This is an online sweepstakes with a twist. A lot of people are going to pass on entering because each entry requires a recipe, but it is not a recipe contest. The rules clearly state that you can get the recipes from other sources as long as you name the source (cookbook, website, grandma, etc.) and do not use any of the recipes from the sponsor's website.  Your recipes will not be judged. Winners will be selected via a random drawing. So even though it is not a recipe contest it does require a little extra effort to enter this one. The old saying is true...the harder it is to enter, the easier it is to win!

To find the “Cooking With My Honey Bear” Sweepstakes on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list do a Custom Search by typing honey in the Contest Name field. To find true Cooking Contests and Recipe Sweepstakes select "by Type" and then select "Recipe/Cooking/Food Contest".

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

The FAO Schwarz Fall Into Fun Sweepstakes is offering 4 fabulous bundles of toys as prizes. The Best Buy® Halo®: Reach New York City Flyaway Sweepstakes is giving Xbox 360 consoles to 25 winners. There are dozens more current sweepstakes offering great prizes that you can use for gift giving during the holidays. But you need to be entering these Game and Toy giveaways right now in order to have any prizes you win delivered before the holidays.

Judging agencies can be notoriously slow in shipping prizes to sweepstakes winners. You will receive them, but not always as soon as you would like. I have always entered the sweepstakes offering hundreds or thousands of small prizes throughout the year than hide them as they are delivered. It has been a big help with my holiday budget to start the season with free gifts and stocking stuffers. So, if you haven't already started working on your holiday stash...GET BUSY! Oh...and be sure to keep an eye out for local promotions. Not only do they give you better odds of winning, they are usually a little quicker with the prize deliveries as well.

To find the FAO Schwarz Fall Into Fun Sweepstakes, Best Buy® Halo®: Reach New York City Flyaway Sweepstakes and other sweepstakes offering games and toys as prizes on the SweepsU.com Contest and Sweepstakes list do a search by clicking on "by Prize" and "Games/Toys/Video Games & Systems". To find a specific prize such as Xbox 360 consoles, do a Custom Search by typing xbox in the Prize Description field.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

Mitsubishi's Win a Trip to Japan Sweepstakes will award one lucky person a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto, while the TripAlertz™ Pre-Launch Sweepstakes will be giving 251 people a hotel package of their choice.

Trip and Vacation Sweepstakes are a great way to see the world on a budget and they are the most frequently offered sweepstakes prize. But remember they are not totally free. Uncle Sam will be asking for his share of anything you win. So watch the prize value and make sure you can afford to pay the taxes before you enter.

To find trips to foreign countries on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list do a Search "by Prize" and select "Travel - International". To find trip sweepstakes awarding hotel only or airfare only select "Travel - Partial". To find trips to a specific location do a Custom Search and type japan (or hawaii, vegas, disney, etc.) in the Prize Description field.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

The Gadling and jetBlue AYCJ Sweepstakes started on August 25th and ends on September 1. On Tuesday, August 24th the Entertainment Weekly “LOST” Box Set Contest ran for 8 hours only. Both of these are extremely short running sweepstakes which really ups your odds of winning. If sweepers do not check their sources regularly, these short ones are over before they even know about them.  To get in on as many of the short running sweeps as possible check the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list regularly and keep an eye on the "Start" date as well as the "Ends" date. Your sweepstakes entries have a much better chance of being selected when there are fewer entries to compete with.

To find the Gadling and jetBlue AYCJ Sweepstakes on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list do  a Custom Search and type gadling in the Contest Name field. To find the EW “LOST” Box Set Contest, look in the SweepsU.com Forums under "Urgent Sweeps".

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

Blog Giveaways are wonderful and you only have one week to enter the ones participating in the Back-to-School Giveaway Bash. All of them end at 3 p.m. EST on Monday, August 23rd. Eleven different blog sites are participating in the event in conjunction with some great product sponsors.

Blogs are fast becoming a very popular way for sponsors to promote their products. There are so many blogs out there on every subject imaginable and many of them have thousands of followers. Marketing reps have realized that having bloggers review their products and give a few away to their readers is an incredible marketing strategy. It must be paying off because we are seeing it more and more. These blog giveaways are handled very differently from traditional sweepstakes and contests, but the prizes are every bit as good. So do yourself a favor and give it a try, but be warned...you may end up staying for more than the giveaway. These blog sites can be very interesting!

To find all the blog listings on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list, do a search for "by Type" and select "Online Blog".

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

The Soup Scan Sweepstakes requires that you find a can of Campbell's soup with the new label and take a photo of you holding it. Sears Big Switch Sweepstakes allows you one entry online and one through Facebook, but if you really want to win one of the appliance packages worth thousands of dollars...

