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

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

Meijer has two new sweeps that just started, the Sweet Style Sweepstakes and Back to College Shopping Spree Sweepstakes, but only five states are eligible to enter. That makes these a great promotion to get in on. Any time a sweepstakes is limited to a specific area of the country…

…your odds of winning are increased. At SweepsU.com we list local sweepstakes alongside nationals, because we want you to win! So always watch for locals sweepstakes that increase your chances of winning!

We also want to save you the time of looking through sweeps you may not be eligible to enter. The SweepsU.com Sweeps Management System (SMS) knows your home state and color codes each sweeps listing for you. If the wording “Only in…” or “Void in…” under and to the right of the Sweeps name is RED, you are not eligible to enter. If the wording is BLUE, you are eligible to enter the promotion. If you prefer not to even view sweepstakes that you are not eligible to enter, select “by Status” in the Search menu, then check the box next to the words “Hide listings you are ineligible for (by region)”. All of those sweeps with red letters that you couldn’t enter are now hidden from your view. If you want to see them again, just uncheck the box and they will reappear on the list instantly.

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

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

The JW Marriott Indianapolis 30-Day Giveaway is giving away a fantastic trip to the Indy 500 and 30 $50 AMEX gift cards, but it has an extra perk as do many on line sweepstakes. If you tell others about it you will be entered to win the contest prize, in this case a $250 American Express gift card (same as cash in my book). Not the biggest prize around, but many people will shy away from it, because it is a small prize and a lot of extra effort is required to enter.

Anytime a promotion requires that the entrant do more than submit their NAZP, there is a drastic drop in numbers. Everyone wants to do the quick easy entries; few will make the effort to submit the harder ones. That’s why skill contests bring in only a fraction of the entries received in a sweepstakes. You have much better odds of winning a contest prize than you do of being a sweepstakes winner. Goes back to one of my favorite sayings: The harder it is to enter, the easier it is to win!

To find the JW Marriott Giveaway or the Forward to a Colleague Giveaway on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contest list do a Custom Search by typing jw in the Contest Name field.  To find other sweepstakes offering Cash Prizes, click on “by Prize” and select “Cash”.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen

The Little Debbie "Back Yard Makeover Giveaway" is offering a large number of good prizes, but you must be careful to enter only once each week. The Meet Rascal Flatts Sweepstakes is giving away some fabulous trips and gift cards, but you can only enter it once a month.  With hundreds of new sweepstakes popping up every week, many people forget to go back and enter these sweepstakes the following week or month.

This gives the person who does remember to follow through on their weekly and monthly entries a bit of an edge. Anytime a sweepstakes has an element that makes them slightly harder to remember, they will receive fewer entries. You need to be careful though. If you submit an entry less than a week or a month from the time of your last entry for these two sweeps, you run the chance of being disqualified.  It is very important to maintain good records when entering these sweepstakes.

To learn how the SweepsU.com Sweeps Management System (SMS) keeps track of ALL your sweepstakes entries whether they are daily, weekly, monthly or one time only, read the Quick Start guide. Scroll down to the section about Sweeps and Contests and pay close attention to Tracker, Daily Email Notifications and Sweeps Unleashed.

To find either of the sweeps mentioned above on the SweepsU.com Sweepstakes and Contests list, do a Custom Search by typing debbie or rascal in the Contest Name field. To find other promotions that require limited entries, click on "by Frequency" and select any of the weekly or monthly options.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

Upromise “Back To School Pop Quiz Daily Prize Giveaway” and Bar-S $10,000 Back to School Sweepstakes are both offering multiple prizes to make it easier on your wallet as you get the kids ready to go back into the classrooms. It is definitely that time of year and "Back to School" sweepstakes are popping up everywhere as retailers do whatever they can to get your attention.

Be on the lookout for short running local promotions. Read the ads in your local newspaper carefully and keep an ear to your local radio stations. If you really want to get serious, then turn that dial frequently. Each radio station has a different set of clients and promotions you hear about on one station may not be on another. Another great source of local giveaways are the radio remotes where they broadcast live from a retail location. You only have a few hours to enter most of these and can frequently walk away with some very nice wins. One of the best starting places for finding information on what's happening in your area is your local sweepstakes club where members share information about local promotions. So, if you are alert and prepared to do a little footwork there are some wonderful opportunities in your future.

