Sweepstakes on my site?

[mike]

Anybody know of some 3rd party companies that could take care of sweepstakes
and lotteries that i would like to offer on my site? I was just thinking
that would be a great way to bring in visitors to my site.. I dont know of
any companies that do that though.. any thoughts?

thanks
mike

 

[Ken]

Hi Mike -

Anybody know of some 3rd party companies that could take care of sweepstakes
and lotteries that i would like to offer on my site? I was just thinking
that would be a great way to bring in visitors to my site.. I dont know of
any companies that do that though.. any thoughts?

There are so many scams on the internet that personally I would never
participate in something like that, and just seeing it on a site would
make me highly suspicious of the whole site.

 

[Augustus]

Anybody know of some 3rd party companies that could take care of sweepstakes
and lotteries that i would like to offer on my site? I was just thinking
that would be a great way to bring in visitors to my site.. I dont know of
any companies that do that though.. any thoughts?

This can be very hard to do...

First, there are the applicable laws and all the headaches that can bring
about... in Canada, as an example, Quebec uses "Civil Law" while the rest of
the country uses "Common Law".

Canada might not be your target audience, but thats just an example... I
know in the US the laws vary from state to state. A US example would be
California, which has very strict laws on contests and lotteries (in
California you can have a "contest" or a "sweepstakes" or "game of skill"...
but any contest where participation is conditioned on payment (IE: they have
to buy a ticket or contest entry or purchase something) is considered a
lottery, and in California only the state can run lotteries.

The next big issue would be if you were going to sell tickets or not... if
you are selling tickets you will find that almost none of the online credit
card processing companies (yes, even PayPal) want anything to do with you.
This is due to the high instance of fraud involved (IE: say you were
raffling off a $20,000 car... you get some guy buys $10,000 in tickets with
his Visa card... if he wins then cool, he got a car for half price (or his
state law might even stipulate he can claim the cash value instead of the
prize)... if he loses then he just phones visa and says his card was stolen
and demands a charge back.

So its alot of headaches... even if you want to give something away free
(IE: no purchase necessary to enter the contest) there are issues that can
come up if you have some kind of draw/contest.

 

[hyweljenkins]

Anybody know of some 3rd party companies that could take care of sweepstakes
and lotteries that i would like to offer on my site? I was just thinking
that would be a great way to bring in visitors to my site.

Where did you get that idea from? Why wouldn't punters go direct to
the sweepstake or lottery company instead?

 

[mike]

Thats basically all i want to do is do a free contest... All u have to do is
visit my site and fill out an email address and first name and u are
entered.. I might even do without the email form...as i hate spam more then
anybody.. I just want to have daily contests that would bring people back to
the site everyday...and give away a free $5 item everyday... and then as the
visitors increase, i would increase it to bigger and better free
items....the advertising i have would pay the costs aslong as i get a ton of
visitors...

the only thing is i dont want the hassle and problems with dealing with the
contests myself...thats why i was asking if there was a professional 3rd
party company out there that handles these kinds of things.... i guess not.