Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year • Hacker News Board

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#21

Post by vinayan3 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #5

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #3

If one compares the amount of money that most sweepers have made to the time invested in the activity, then probably any minimum-wage job would have been more worthwhile financially. For the small amount of exceptionally successful sweepers, I still suspect that the time lost, along with the additional burden of tax accounting, makes this a pretty inefficient strategy financially. The exceptional ones are showing eff…

> If one compares the amount of money that most sweepers have made to the time invested in the activity, then probably any minimum-wage job would have been more worthwhile financially. But why even make the comparison? You can’t work at McDonald’s from your kitchen table at 11 AM if you feel like it or while you’re watching TV at 2PM on a Saturday.

I have a family member who is really into winning contests. They have won tons of stuff similar to the people in the article. I have explained the time spent is not worth but they don't see it that way at all.

For them winning is exciting because it's random and unexpected. They also, do this when there is nothing else to do so it's their form of leisure. It costs nothing to enter and if you don't value that time anyways, like doing this instead of working, then why not? Which is different from going to a casino or playing the lottery which require you to pay to play.

The other issue I've explained to my family member is that their personal information is being handed out to tons of companies. I avoid handing out information so I don't get targeted for ads etc.. but I guess each to their own.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#22

Post by stordoff » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:15 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #14

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£1k in prizes is not £1k cash in hand. If it is merchandise, now the winner has to do all the work involved in reselling it. If it is non-tangible earnings like travel, it cannot be resold at all.

In the US, I believe there's also a 40% tax on winnings. It's on retail value for goods.

Worth noting not in the UK, where Coke lives.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#23

Post by stordoff » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:35 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #15

Retric wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average, Coke enters around 300 online contests per month (about 10 hours’ worth of work) and wins £1k in prizes. That's £100 per hour which is much better than most jobs. That's most likely a statistical aberration, but if you assume the people they go back are also the people that won in the first place it probably seems to be a winning strategy. That's assuming people that go long streaks without winning then s…

It also says she tuned it into a full time job, and talks about how it's really hard work. I suspect she's mistaken about how many hours she puts into it. Maybe not. Maybe she just worked hard perfecting her skills and can make 100 pounds / hour, but is picking the most profitable opportunities. Some side gigs are like that - you can make a huge hourly wage on something but only for a few paid hours a month.

I suspect the full-time job is actually her blog, rather than the contests per se:

> The operator of a popular sweepstakes blog, she has made the hobby into a full-time job.

So far in 2019, she's won prizes equivalent to £5,389, or about the same as working 110 hours/month at minimum wage[1]. Given that £2,000 worth (Majorca trip) is tagged as "Group win", and most of it appears to be stuff you couldn't sell at retail price, or just couldn't sell, I find it difficult to call that a full-time job.

[1] (£5,389/6 months)/£8.21 an hour = 109 hours

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#24

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 3:42 AM UTC

redorb wrote: post #4

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #3

If one compares the amount of money that most sweepers have made to the time invested in the activity, then probably any minimum-wage job would have been more worthwhile financially. For the small amount of exceptionally successful sweepers, I still suspect that the time lost, along with the additional burden of tax accounting, makes this a pretty inefficient strategy financially. The exceptional ones are showing eff…

old boss told me once - 'some people will work harder at not having a job than they would at a job'

I've seen people spend far more effort trying to cheat on tests than if they'd simply studied the material.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#25

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

Some students at Caltech were probably the first to do this, entering a McDonald's sweepstakes millions of times.

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_caltech_sweepstakes_...

Some of the winnings were used to buy a nice TV set for the common room in the dorm.

The stunt was parodied in the movie "Real Genius".

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#26

Post by anonymous5133 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #23

wisty wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also says she tuned it into a full time job, and talks about how it's really hard work. I suspect she's mistaken about how many hours she puts into it. Maybe not. Maybe she just worked hard perfecting her skills and can make 100 pounds / hour, but is picking the most profitable opportunities. Some side gigs are like that - you can make a huge hourly wage on something but only for a few paid hours a month.

I suspect the full-time job is actually her blog, rather than the contests per se: > The operator of a popular sweepstakes blog, she has made the hobby into a full-time job. So far in 2019, she's won prizes equivalent to £5,389, or about the same as working 110 hours/month at minimum wage[1]. Given that £2,000 worth (Majorca trip) is tagged as "Group win", and most of it appears to be stuff you couldn't sell at retai…

This is true. Reminds me of a somewhat popular youtuber who makes videos about "side hustles." One of his "main" side hustle is operating vending machines. He basically makes videos about how to operate your own vending machine business and so on. The irony to it of course is that 98% of his "profit" comes from youtube partner advertising. So he makes a few hundred bucks from the vending business but pulls 10k-15k profit per month from youtbe ads. So the real moral of the story here is don't waste your time doing a vending machine biz, focus on making entertaining youtube videos.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#27

Post by anonymous5133 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #24

redorb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old boss told me once - 'some people will work harder at not having a job than they would at a job'

I've seen people spend far more effort trying to cheat on tests than if they'd simply studied the material.

Definitely guilty of this. The real irony of it is that the cheating on the exam was actually far more of a challenge and had an adrenaline rush to it. That's why I did it at least.

I remember one method I would use is to simply memorize thousands of multiple choice questions from the test bank. That way when you took the exam, you would already be familiar with the question on the exam and how to solve it.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#28

Post by anonymous5133 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

Scaevolus wrote: post #8

> Kohl’s gave out 1,000 $20 gift cards ($20k total), but the ad got 10,812 retweets. According to an estimate from the data analytics company SumAll, the value of a branded retweet is $20.37. So for a cost of $20k, Kohl’s got roughly $220k in value — about 10x its investment. There's no way a retweet is worth $20-- or is this some weird power-law effect?

That statistic comes from social media marketers who like to overstate the value of social media. In reality, most of the people doing that retweeting are simply using fake twitter accounts to do the retweet. I do the same thing. No one reads my retweets lol

These social media marketers make it sound like kylie jenner is going to retweet your crappy contest. Never happens.

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#29

Post by XMPPwocky » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #17

Scaevolus wrote: post #8

> Kohl’s gave out 1,000 $20 gift cards ($20k total), but the ad got 10,812 retweets. According to an estimate from the data analytics company SumAll, the value of a branded retweet is $20.37. So for a cost of $20k, Kohl’s got roughly $220k in value — about 10x its investment. There's no way a retweet is worth $20-- or is this some weird power-law effect?

A single retweet can be worth several tens of dollars under twitter's ad program, depending on targeting. The pricing is really fucky. Disclaimer: Twitter's ad program is atrociously bad.

who on earth retweets an ad, though?

Re: Women who win hundreds of sweepstakes per year

#30

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

redorb wrote: post #4

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #3

If one compares the amount of money that most sweepers have made to the time invested in the activity, then probably any minimum-wage job would have been more worthwhile financially. For the small amount of exceptionally successful sweepers, I still suspect that the time lost, along with the additional burden of tax accounting, makes this a pretty inefficient strategy financially. The exceptional ones are showing eff…

old boss told me once - 'some people will work harder at not having a job than they would at a job'

[deleted]