What you need to know about: Win a holiday competitions

What are the best “Win a holiday” competitions?
How do you select your competitions to win a holiday?

It is essential to understand the purpose of the win a holiday competition in order to determine the odds of winning that competitions or free prize draw. Also, one must pay attention to the way the winner is determined as not all holiday competitions are equal. The winner selection process of these prize draws can be random, hand picked or based on a test of skill depending on the end goal of the holiday competition promoter. So here are the 3 main types of win a holiday competitions you need to look out for not all travel holidays are made equal.

Free Holiday prize draws from prize draw websites:

Typing “Win a holiday” in Google will yield a full first page results of prize draw websites, and since I do not want to single out a specific business you will need to find the mentioned websites yourself.

So what is the objective of free prize draw websites? Well they are generally called lead generation website. Leads are qualified pieces or groups of personal data that qualifies a potential sales lead. In other words that would be YOU, the people that enter all these free holiday competitions and other travel prize draws. Nothing is free. Always remember this fact, nothing is free.

The various prizes and notably the most popular win a holiday competitions are the carrot in the lead generation process. “For a chance to win a holiday” customers and punters are incentivized to part with personal information, lots of very personal information as well as asked to answer surveys, notably whan car insurance or home insurance expires, how many kids in the family and many other personal questions, let alone your mobile number.

So the for your chance to win a holiday for 2, be it winning a holiday in the Caribbean or just in the country side, you part with your personal information. Your personal details are then sold as qualified leads to a variety of businesses, insurance companies, car companies, email list companies, etc. A profile will be sold anywhere between £1 to £15.

What are your chances of winning a free prize draw or Holiday competition?
Competitions to win a holiday can run for up to 6 months or longer. Every competition entry is pooled from a variety of websites and offline entry sources. Compounded, the sum of travel competition entries can often exceed 500,000, some of the most popular travel competitions have exceeded 2,000,000 entries. So ask yourself:

Is your personal info worth a chance of winning of
1 in 2,000,000 for a mediocre holiday?

Travel company sponsored holiday competitions:

The other type is the travel company sponsored holiday competition. These travel competitions are the fruit of a partnership between a media partner such as a newspaper and a travel company such as a holiday package tour operator or a hotel company with a media company such as a newspaper publisher or magazine.

What are the objectives of these sponsored competitions to win a holiday?

For the media company the “Win a holiday” competitions allow it to offer its reader new and exciting competitions, it is value added content, or what I would call perceived added value content.

For the travel company, partnering with a media company gives their brand significant reach. The travel company will provide the travel prize for the Holiday competition in exchange for distribution and reach to the audience of that media company. The key to sponsored travel competitions from holiday providers and hotel companies is also for lead generation. But the only chucks of information the travel sponsor is really interested in is your name and email address and provide additional brand or product awareness in the process. You will generally only receive the email messages from that company and it is less likely that your details are passed on.

Winner selection and odds of winning a travel prize draw:
The first point of thought is that the sponsored travel competitions have less entries then the massive free to enter win a holiday competitions. Depending on the selected media partner and validity period of the holiday competitions the total number of entries can vary between 20,000 and 250,000 depending the value of the holiday. It is common sense that prize draws and competitions to “Win a Caribbean holiday for 2” or “Win a holiday in the Maldives for 2” will get more registrations than a “Win a free city break for 2 in Paris”.

Who and How is the winner selected?
Because these sponsored travel related holiday competitions are freebies and free to enter, little do people mind to know how the winner is selected. Most would think that it is random and in a list of over 250,000 it generally is. But many times the winner is hand picked according to certain criteria. For example, the winner needs to be from a certain city, a specific gender or social class. Or the worse situation… well the exact person is hand picked because the business wants to reward a commercial partner… This happens more often than you think. So maybe your chances of winning appear greater due to the smaller number of travel competition entries. That is if you consider a chance in 200,000 a small chance for a Win a week end break.

Skill based competitions to win a holiday:

Skill based entry process include such things as Spot the Ball competitions and other games of skill as the method of determining the winner. Competitions to win a holiday from promoters that ask a fee to enter are far different. The business model of such competition promoters is to make a financial margin on the entry fees with the price of the holiday prize.

