Are you looking for a side hustle that allows you to make extra money with minimal energy, that can be done from the comfort of your home, and that you can start and stop whenever you want with no repercussions?
Allow me to present you with this idea: entering giveaways.
In the past my wife and I have both used entering giveaways as a side hustle. It was the perfect side hustle for our busy lives as it was something we could do while watching TV shows and required little energy on our part.
Despite no longer treating it as a side hustle, we both still enter giveaways from time-to-time. For example, a local card club gives away poker tournament entries on their social media accounts. It takes almost no effort to enter and in the past six months I’ve won entries into tournaments worth $250 and $125.
Once you realize how many giveaways are online – and how many new ones are started each day – you quickly realize the potential of giveaways as a way to make extra money.
Before I dive into any more stories (read on to hear about our free trip to Hawaii), I’ll talk about the logistics of entering giveaways as a side hustle, the ideal way to go about it, where you can find giveaways to enter, and what you can expect.
Entering Giveaways as a Side Hustle
Entering giveaways is a numbers game: the more you enter, the more likely you are to win one. On an individual scale, you aren’t likely to win any one giveaway. If you enter a giveaway and 99 others also enter, you have just a 1% chance of winning. This is why you will want to enter hundreds, if not thousands of giveaways if you want to make extra money on them.
Giveaways can be an unforgiving side hustle because you could go weeks or months without winning anything. There are other times where you may win multiple giveaways in back-to-back weeks.
If you want to make extra money on giveaways, you need to be willing to consistently enter a bunch of giveaways while also being patient if you go week after week without winning anything.
If that doesn’t scare you off from entering giveaways then this just might be the side hustle for you!
Let’s start by talking about ideal giveaway wins. The absolute ideal giveaway win is cash (typically given through PayPal). Cash requires no effort on the back-end. Take a baby seat as an example. If you win that you will need to sell it to someone if you want to convert it to cash. Cash giveaways are always ideal!
The second best giveaway win is a gift card. Many gift card giveaways will be for stores that most people use, such as Amazon or Target. These giveaway wins are almost as good as cash because they are for stores where you shop and can use the gift cards in lieu of cash. If you get a gift card you don’t want you can always sell it on a site like Raise.com which buys unwanted gift cards and turns around and sells them to buyers at a discount.
And then you have everything else. I’ve won everything from a kid’s bookshelf to a car seat to a Pfister kitchen sink faucet. These can all be converted to cash through Craigslist or eBay. Some items can be returned to stores for store credit, but check return and exchange policies before going this route.
Another thing to keep in mind is the possibility to give things as gifts. One time I won a box filled with a blogger’s favorite things. It was a lot of small, random things but some of the things worked out well as gifts for people who I know would actually use the stuff.
A final special category of giveaway wins is travel giveaways. As someone who travel hacks and likes to travel for free or as cheap as possible, travel giveaways are some of my favorite giveaways. There are two things you should keep in mind, though, if you enter travel giveaways:
- Non-transferable – While it can’t hurt to ask, you typically can’t get cash value of a travel prize. There are some exceptions, though, such as most giveaways on The Travel Channel where you could elect to take a cash prize instead of the trip.
- Taxes – Travel giveaways – and actually all giveaway wins – count as taxable income. For example if you win a trip valued at $5,000 you are going to have to pay taxes on it as though you made $5,000 of income. This can be off-puting for some people who are entering giveaways as a side hustle because you end up paying money at the end of the day. It’s still a “free” trip, but you will want to make sure it’s a trip you actually want to take.
Now let’s talk about where to find all these online giveaways.
Where to Find Giveaways
One big secret about the blogosphere that millions of people don’t realize is that there are tons of giveaways on blogs. On Young Adult Money alone we have easily either solely hosted or co-hosted over thirty giveaways, some for prizes worth thousands of dollars.
Giveaways are a great way for blogs to promote their sites and gain exposure, not to mention boost their social media and traffic stats. Blog giveaways typically have a lower number of entrants than giveaways or sweepstakes hosted by big brands. The less entries the better your chances of winning.
There are a number of places to find giveaways, though websites that list giveaways tend to change over time. For example we hosted a “Friday Giveaway Roundup” on our site for about two years where we listed between 100-300 giveaways that were ending every single week. We no longer do this, but there are still no shortage of sites that have lists of giveaways.
