending that my way. I think the same company owns HGTV and DIY Network. I am pretty sure they BOTH do annual or semi-annual home giveaways. I really want to win one of these and sell it! Thanks for passing it along.
I need to start entering more giveaways! I stopped recently because of lack of time but I need to start back up again.
SenseofCentsI totally understand why you would stop. You’ve had a ton of side work on top of your full-time job, plus your wedding planning. BUT if you have extra time in the future you could at least scan the list and enter the big ones, like the $500 ones.
I have entered a handful of giveaways but no luck yet. Have you decided where your next vacation will be? Sounds like good motivation
BudgetforMoreWell my friend is getting married in Costa Rica in March and she asked me for my address. I think that means I’ll get an invite? If so, looks like that will be our next trip!
Sounds like it’s working for you guys, so why not keep it up? It’s not something I’ve personally gotten into. I’m one of those in the camp of it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort. I could well be wrong though, and like anything else it probably just has a lot to do with how you approach it. You guys seem to have a pretty good system down.
Matt @ Mom and Dad MoneyYep we definitely have a system down. My wife compiles the list of giveaways, while entering them, and it takes me less than 5 minutes now to prep the Friday giveaway roundup post. I spend an hour or two getting entries into a majority of the giveaways ending next week, concentrating on the bigger ones. We get traffic from the weekly roundup plus we win a decent number of giveaways and convert to cash when possible (just sold something last night on Craigslist). We keep track of the money from winnings separately from the rest of our money so we know exactly how much we have for our travel fund.
I think you’re right, there are so many more giveaways now than even a year or two ago. I think it’s great, and there are definitely much better odds of winning a giveaway than winning the lottery or something silly like that, that you have to pay to enter. I don’t enter as many as I’d like to because I always seem to run out of time. But even entering 10 a week or so probably increases your chances to win. You gotta be in it to win it, right?! :-)
StudentDebtSurvivorTime is killer. I try to enter all the giveaways that end the next week by Saturday or Sunday at the latest, then I don’t have to worry about it until the next week. Honestly if you just enter the 10 biggest giveaways you just might win a few here and there and it would only take 15 minutes or so to enter them.
I have not taken part in any giveaways and this piece has made me rethink. I will be trying out some . And I agree with you, the cash give away is very exciting. Who hates cash?
BorrowedCentsNothing beats winning cash! I’ll take products and gift cars as well, just takes some effort to convert them into cash.
I just can’t get into them. Maybe it’s because I don’t normally spend too much time on the computer at home and I can’t really enter them at work. Plus, I feel like most of the tweets that you’re required to send out are really spammy and get annoying. That being said, it sounds like it’s working out well for you and Victoria! More power to you for winning stuff, I’m definitely jealous when you actually win.
CommonCentsWealth I don’t know of any that require you to tweet, they are almost always optional. I find it amazing you are a blogger who does not spend much time on your computer at home! When do you write?
You’ve almost got me wanting to enter giveaways again. I love traveling… so attractive to be able to go for free (or almost free!).
Ugifter Definitely! We will likely be headed to Costa Rica next Spring so it’ll be a fun challenge to bankroll it 100% through giveaways.
That’s awesome DC! I’ve been entering giveaways on your list for a few weeks, but no winnings yet! I will keep my fingers crossed though. :)
ayoungpro I hope you win one soon!
That sounds like a fun way to raise money for your next vacation. And you guys seem to win quite often so it probably won’t take you very long to save up enough.
TacklingOurDebt I hope it doesn’t take too long – my friend is getting married in Costa Rica in March and I *think* the save the date is on the way ; )
Wow, Tha’ts great, I’m happy for both of you. I never considered entering giveaways, but I’m going to give it a chance now. They have to pick someone!
Thanks for sharing these lists and helping out everyone us!
That’s great to be able to fund your vacation on a side hustle that’s not the blog. I would like to get into entering giveaways, but like others, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort and time. Your results with it are certainly encouraging though!
JourneytoSaving Young Adult Money makes it easy- little to no effort involved because they are all listed and it literally can take 5 minutes if you just get one entry in some of the big ones. Someone’s gotta win and it might as well be you :)
Your not crazy! If you are winning why not? My problem is that I don’t have enough patience. If I enter 10-20 giveaways and don’t win anything I give up.
SingleMomIncome Haha you need patience and to realize that it’s a law of large numbers. You could win two in one day and not win one for a week or two.
I am always amazed by how money giveaways you find for your weekly round-up. I absolutely see how it can be beneficial (and fund your next vacation). My natural inclination would be to only enter those that are relevant to me, but you’re right – you can easily sell almost anything these days! Glad it’s been paying off for you and your wife – and yes, it will be extra sweet to go on that giveaway funded vacation! :)
Awesome!!!! So happy for yall! This is great!
BudgetBlonde Thanks Cat : ) I hope we win!
Wow, that’s amazing! Congrats on winning so many! I enter some. I won one once for those What to Expect books. I’m generally unlucky as a rule, though. :p Hope you guys get to have an amazing time on a giveaway funded vacay!
femmefrugality My wife is extremely unlucky, but if you enter enough of them you no longer need luck haha. Law of large numbers.
Thins is like a lot of things. If you enter 20 or 30 and you don’t win then most people just give up. If you have patience and stick with it it could really be worth your time.
OneSmartDollar Exactly. The nice thing is that not that many people really enter giveaways, relatively speaking. There could be a LOT more people getting entries in.
I think maybe I’ve underestimated the value of entering giveaways. I’ve only been entering the really big ones, but maybe it’s smarter to enter several smaller ones? I think that’s a great plan, and I love to come up with ways to fund travel or other wants without having to use real income, like pay the bills money, to cover it.
Eyesonthedollar I just enter them all haha. I do hope to bankroll our next vacation through the giveaway income. If we just stick with it, we should be able to.
I love this article…I am an avid sweeper, and when I first started entering my friends and family would make fun of me like crazy. I am in grad school and I live off my fellowship/teaching money (which is not a lot)..I use my sweepstakes win to supplement my income and treat myself to fun things. I do not think you guys are crazy for funding your travel through giveaways. Think of all the time people spend watching tv, instead of doing that I enter sweepstakes while listening to music…I won a paid trip to Orlando Studios in Florida, $5,000, ipad, ipod nano, digital camera, year’s worth of cinemark movie tickets…and lots of other stuff!!!
BellMartin That’s seriously inspiring! The $5k and the trip sound so awesome! I really really really want to win a big cash prize or vacation. I’m glad you don’t think we are crazy, and you certainly are proving that giveaways are worth entering!
Yeah definitely,i also believe in cash giveaway,it must be important to our future where i can save some money as a fund for our future…This post is really inspiring me..I’m happy to see this post here.Thanks for this nice sharing…
I need to get better with entering giveaways! I have a friend who just won tickets to Hawaii doing something very similar as your wife.