The great benefit is that these forms of competitions to win a holiday for 2 are not lead generation based. Your data is often protected by far stricter privacy polices and stricter terms and conditions. The only objective is to sell the entries to the competition. In general the advertised holiday proze is the one that you will receive. There are no hidden agendas, no last minute product replacements and the prize that is show is the prize the entrant will will.

The odds of winning pay to play skill based “Win a holiday for 2 competition” have significantly less entries due to the fact that they are Pay to play. So in effect your chances of winning are greater. The winning result is either generated by the skill based game or is filtered randomly. The travel competition promoter does not have any particular interests in who wins his travel competition or win a holiday to the Caribbean prize, so it is far more likely that the winner of the win a tropical vacation will be an unbiased and legitimate winner.

Win a car competitions

Do I want to win a car?

Win a car, finding the best car winning competitions isn’t obvious, but one thing is clear no win a car competition is free. Yes, free prize draw and car raffles may appear to be free be the reality is they are not. The UK online scene is full of prizes draws to win a mini, win a Toyota Prius or win a sports car and win a super car. And hey, who doesn’t want to win a new car for free?

The reality is that free win a car competitions are not free. It seems as it may be to you, but ask yourself what do I have to do to win a car?

You will have to part with your personal information and private details
You will need to answer surveys and product related questions
You will need to give information on your car insurance, home insurance, etc

Information is gold nowadays, and win a car prize draws and other related win a car competitions are just the bait to help players part with their personal details.

Win a car competition as a lead generation tool

Many “compaholics”, people addicted to free car competitions and prize draws are serial competition players. For most of the entrants and competition players wanting to win a car, lead generation is a foreign term. All these competitions are not set up and operated out of the kindness of business hearts. The competition promoters that offer the remote chance of winning a car do so to get your personal data. That is why they are free. By entering the win a car competitions you agree to part with your personal information, you agree that the business you are giving your private details can sell it on to its partners many times over. Basically you are agreeing to let the competition operator make a fortune on the win a car prize draw.

I would accept to give some of my personal information if I had a real or tangible chance of winning a car. But the reality is you don’t. Car competition rarely offer a car as a prize worth more than £15,000 or so. Some of the win a car competitions and prize draws will run for as long as 18 months. the promoter will collect millions upon millions of entries and make millions of £ selling the private information collected from the win a car competitions entries and free prize draw accounts way before the prize is awarded.

What are your chances of winning a in a free “win a car” competition?

Well lets put this into context, your chances of winning a win a car competition are in the millions.

For example: There is currently a Win a new Toyota Prius competition running somewhere on the UK net… I won’t tell you where but I have a suspicion that Google can help… The object of the game is to select 3 number. Each number is picked from a dropped down menu and the player selects a number from 1 to 159 three times. Don’t forget this is to win a new car a ToyotaPrius. Pull out the calcualtor, 159X159X159 is?

4,019,679

You have a chance in over 4,000,000 to win… but wait how do you find out if you have won a new car? You have to call a number, your selected number from the competition entry is valid for 3 days, you can’t leave a message over the phone if there is no answer and … how much is that call?

What do you trade off when entering this win a car competition to win a new Toyota Prius? All your personal data, you agree to endless spam in the in box and flyers and promos in the letter box, phone calls at night. Is that what a win a car competition is worth.

Compare it to: What are your chances of being struck by lightning in the UK? (BBC weather centre info)

3,014,251

So how much is your personal information worth to you now?

Pay to play win a car competitions

So the need and desire to win a new car online is still present, obviously the free prize draw to win a free car is not really an option unless you plan to heat your home in winter with all the junk mail that comes through the letter box.

So paying a small entry fee to carefully selected car competitions might be a better and more viable option then entering the free prize draws to win a car. Most pay to enter car competitions make their money not selling personal information, but on a margin on the entry fees. Just like any other retailer they make margins on the value and purchase price of the prize. The good thing is that reputable competition promoters that operate pay to play car competitions protect your data. Their privacy policy are far more stricter than those of free car raffles and the sort. On the contrary they make it a point to keep your information confidential, they do not sell it or pass it on to partners and other third parties.

