One of the things in comping that has grown over recent times is paid to enter prize draws. These range from win a house promotions, charity prize draws, raffle sites and even up to and including ITV Competitions and PrizeJar. On our internet travels we’ve recently come across a couple of new additions to this sector and decided to take a closer look. Competitions Live is a site from Reach Publishing whilst Akatyak is a continuously growing cash prize.
Competitions Live
Reach Publishing are the company behind newspaper titles such as The Mirror, Daily Star, OK Magazine, Daily Express and Daily Record. They also have a whole bunch of local media brands too. We spotted Competitions Live featured on one of their sites. At present it’s a one competition page with prize draws running weekly from the start of September up until the 1st October. There’s £2500 to be won each week of the promotion. If successful (i.e. it makes Reach some money) we’d anticipate that it’d run again!
How To Enter
Entries cost £2 (plus extras from your provider) should you choose to enter via mobile or phone. Entrants who enter twice from the same phone number or mobile number will receive a third entry into the Prize Draw without charge. There is a no purchase necessary postal route option provided and it’s worth noting that Reach do give a bit of a grace period for entries to be made. For example the first prize draw closes on the 10th September for mobile and text entries but this is extended to the 15th September for postal entries. Full details about how to enter are given in the terms.
No Maximum Entries
As far as we can see there are no maximum entry limits for these prize draws, which is something we’d like to see because there surely is a grey area between paid to enter giveaways and gambling online. Why is that to play bingo at £10 a week has more responsible play tools than pay to enter giveaways which usually have none whatsoever! There also doesn’t seem to be any limits on the number of postal entries you can make. We wonder if anyone will fire off 2001 postal entries for this one?
What Is Akatyak
Akatyak is a site that we saw advertised on Facebook. At first we thought that it’d be just like other raffle sites but it does have a different approach. From what we can see it’s like a member’s club. To take part you register, login, answer a question and then pay an annual fee (minimum £18) to get you included in the draws for the whole year. There currently seems to be three prize draws a month, all of which are drawn at 8pm on the 28th. There’s a Monthly Cash Draw, Charity Cash Draw and Monthly Special Cash Draw.
Costs & Prizes
At time of writing the prizes are £310.54, £62.11 and £124.22. The winner of the charity cash draw gets to donate the amount to their chosen good cause. Details of this and winners are posted on the site. One thing that isn’t clear is how much Akatyak take as an admin charge. Obviously there are costs involved but we think it’s best if there’s clarity on the subject. The website also does say that the “rolling monthly value is growing” which it will do as the site evolves. But what happens when people don’t return and/or cancel subscriptions?
£1.50 A Month
Breaking Akatyak down you’re basically paying £1.50 to enter a monthly cash prize draw and make a small donation to charity. The Monthly Special Cash Draw is described as a “an optional free monthly members’ prize draw” but details are limited on how that works? Surely every member would like to be entered into that draw as well? One thing that Akatyak doesn’t have is a no purchase necessary option. Overall it’s an interesting concept but with so many other options for people to spend their money on – it’s going to have to battle hard to get enough subscribers and really push up the monthly prize funds.
Disclaimer: Loquax has not been paid for featuring either of these sites. We just thought they were worth featuring.