Over the last year a slew of free lottery sites have cropped
up. We've been trying them for almost a
year, so now's a good time to analyse the results.
The business model is fairly simple. Your entry to the lottery is based on some
personal datum, like post code, date of birth or phone number. Entry is free and there’s a draw every day,
all you have to do is go on to their site and check the results every day.
There is advertising on the site and that pays for the
prizes.
The big question is:
Are they worth doing?
The £70 or winnings sat in our bank account suggests yes. A more thorough look at effort and reward
says maybe not.
On the surface, it looks like a no-brainer. It only takes a couple of minutes and you
could win a nice lump of cash, in some cases hundreds of pounds.
But those couples of minutes add up. We’ve been using six of these sites for
eleven months. That’s 330 days at 6 minutes
(allowing for 1 minute per site) a day, times 2 people. 3,960 minutes or around 66 hours. So the £70 we’ve won over all came at a rate
of £1.06/hour.
This is a slightly unfair statistic, as all of our £70 has
come from one site, so discounting the others, that one has a pay rate of
£6.36/hour. Almost minimum wage. Add in the excitement of winning and that’s
probably worth the effort. Or it was,
before they reduced the pay rate by 60%
Luckyphone
This is the one we’ve had the money from. The main reason that this site pays out is
that there’s a slight difference in format.
Where the others are all-or-nothing jackpot only, Luckyphone allows you
to build up smaller prizes and cash out at £10.
I’ve loved this format from the start and it’s always been
the one free lottery I would have recommended to people.
Your entry is based on the last nine digits of your phone
number and you can have multiple entries if you have more than one phone
number. The main daily draw picks one
person who receives £20 (originally £10), then you can have smaller prizes for
matching 6, 7, 8 or 9 of their numbers.
It was nice. A couple
of times a week you’d log in and see you’ve won 25p or 50p. It’s small amounts, but a little bit of free
money is a great way to start the day.
Up to 4 May 2016, we were averaging 25.8p per day between
us. It was never going to make us rich,
but it was a nice little bonus. A little
bit of excitement every day and competition to see who could get to £10 first.
On 5 May 2016, the format changed. Jackpots were doubled, a new “mega draw” was introduced
with a one in a billion chance of winning £1,000 and the small prize structure
was changed.
The rewards for matching 7, 8 or 9 numbers was reduced, matching
6 now gets nothing but new prizes for matching 0, 1 or 2 were introduced. Maybe that will balance out, maybe not.
Since that change, our average is 9.8p per day. 61.8% lower
than previous.
We’re only a month into the new regime, but so far it’s
pretty damning. If it continues like
this, it’ll be bye-bye luckyphone.
It’ll be a shame because it’s been a great site. Excellent service and very prompt payment but
if the bottom line doesn’t add up it has to go.
The others
Well, we’ve had nothing from the others. They are all jackpot-or-nothing, so maybe
that’s just the odds slowing things down.
That being said, with over 10 hours sunk into each site so
far, even winning the bigger jackpots will struggle to bring up a decent
average.
Maybe it’s just luck though, maybe the experience of two
people over eleven months is too small a sample to really tell, so I’m going to
ask you to help improve my stats.
Please comment with your own figures and I’ll edit this post
with overall predicted earnings on each site.
I’ll need the following info:
· Name of site
· Number of days you’ve been using it
· Total amount won
My conclusion so far is that it’s just a long-shot gamble
like any other lottery, but at least you don’t have to pay for this one. If you enjoy the anticipation then go for it,
it doesn’t cost anything after all. If
you’ve got a more mercenary approach like me, maybe don’t bother.
If you do want to give them a go, here are some links:
Number plate lotto
Edit: On 14 June 2016, Luckyphone changed the reward structure again, once more reducing the value of various wins. In the 39 days since, we have averaged 1.74p per day between us. The total reward has been reduced by 97% over the two changes.
It's going to take each of us about 3 years at this rate to build up £10 with withdraw.
Thanks for he good times Luckyphone, but I'll be leaving now.
Edit: On 14 June 2016, Luckyphone changed the reward structure again, once more reducing the value of various wins. In the 39 days since, we have averaged 1.74p per day between us. The total reward has been reduced by 97% over the two changes.
It's going to take each of us about 3 years at this rate to build up £10 with withdraw.
Thanks for he good times Luckyphone, but I'll be leaving now.
