Success with Sweeping & Twitter Parties

I've decided to share a little of what I've won over the past 10 months thanks to sweepstakes, instant win games, twitter RT contest, twitter contests in general, and twitter parties. I will later touch on the rules and regulations of some of these things and what my thoughts are on them...

In December of 2009 while signing into my PayPal account I noticed they had a snowflake game going on. So every night for a few nights in a row I would sign on and play the game. After about the forth night I signed in choose my snowflake and low and behold I won an iPod Touch 32GB. I honestly thought it was a fluke.  A few weeks later my Mother gets an over night delivery from UPS, see she had entered the Dawn Wildlife Sweepstakes and had won! She wasn't quite sure what to make of this letter asking her to have some papers notarized. We were skeptical at first until she later confirmed that she was indeed a 1st place winner in the Dawn Wildlife Sweepstakes and had won $1000! WOW I thought imagine if you could win like that all the time? Was it possible? If so how would I even begin? Honestly it never went any further than that.. I had no idea where to or how to find things to enter, so it slipped my memory for a few months.



Then in July of 2010 a friend of mine pointed me to a freebie site and I was awe struck at all the free products and free product coupons I was getting in the mail. This was great! All things that we use. One night while looking around the freebie site I had been referred to I noticed a sweep post, that post lead me to none other than Sweeties Sweeps! YES! I had finally found the way to enter sweepstakes. Not only did I find the way to, but also rules, prizes, and how to videos posted on her site. I was excited to have found this site, yet still a bit skeptical on whether or not I could really win all these things people were posting about winning!

So began my journey into the world of sweepstakes. I did a few instant win games here and there at night time and started winning little things like song downloads, movie downloads, toothpaste until finally one night I had won a PS3 Game on a Subway sweep and it was worth $50! WHAT? No way did I win this game worth that much, but indeed I had won that game.  From then on I would go through Sweeties site every single night and play every instant win game she had listed. I started winning more and more and then one night in September 2010 I delayed playing a game called Open My Safe because it was just a hassle to play and really the odds weren't good I thought I'd never have a chance.. the prizes were a $500 Visa Card, $5000 check, and $10000 check. I thought no way I'd ever be lucky enough to win those things, but that night my first try BAM "CONGRATULATIONS" I won a $500 Visa Card. Oh My god was this for real? Was this happening when I needed it most? See I had been laid off since May 2009 and money was tight and I was thinking about Christmas coming in a few months.  Indeed that was a legit win and here is the picture to prove it...

After that night I was HOOKED! I started entering sweeps every single day. Doing daily entries, monthly entries, and even one time entries and little by little the wins kept piling in.  In the process I discovered Sweetie's Chat Room on her main site and went in there and everyone was helpful and kind (but a few, a few were bitchy cranky and thought they should win it all). In this chat room everyone kept talking about twitter parties, twitter parties? What were these? I had a twitter account, but rarely used it. Then one person gave me a website to follow the twitter party schedule, which happened to be TweeParties.com.  I read up on rules and posts and blog pages of parties and asked questions yet again how do I RSVP what is tweetchat and tweetgrid? How do I get into these virtual parties? I watched Sweetie's videos on how to use tweetgrid and one night decided to give it a try.. I remember the party, my very first party, it was a ResourcefulMom party and the prizes were the Imaginext BigFoot! I had to have this I kept thinking how awesome of a Christmas present would this toy be.  I had many questions, I was new, and I will say that while my screen is flying by Amy - ResourcefulMom, took the time to tweet me back with answers to the questions I was asking. Here she was helping me in my first ever twitter party! I didn't win that night, but I have gone on to win some amazing things in her parties. Some of which I will list in this post. 

Now I had truly found my ticket to occupying my time. I had found a sweepstakes site and a twitter party schedule! I had finally found a hobby that I enjoyed and I say hobby because that is what it is. I don't get paid to do sweeps and parties, I may win some great things and some not so great things, but even so it is still a hobby! It is all down hill from there! Yes, I may get bent sometimes at not winning things, but those times I get bent out of shape I see unfairness and cheating happening. This topic I will save for a different post, because those that know me know I am very opinionated and one thing I can not stand to see is something being unfair and to see cheaters trying to win "at all costs". I also only enter those things that interest me. I do not enter every sweep or attend every party. If the topic is something that doesn't interest me or the prizes are things I do not use or really do not need then I won't enter or attend the parties.

