There seems to be an unwritten rule about win a house competitions! When Jason isn’t anywhere near the computer then something new and win a house related will appear in the news. Sure enough, this week whilst out doing business stuff (yes we do business things, honest) there was an article in The Telegraph about how Michelle and Paul Wood intend to giveaway their home in a win a house competition. But with one big difference to other house competitions. The site, Win a House for Free will launch in November and instead of charging for tickets entries will be accrued from people clicking on sponsors links. They hope to “make between £850,000 and £1m from advertising on the website to enable them to give their two-bedroom detached home away for free”. By the way their home in West Yorkshire is worth £425,000, however they need to generate more revenue to pay creditors.
How Does It Work
Michelle and Paul are hoping to attract sponsors to the site, who for anything from £40 upwards will have a one day presence on their site. If a sponsor pays more then they’ll be able to be involved in the entry route which involves a user clicking on ads to find questions. Advertisers can register an interest “now” to advertise on the site, but we wonder whether they can stock up quickly with sponsors to get things going. Advertising budgets are tight for many companies and with Christmas coming possibly even allocated already – if the site launches and within a week is void of advertisers then that may well see entrants quickly lose interest and faith. It’s hard enough finding a couple of willing sponsors a month, so to try and acquire 200 different sponsors a day for 21 weeks seems a pretty tall order!
Will It Work?
Of course, once launched, then The Wood’s will then have data to demonstrate user interaction with the site, which actually could see increased demand for sponsorship and media interest. Attracting good sponsors will therefore be the key, but what about getting people interested in the competition? Our biggest concern is that the site isn’t particularly inviting and that may well put off both entrants and would be sponsors. The site is also incredibly wordy, in every section, and whilst that’s possibly necessary to make sure all legal angles are covered and their story fully told it could do with a major reorganisation before the official launch on November 2nd. That’s just 2 weeks away and we’ll be intrigued to see just how this win a house competition pans out over it’s expected 84 day run.