Tag: competitions

The Problem of Automated Competition Services

If you host a competition on your website you may find that hundreds of emails or online entries appear but they all have the same format and just have a person’s name, phone number and address.

If there were any questions to answer in the competition they wont be in the submissions.

Q. What is going on?

It’s likely your competition has come to the attention of one or more online automated competition entry services.

These services charge people a monthly fee to enter them automatically into lots of competitions.

Services such as

  • Win24
  • WeWin4U
  • Prizewise
  • Prize500
  • PrizeDrawCentre

For some competitions maybe that isn’t a problem, but for others it can a big annoyance and even overwhelm the number of genuine entries by individuals.

One of the companies listed above guarantees each person at least 1,000 competition entries per year.

Automated competition entries are of little benefit to a website running a competition as there isn’t anyone looking at the website – just software.

How To Avoid Competition Spam

  • Don’t offer an email route to enter the competition – only through a form on the page
  • Don’t have a competition where only name and address are required to enter – include at least one question to be answered and preferably one or more questions that are open rather than having multiple choice answers
  • Use a form with a CAPTCHA to stop the automated entries
  • Consider making users login to enter your competitions, but you might lose some people that way
  • Make it a rule that automated/bulk entries will be disqualified and do disqualify any that get through

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Automated Competition Entries

Many people like entering competitions – they are a challenge and you might win a worthwhile prize. Some people even make this a full time job – entering as many high value competitions as possible.

A small number make a significant amount of money on a regular basis but for most it’s an occasional win for fun and to supplement their income.

There are automated services online that once you’ve handed over payment and your details will enter you into dozens or even hundreds of online competitions each month.

Are These Services a Good Idea?

Yes and no.

They will get you into large numbers of competitions with little effort and cost.

But there are disadvantages, including:-

  • You may be entered into competitions that you wouldn’t want to enter
  • You may win prizes that are of little or no use to you
  • They can only enter you into competitions that don’t require any skill and that is very limiting
  • Many competitions do what they can to disallow automated entries
  • Most competitions are intended to bring people to a website and the use of an automated service denies that so the competition provider loses out

There is nothing illegal about the automated competition entry services but maybe it’s better to manually enter competitions of your choice.

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