The Winning Lifestyle - My Sister-In-Law on Sweepstakes

“So sweepstakes are real?”

I think back to four years ago, before I met Rachel, my now-sister-in-law, and my reaction when I learned that she enters sweepstakes for a side-hustle. Side-hustles are supposed to be extra cash from cleaning offices and homes, commissions from direct sales, and part-time weekend jobs… so, how do sweepstakes provide like a side-hustle? First of all, I thought sweepstakes were like gambling: where hundreds of thousands of people enter, but only one very lucky person wins. Then, on top of that, I thought that most sweepstakes had to be scams… Why else would I need to enter all that information? It seems, more often than not, that entering my email address into those online forms just leads to more and more spam in my email inbox.

I will never forget the day I was walking to my parked car after work when Rachel called me. I answered the phone, and right away I could hear the excited tremble in her voice: “I just won a $54,000 check!” My jaw about crashed through the floor. Those definitely aren’t words you hear every day, let alone in a lifetime! A smile hopped to my face, and I could hear Rachel beaming through the phone. An experience like that is life-changing, and it was all through a hobby-turned-side-hustle of entering sweepstakes. I finally had to believe it:

Sweepstakes are real.

Once I had a change of heart about sweepstakes, I began seeing them everywhere. I saw them at the grocery store on food packaging, as advertisements on social media, even local small businesses sponsoring different giveaways… but my preconceptions about them lingered, and I was wary. Come to find out, there is a method to achieving sweepstakes success. It doesn’t just happen out of the blue. Entering your email into an online form once might get you entered into a drawing, but it’s not going to fulfill your maximum odds of winning. Did you know that some sweepstakes can be entered more than once? I didn’t!

Since meeting Rachel, someone who has experienced real wins first-hand, I stopped turning my nose up at giveaways and sweepstakes and even won two Instagram giveaways of my own for the first time! The mastery of sweepstakes is found at the intersection of patience, detail, persistence, and discernment -- and that is what turns a giveaway hobby into a sweepstakes side-hustle.

by: Toni Graham Travis

Toni Travis is a high-school music teacher living in central Virginia. She  graduated in December 2020 with a Degree in Music from Liberty University. She lives with her husband and one-year-old puppy, who enjoy walking and playing fetch together in the big outdoors. Toni’s favorite ways to pass time include reading, cooking, starting small home renovation projects that turn into complete room overhauls, and gardening. She looks forward to accomplishing a new set of goals in 2021: running a 10k, journaling daily, and reading a new book each month to name a few!  She has written for the Pop Song Professor blog and her university's newspaper, the Liberty Champion.