Here’s a few different places you can find giveaways:
- Blog Giveaway Linkys
Blog giveaway linkys are great places to find a list of giveaways to enter. Simply googling “Blog Giveaway Linkys” will give you endless search result for sites that have giveaway linkys, which are essentially places where blogs can add their giveaway to a list of giveaways.For example the first result I see is Living Well Mom’s list of giveaway linkys. She has a long list of weekly giveaway linkys. All you have to do is click on each to see a list of giveaways you can enter.
Now giveaway linkys come and go, so it does take some initial work to find ones that are still ongoing and haven’t discontinued.
- Giveaway Promote
Giveaway Promote is a great site to find giveaways. There are constantly new giveaways added and usually there are bigger ones laced in as it does cost money for giveaway hosts to have their giveaways listed there. I’ve personally spent a considerable amount of money promoting Young Adult Money giveaways on the site.Some other websites that list giveaways are Just Sweep, Contest Girl, Online-Sweepstakes.
- Twitter Searches
Searching for giveaways on Twitter is easy. Searching for hashtags like “#Cash #Giveaway” or “#Travel #Giveaway” can help you find giveaways. As you enter more giveaways, you will quickly find that many ask you to tweet giveaways for entriesEven following certain people who enter an obscene number of giveaways can help you find giveaways. This account and this account have consistently been tweeting giveaways for years.
- Company Giveaways
As I mentioned earlier the local card club near me regularly has social media giveaways for poker tournament entries that are valued between $100 and $1,000. These are big prizes and because they are appealing to a small geographic locale and even smaller demographic (poker players), there typically isn’t more than 250 entries.Keep small businesses in mind when looking for giveaways. Typically they will have a small number of entries relative to some of the bigger brands.
What you should take away from this list is that there are a lot of giveaways out there. If you are going to treat entering giveaways as a side hustle there can never be too many giveaways – you will want to enter as many as you can.
My Experience Entering Giveaways as a Side Hustle
Giveaways can be a great side hustle and my wife and I made thousands of dollars entering them and either winning cash or selling our winnings for cash. We’d enter around 100 giveaways a week, which can be done surprisingly quickly if you can find a good list of giveaways that you can go through.
We’ve won gift cards ranging from $25 all the way up to $250. We’ve also won a number of random things that were worth over $100, such as an electric lawn mower from Home Depot ($400), a car seat, and kid’s toys.
My two biggest wins were travel giveaways. One was through a Pepsi sweepstakes where I won two tickets to the MLB All Star Game, a two-night hotel stay and airfare. Since the All-Star game was located in the Twin Cities where I live I was able to negotiate $500 cash instead of airfare. I ended up selling the tickets on Stub Hub for around $250 each.
My second big win was a trip to Hawaii. This was actually more of a competition of who could refer the most users to IZEA’s influencer marketing platform. This was an awesome trip valued at $5,000, but after taxes and a rental car it was still a decent amount of money out of our pockets. I wasn’t complaining!
If you’re looking for a work-from home side hustle, entering giveaways might be a good fit for you.
What’s the biggest prize you’ve won in a giveaway? Have you ever or would you ever consider entering giveaways as a side hustle?
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My wife enters giveaways and sweepstakes on a regular basis. Her biggest win so far was a $1,000 Amazon gift card. Even if the main prize is cash, one caution is that you may win a runner-up prize. She won a tailgating set (a gazebo tent, two chairs and a beanbag game) as a runner-up prize and we decided to take it to try to sell. But it’s become somewhat of a nuisance to sell and now we wish we had turned it down instead of having it take up our precious storage space. Only accept prizes that you really want or you can easily sell.
Very cool to hear about the $1,000 Amazon gift card! I’m very surprised you are having trouble selling the tailgating pack. It sounds like an easy thing to offload on Craigslist.
I remember when you won the trip to Hawaii. That was awesome. I used to love when you had the giveaway post on your blog. I don’t apply to as many giveaways as I should. I need to start back.
Yeah the lists seemed to be pretty popular! Too much work, though, and unfortunately couldn’t be justified. There’s some other good sites out there, though, so definitely easy to find giveaways.
I never thought giveways in this way, meybe I”ll give them a possibility as new side hustle:P