Rafflecopter Giveaways: Everything You Need to Know to Enter & Win

If you enter sweepstakes, especially through blogs, Facebook pages, or smaller companies’ websites, it’s likely that you have seen giveaways hosted by something called Rafflecopter. What is Rafflecopter? Can you trust their sweepstakes? And how can you boost your odds of winning them?

What Is Rafflecopter?

If you have a small company and want to run giveaways, you'll find yourself facing a lot of challenges.

For example, you have to design an attractive and professional-looking landing page and entry form. You need to collect personal information from your entrants and store it securely. You need to have the giveaway hosted on a server that is robust enough to handle thousands of entries in case the giveaway draws a lot of entrants. And you need to fairly and randomly choose your winners.

If you are a large business, you might have entire departments to handle these issues, but smaller companies usually don't have that luxury.

Rafflecopter is an app that takes care of many of these issues, making it easier for small businesses to run giveaways. Even without dedicated designers or programmers, a business can get a giveaway up and running in three minutes, according to the Rafflecopter website.

For many small companies, this is an attractive offer. For an affordable fee, you can make a few selections and, for a reasonable price, get a giveaway widget with everything you need. You can then put that widget on your website, blog, or Facebook page and be up and running.

Rafflecopter also allows companies to define different ways for people to get entries. They let companies set up tasks for the entrants that are either mandatory (you won’t be entered if you don’t complete these) or optional (these award bonus entries).

These tasks include:

• Signing up for newsletters.
• Retweeting news about the giveaway.
• Visiting websites or Facebook pages.
• Watching videos.
• Pinning something on Pinterest.
• Following the sponsor(s) on social media.
• And more.

Some of these activities can be done only once (like signing up for a newsletter or following the sponsor on social media), while others can be done daily (like retweeting or visiting web pages), which drives engagement.

This lets sweepstakes sponsors define goals they want to achieve, like expanding their email lists and the flexibility to hit those goals and make their giveaway a success.

How Does Entering Sweepstakes Through Rafflecopter Work?

Rafflecopter sweepstakes have advantages and disadvantages for entrants. On one hand, they are easy to enter; on the other hand, depending on how they've been set up, entering Rafflecopter sweepstakes can be time-consuming.

The first step to enter Rafflecopter sweepstakes is to log in, either by entering your name and email address or by logging in through Facebook.

The time-consuming part of entering Rafflecopter sweepstakes is that some of the giveaways have so many tasks to complete that entering becomes cumbersome.

For example, you may have a giveaway where many sponsors have banded together to offer prizes, and you need to sign up for all of their mailing lists to enter. Not only does that take a while to do, but it can also lead to having to unsubscribe from many unwanted emails.

Even when the tasks are optional, it can be frustrating to receive only a handful of entries while people who jump through more hoops get dozens more. On the other hand, it is also frustrating to spend a lot of time gaining entries into one giveaway rather than using your sweeping time efficiently to enter multiple giveaways.

For that reason, many people skip Rafflecopter sweepstakes altogether. However, if you find a giveaway with prizes you want to win, there’s nothing wrong with adding it to your sweepstakes list. Even a single entry puts you in the running for those prizes.

How to Win More Rafflecopter Sweepstakes

If you want to improve your odds of winning Rafflecopter giveaways, here are some tips to follow.

1. Start off by reading the privacy policy of each giveaway that you want to enter. Remember that Rafflecopter giveaways are not sponsored by Rafflecopter itself but by various other companies. You want to be sure that they are going to use your information properly.
2. Next, read the sweepstakes rules. This will help you ensure that you aren't wasting your time by entering a giveaway that you aren't eligible to win, that you're entering properly, and that you're getting all the chances to win that you want to.
3. Complete the mandatory tasks. Many entrants overlook some of these tasks, causing their entries to be disqualified.
4. Raise your odds by entering as many of the optional tasks as you can.
5. If the giveaway offers daily tasks, bookmark the giveaway and return every day to get better odds.
6. If you are doing tasks like commenting on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter, make sure your Facebook or Twitter handle reflects the name you are using to enter the Rafflecopter contest. Otherwise, you might be disqualified when the sponsor can’t verify your entry.
7. If you need to tweet something to enter, make sure you do it by clicking the small “Twitter” button in the giveaway form. Otherwise, your tweet might not count toward your entries.