I recently launched a new website called MyContestSite.com, a sweepstakes site that offers prizes to users who enter using their Twitter.com accounts. Sweepstakes will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. The second $100 sweepstakes has just started and so far I have a few hundred entries (across both the first and second). Future prizes will include larger cash amounts, gift certificates or trendy items like an iTouch. Users have an option to send out a tweet announcing their entry but it’s not required.
Legal
The biggest legal issue was that some states had different regulatory requirements for sweepstakes which depended on the value of the prize. If a sweepstakes had a prize pool that exceeded a certain size I would have to register and/or post a bond ahead of time. Both options would require more administrative work and be a big pain. I wanted to be able to run sweepstakes with minimal effort at first to test the concept of the website. My research concluded that if my prize pools stayed under $5,000 I would be able to run the sweepstakes nationwide without having to register or bond them.
To build the rules I went through different sweepstakes websites to look theirs over and found a sweepstakes rules template that was helpful. They all pretty much had the same language so, to save money on legal fees, I started to craft my own version based on what I’d found. Towards the end I posted a job on Elance.com to look for a lawyer who could review my rules and confirm my assumptions about registration and bonding. I found a great lawyer by the name of Tamara S. Pester who did a fantastic job. She’s someone I’d definitely recommend and look forward to working with again.
Links to some resources I used for my rules and legal research:
SCA Promotions
Sweepstakes Law Basics
PromoRegistration.com FAQ
Rules For Operation of Contests and Sweepstakes: Legal Guide U-3 – California Department Of Consumer Affairs
SWEEPSTAKES DO’S and DON’TS FOR MARKETERS
Sweepstakes – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Design
The site was designed by GrayTartlet.com. The initial concept was a winner right away with the main question being if I wanted a colored background for the text and a white frame or vice versa. I decided on the white background with colored frame since it gives me more options for font colors. With a colored background it’s so hard to make text readable or stand out.
There were two primary options for the logo – Space between the words and no space between. Even though I liked the look of the logo with no spaces better, I decided on the one with space since it seemed easier to read.
Programming
I wrote the site using asp.net and it took about 2 work weeks spread out over some months. The most interesting part for me was using Twitter.com OAuth authentication. This way the user doesn’t have to give me their username and password to access their account. This should add trust to the site since a user can easily revoke OAuth access at any time. One of the benefits to accessing the users account directly is that they wont have to fill out any forms. The user just clicks “allow” when directed and I can read all the information that’s necessary for their entry. OAuth access also allows me to send out the optional tweet and follow others at the users request. The rest of the code was pretty much straight forward. Read/write to database and present computed results to user.
Cost
It’s hard to put a price on the development of the code. I’ve always worked for myself and never had to bill out to a client before. The positions needed were that of a DBA, Senior Programmer and Junior Programmer. The DBA work could probably be handled by the Senior Programmer. My guess is that it would cost about $4,000-$6,000 to complete the job.
Hosting the website is nominal since I’m using the existing server that hosts my other sites.
Design and Legal were under $2,000.
I estimate that the project could probably be replicated from scratch for about $7,000.
Disclaimer
Any information about how prizes are won or how entries are processed are for general purposes only. Full details are always available in the Official Rules.
None of the information here is meant as legal advice. If you’re going to run your own campaign, you should seek legal counsel. I’d recommend using Tamara S. Pester.