To find the sweepstakes mentioned above and other new sweeps featuring "back to school" prizes on the SweepsU.com Sweeps and Contests list, do a Custom search and type school in the Contest Name field. Remember you can now save these custom searches by clicking on the "Save" button in the top bar. A box will open in the left menu asking you to name your search. I named this one Back to School and clicked Save. Tomorrow morning I will click on "Saved Search" in the left menu and "Back to School" and all of the new and old sweeps and contests with the word school in the title will be listed for me. You can save as many different searches as you want and just delete them when you no longer need them. As always these features can be used on both the main list and within your own tracker.

Take care and win BIG!

Gwen Beauchamp

21 years ago Robert and I sailed away on the Coca-Cola Isle of Dreams Treasure Hunt Cruise...along with 500 other winners. We boarded Carnival Cruise Line's Jubilee and departed for a private island in the Caribbean where we searched for hidden treasure.

I didn't do too good in the treasure hunt, my prize was a whopping $20. But I struck gold on that ship! Seven days on a vessel loaded with sweepstakers makes for one incredible week! I will never forget that first cruise and the thrill of meeting so many warm and friendly sweepers who were willing to teach this rookie the ropes.

We've had several other opportunities since then to travel with other sweepers. Those trips stand out as some of the best we have been on, all because of the friends we were able to share the experiences with. Our most recent one was last October when Robert won the Bud Light Port Paradise cruise. Bud Light selected 2,000 winners, each winner was allowed to bring one guest and we filled two Royal Caribbean ships as we sailed to Nassau and a private island in the Bahamas.

Bud Light is in the process of filling two more ships with winners to sail the Caribbean. Be sure to check out all the different opportunities you have to enter on the Sweeps list. Here are a few offering multiple trips:

Bud Light Port Paradise Sweepstakes
Sail to the Bahamas with 2,000 winners on the third Bud Light Port Paradise cruise. There is a charge of $190 per person ($380 if winner travels alone), but this is legitimate. Robert and I paid the fees last year and had the time of our life for less than the airfare for one person would have cost us. To see a video of the private concert by Dave Matthews Band that Bud Light treated us to on last year's cruise, go to My Community and click on the link to the video that a SweepsU.com subscriber posted.
To see a list of all the Bud Light promotions listed on SweepsU.com click on "by Custom Search" and type bud light into the Contest Name field. Many of these are for specific geographic regions and more are being added as we find them.

Blue Light "Refreshment Weekend" Sweepstakes
50 winners will travel to southern Vermont to attend a party with the Labatt Blue Light Refreshment Duo
To find this one on the sweeps list, click on "by Custom Search" and type refreshment into the Contest Name field.

Food Lion Keith Urban Sweepstakes
19 winners will attend a Backyard Barbeque in Nashville, TN with Keith Urban in October 2010.
To find it on the sweeps list, click on "by Custom Search" and type keith into the Contest Name field.

Good luck everyone!

Gwen Beauchamp

The week before Father's Day is loaded with great opportunities to win a prize or two for Dear Ole Dad! This is the week to be listening to your local radio stations...morning, noon and night. Those stations will be teaming up with area retailers to tempt you to come to their live remotes at specific locations and shop for the best gifts for Dad. The carrot they will be dangling to get you there is usually a giveaway with some very nice prizes.

Many of the radio stations also feature call-in-to-win sweepstakes where you have to be a certain number caller to win. There are frequently some great opportunities for winning by writing or calling in to tell them just how great your Dad is! Don't let the writing competitions scare you. You probably have plenty of good material to use if you just think about it. If you want some tips on how to come up with a well written entry, you can read my article in Sweeps University, titled "I Can't Write...". You'll have to speed things up on these entries though, cause most  local Father's Day sweeps and contests will end by Friday.

You may also find a few retailers running Father's Day sweeps in the store. Check your local newspaper and watch the ads for anyone having a giveaway and offering prizes that you are interested in. It could be a Mall, department store, drug store, gas station, barber shop, car dealership...these and many more will use prizes to lure in customers. Most of them will run right up until Saturday or Sunday to try and get those last minute shoppers to pick them. They may not draw until the week after Father's Day, so be sure and get Dad a gift while you are filling out those entry forms.

I have always said that local sweeps are the best! You are up against a fraction of the entries that are received in a national promotion. So give it a shot and then let us know how you did.

Happy Father's Day to all of the sweepers this holiday was created for! May you and your families spend a wonderful day together.

Gwen Beauchamp