It seems a better alternative to trying to win a car the free prize draw way. In a free prize draw to win a new car you are only certain of one thing, that is that your information will be sold from business to business. In a pay to enter car competition you know the small fee that it will cost you to enter the competition. That entry fee is nothing compared to the interest you would pay on a new car loan. So often it is worth the try to enter and win a new car. All the more, pay to play competitions have a significant amount of less entries, so your odds of winning a new car in a pay to play online competition are 1,000s times higher than in a free one.

Spot the Ball Competitions

Finding the best Spot the ball competitions

Players can enter spot the ball competitions online, in newspapers and magazines. Spot the ball competitions are a test of skill where entrants find a missing ball. Many free prize draws and competitions determine the winner or winners using Spot the ball game process.

How do you find the best odds? How do you find the spot the ball competitions with the best chance of winning the competition?:

• Estimate the number of entries in the competition: Get a feel for the amount of entries that the competitions have. For starters if the spot the ball is using a grid system is is more likely that there will be a lot of ties or less entries to that spot the ball competition. look at the size of the image and its resolution. The bigger the image the more competition entries it can handle.
• Are the competitions multi link to other websites: This is crucial, you need to find out if the competition entries are in effect pooled together. Many free spot the ball competitions pool the entries from multiple websites and even from press and magazine entries into one big entry pool. For popular items such as win a car or win a holiday style competitions you can have as many as 1,000,000 competition entries or more.
• When does the spot the ball competition close? The amount of time the competition is left open is essential. Unless the spot the ball competition or prize draw specifically limits the number of entires, the competition will close at a fixed time. Often you will need to look at the terms and conditions of the competition to determine when that competition or prize draw closes. Don’t forget to also look at when the winner is determined. Many competitions can remain open from anywhere between 6 and 22 months, that’s almost 2 years… and lots of competition entries.
• Read the small print and the terms and conditions: Value in the spot the ball competition can be found in the prize the winner gets. Sometimes the competition odds are worth the prize that is on offer… or is it? The prize advertised in the competition or prize draw is not always what the winner will receive. read the small print and see for yourself, most free spot the ball competitions and free prize draws will never guarantee a prize, but most importantly will actually give a list of the possible alternative prizes that the winner will receive and often enough they are not the one that was shown.
• What is the value of the prize? The greater the value of the prize the worse the odds of winning the online spot the ball competition or prize draw. But there are significant differences from competition to competition. This holds especially true for free competitions and prize draws. A simple £16,000 win a Toyota Prius competition can have odds of 1 in 4:010,000. Remember that according to the bbc, your chances of being struck by lightning are 1 in 3,000,000.
• Are public limits set to the number of competition entries? This is counter intuitive to the profitability of online competitions. Why would you want to set a limit on the number of entries. The key to most competitions is to either take in as many paying competition entries or to have as many possible free prize draw entries. So why would you limit the number of entries to a spot the ball competition? Some do and they are very rare. The competition websites that operate limited entry competitions want to have as many competition winners are possible and generally offer the best odds of winning a competition.
• Is the competition limited in time? Look for the time limit of a competition. If it is easy to find and the closing time of a competition is put up front then it is a good competition or prize draw to enter. If you can’t find it, then it is buried in the terms and conditions and you can bet that that prize draw will be running for a very long time reducing the player odds and chance to win.
• Is it a spree spot the ball competition? Free spot the ball competitions and free prize draws will always have more entries and will always offer worse odds of winning. Nothing is free and free prize draws and free online competitions want one thing, your personal information. The personal information gathered this way is called lead generation and leads are sold sometimes for more then £10 a pop, that means that many businesses are making money on your personal information.
• Look at previous winners? How many previous winners are there, are you having a hard time finding the winners of previous spot the ball competitions? if so then that is a big clue. Competition websites and prizes draw websites that don’t proudly display the amount of winners they have, generally have something to hide and that is that there are no or little amounts of competitions and prize draw winners.

