The Truth About Car Sweepstakes

In order to win a car sweepstakes, you need a combination of luck, persistence, and strategy.
Vehicle sweepstakes (with prizes ranging from cars to SUVs, from motorcycles to Segways) are popular and rare, a terrible combination as far as odds of winning are concerned. So buck up, get tough, and be prepared to work for your win!

A lot of sweepstakes and contests give away prizes that are relatively low-cost to the host, even though
they are valuable to you and me. Beauty products are a perfect example. The markup on a skin care product is pretty high. You may be thrilled to win an assortment of such products, any one of which retails for $50 or more. But even though you've brought home a goodie basket worth a few hundred dollars, the manufacturer has spent a small fraction of that amount and earned plenty of good will from you. An even better example of this is any vacation or travel giveaway; while a fancy hotel room costs you an arm and a leg, it costs the hotel virtually nothing, as most hotels aren't fully booked every weekend anyway.

But cars cost real money, and the mark-up on them isn't as high as you'd imagine. Giving one away is one of the most expensive and valuable kind of sweepstakes offerings that exists. For that reason, there are far fewer vehicle giveaways than there are for beauty products, toys, home goods, or even travel. Of course that also means that when a car sweepstakes does come along, it gets huge numbers of entrants, lowering your odds.

There's no way to beat the odds—you can't hide the giveaway from other people—but you can nonetheless improve your chances by adhering to sound sweepstakes strategy.read more...