Through the sweeps and the parties I found my way to finally starting a blog. So all of my followers can thank the line of events that brought me here to this place right now!

I'm not a pro at these things, I have only been doing them not even a year, but my point of this post is show people that YES you can win too! My one friend Christine tells me I am the luckiest person she knows...instant win games are not about luck, it's about timing! They all have pre-determined times that are "winning" times.. I just happen to play them in the middle of the night when less people are playing and have had some good success doing so.  Christine is now also hooked on sweeping, not as much as I am, but she does some stuff. Currently we are both on about 10 crews in an attempt to win the cruise through Bud Light's Port Paradise! I share the things I win... Christmas, Birthdays, just in general. As for the baby stuff... yep you guessed it, it all goes right to my sister! She is also planning on having another baby, so I will keep at it being persistent in an attempt to win for her! Her and her husband aren't made of money, so this is my way of saying here you deserve this or need this.. after all she is being kind enough to let me forward packages to her address while we are in the midst of this uncertain move..

Finally - the list - seeing you have all read this once again novel length post...

$500 Visa Card

Weber FirePit

$1000 Buffalo Bills Suite Tickets (6 tickets) with VIP Bud Light Pre-Game Passes

PS3 Games & PS3 Move Bundle

AE Active 2

Wii Games

XBOX 360 with Kinect Sensor and two Games from Burger King

RCA Mini Camcorder

Men's Carhardt Winter Jacket

iPod Touch 32GB

Toaster Strudel Coupons - 12 of them

Quiznos GC

Wendy's GC's

XBox Games

Fisher Price iXL

Movies Tickets (More than I can count)

Infinity Mobi Headphonies

EXPO Dry Erase Calendar with Markers and Eraser

$200 UHaul GC

$100 in Touch'd Spa Products (which I highly recommend)

Yellow Rose Gifts Spa Basket with Tea Tree & Peppermint Doggie Soap

Babara's Bakery Gift Basket

Ecomom.com $100 GC and numerous items from their store

$100 Target Card

B & N nook

$100 Spaweek GC

Sketchers Shape Ups

Word Lock padlock

Fire Proof Safe & File Safe from Sentry Safe

Coupon for up to 25lb Turkey

Bissel SpotBot Pet Cleaner

DearFoam Slippers

Flameless Candles (3)

E.L.F make up pallette

$100 Marshall's Card

Sprint Android Cell Phone

BeeKneez stationary set

TinyPrints Cards & Address Labels

Numerous Restaurant GC's - Chili's, Wendy's, Fridays, Outback

Numerous Visa Cards - from $5 to $500 in value

Airline GC's

Amazon GC's - to date $155 worth

eBay GC's

Baby items galore - of course for my sister!

Coupons for free products

Cookbooks (about 12 so far)- of which my favorite is the Holistic Moms Network one

Kitchen Gadgets from mini choppers, measuring cups, Tassimo BrewBot, utensils, Calphalon Pan

$80 GUNNAR computer glasses

Toys and Games - a lot of toys and games!

Udderly Smooth Gift Basket (this is one of my favorite wins)

I could go on and on. I have a spreadsheet I keep track of what I won, date, value, from who, and if it has arrived yet.  Last year I believe in just the few months of sweeps and twitter I totaled out at a little over $4000, this past March I beat that 2010 total with over $4700 worth of things, just for the Month of March 2011. There are very few things I would absolutely love to win that have eluded me... A trip, Cash over $1000, a Grill, a TV, and laptop.  I have won my fair share of money at the casino, so I really can't say that cash over a grand has eluded me, because I've hit a few $3000 jackpots in my time at the casino, but it sure would be nice to win $5000 or $10000 or even $25,000 in a sweep! Maybe one day... 

So as you can see if I can win things you can too! It's not rocket science and it's sure not impossible. Just be persistent and most importantly DO NOT be greedy!