Spot the ball

How does spot the ball work?

Spot the ball is a common competition entry process used in the UK since the late 1970’s. The process is simple, a picture is shown to an audience, the football has been digitally removed from the picture. The picture is generally that of a football scene or action shoot. You see the players in the “Spot the ball” image, but the football in gone.

Each player that enters the “spot the ball” competition must use his judgement and skills to determine where he believes the centre of the ball to be located. Traditionally, in the newspapersentries were submitted by mail. The coordinates of the footballs location was based on a grid system. The entrants would submit a single grid position where the player believes the centre of the ball to be. Today, modern “spot the ball” games use a digital interface. The centre of the ball generates a set of X and Y coordinates on the picture, and the competition or prize entry is submitted via email or other electronic forms.

Depending on the size of the image used in the spot the ball competition or free prize draw, there can be a large number of possible coordinates. These Spot the ball competitions allow for a large amount of players to enter without running the risk of too many ties and identical spot selections.

Spot the ball process to determine the winner

The winner of spot the ball competitions and prizes draws are determined in a multitude of ways:

Spot the ball based on the actual centre of the ball:

For those that operate free competitions, free prize draws or spot the ball games that are just for fun, then entries and player are often trying to find the actual centre of the ball. In other words to determine the winner, it will be the competition entrant that has found the real position of the football on the image. or at least the one that is closest to it.

Spot the ball against a professional referee

In many cases, if the spot the ball competition requires a payment to enter, no matter how small, even if it is just a £1 or £2, the competition spot the ball winner is matched against the results of a professional referee. The football referee in effect follows the same process as all the other players. He determines where he believes the centre of the ball to be located using his professional experience. This in turn generates a set of coordinates X and Y. All the entries are matched against that of the professional football referee and the winner is the closest or exact match to the coordinates of the spot picked by the referee.

Uses of the spot the ball game

The purpose of the spot the ball process in competitions and prize draws is used to determine a winner, or filter out a significant amount of people and entries that would be eligible to win a prize. It depends on the objective of the competition and the amount and value of the prizes. in general there are 2 reasons why this for of game is used and it depends on whether the competition or prize draw is free to enter of if it is a pay to play on-line spot the ball competition.

Luck in determining the winner in Spot the ball games

You have often seen these competitions on TV or in magazines they often start with the famous words, “enter for a chance to win“.

The objective of the competition process is to eliminate a number of competition entrants and their entries.

In the case of spot the Ball competitions, some competition organizer can select the entries that are within a certain distance of the winning spot or just select the exact coordinates. Nonthe less, those competition entries that are considered as part of the winning group or selection needs to be split and a final winner determined.

The general accepted process of a tie break is to use a form of draw to split the winners of the competition and pick out the winner. Some of the factors influencing the final process is the amount of entries taken in by the Spot the Ball competition or Spot the ball game. It also depends on the intent of the promoter of the spot the ball competition, if it is a pay to play competition entry and the objective is to have a single winner then the process is designed for that exact purpose. If the objective of the promoter is for lead gathering, In other words to collect personal information and commercial leads and to go ahead and sell them, then the maximum amount of potential winners will be selected to increase the lead generation potential of that competition.

Types of spot the ball games

The most common “Spot the ball” competition in the UK is generally using football images. The advantage of football images is that the players action and movement depicted in the image gives a lot of visual clues where the actual centre of the football can be located in the image. Football image based Spot the ball competitions is the type that requires the most Skill and judgement as part of the entrants thus reducing the amount of luck in the process to determine the competition winner.

In some case Spot the ball competitions have used images of golf images and tennis. As long as the Spot the Ball competition that uses these types of tennis or golf images are free and the selection process is on the other hand very specific. For the golf and tennis images, or similar, do not give many visual clues as to the possible location of the centre of the tennis or golf in the image. The part of luck this becomes a bigger part of the process.

Finally, avoid using rugby, it is always debatable where the ball is and will be. Predicting the path of an oval ball is virtually impossible and often no amount of skill or judgement will help in determining the centre of the ball in these types of “Spot the ball” competition games.