...you can submit an unlimited number of essay entries. Neither the photos nor the essays will be judged. These are not photo contests or writing competitions, but these methods of entry will scare off a large percentage of sweepers.  Most people are afraid of skill contests. The minute they saw that a photo was required they passed on entering the Campbell's cash sweepstakes. Many may enter the Sears Sweepstakes once through the online and Facebook entries, but they won't even try for the extra essay entries which is how they could really get ahead of the competition. Even knowing that the winners will be randomly selected, People just don't want to take the extra time or do the extra work.

Most sweepers are looking for the quick and easy entries, which could be to your benefit. If you are that rare person who is willing to do the extra work you will have way fewer entries competing with you for the prizes being offered. One fact I have learned over the years, the harder it is to enter, the easier it is to win!

To find the Soup Scan Sweepstakes on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list, do a Custom Search by typing the word soup in the Contest Name field. To find the Sears Big Switch Sweepstakes on the list type switch in the Contest Name field.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen

The final round of the Kroger Summer of Savings Game begins today and gives sweepers an excellent opportunity to win some free food. The prizes are not big ones, but there are so many of them that the odds are good that you will win something!  If you haven't won any prizes lately...

it may be just the motivation you need to get you in the mood to start sweeping again. Winning a prize, no matter how small, gives you the incentive to continue entering. The more sweepstakes you enter the more likely you are to win something, which once again stimulates you to enter even more sweepstakes and hopefully win more prizes. It really is a sweepstaking Merry-Go-round! So instead of strictly entering the big travel sweepstakes or the House sweepstakes offering one prize, look for something with hundreds or thousands of lower level prizes. Winning a small prize may be just the mental boost you need to keep going until you win that big one.

To find the  Kroger Summer of Savings Game on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list. Click on Custom Search and type kroger into the Contest Name field.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

The DNC “Guest Experience Sweepstakes” is a travel sweepstakes that is giving four winners a choice of five fabulous destinations. One trip will be awarded every three months. The catch is that you are only allowed to enter once per month and since your entries roll over you don't want to miss a single month for a full year. So how do you remember to get those entries in when the rules only allow them once a week or month?

You could keep a calendar and write down all the limited entry sweepstakes you are interested in manually, a time-consuming job that takes you away from actually entering sweepstakes. And then you have to check your calendar regularly to see what entries are due...hoping you didn’t miss any! Or you can let the SweepsU.com Sweeps Management System (SMS) do it for you. Once you place a sweepstakes in your tracker, the SMS does all of this automatically and more! It warns you if you try to enter again too soon and it will not include limited entry sweepstakes in either your Daily Email Notifications or Sweeps Unleashed until another entry is due.  The SMS knows when you last entered and how often you are allowed to enter each sweepstakes and contest you are tracking.

So, to be sure that you get your entries in on ALL the great sweepstakes and giveaways without the hassle of keeping track of those dates yourself, give the SweepsU.com SMS a try. A 7-day free trial is just a click away!

To find the DNC “Guest Experience Sweepstakes” on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list, do a Custom Search by typing dnc in the Contest Name field. To find sweepstakes that only allow you to enter once a week or month, click on “by Frequency” and select “Weekly” or “Monthly”.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

The Kmart Instant Win Sweepstakes can give sweepers paying close attention a real advantage. Specific prizes are distributed each of the three months it runs...

The first month of this internet sweepstakes is August 3-31, not quite a full month, that’s a slight advantage. They are giving away two Grand Prizes and two First Prizes in August as opposed to one in each of the following months, another good advantage. Not everyone will know about it right off the bat, so it will receive fewer entries towards the beginning, a big advantage!

There is a certain amount of strategy that can be implemented when deciding which sweepstakes to enter to make the most of your time. Look for little details such as the ones pointed out above, which could give you an edge. Sometimes that’s all you need to receive that highly sought after “CONGRATULATIONS” message.

To find more tips on how to win sweepstakes read Gwen’s article, “What I look for in a Good Sweepstakes” in the Sweeps University library. To find the Kmart Instant Win Sweepstakes, do a Custom Search in the Sweepstakes and Contest list by typing kmart in the Contest Name field.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

Trip sweepstakes are one of the most frequently offered prizes available, but if you find one that can only be entered by a smaller group of people be sure to enter. This is the case in the Caribbean Giveaway that is only open to three states...

Residents of CT, FL and NJ should be all over this internet sweepstakes. It offers 25 people a chance to win a luxurious vacation in the Dominican Republic. This is exactly the kind of sweepstakes I look for to enter...limited eligibility and lots of prizes. If you do not live in one of the eligible states for this promotion, use it as a guideline of what you should be on the lookout for. Then be ready to enter when you find one for your area.

SweepsU.com puts locals side by side with the national sweepstakes on our Sweepstakes and Contest list, because we consider them the best of the best. If you do not want to view regional (state) sweepstakes that you cannot enter it is easy to eliminate those not open to your state from the list. Just click on "by Status" and then click on the box next to the words "Hide listings you are ineligible for (by region)". Then you will only be able to see the limited area sweeps open to your states and the nationals (of course). If at any time you want to view the sweeps not open to your region, just un-click the box and you will see what's being given away in other parts of the country.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp