Great Tips from One of Our Winners!

It’s great to hear from our previous winners. It’s easy to forget that real people take home these prizes – but play the game right – or get lucky and any of our prizes could be yours!

One of our winners was lucky enough to win a £2000 shopping spree and pamper day at Selfridges, a gold plated Mont Blanc pen AND a cashmere baby gift set!

In her blog she describes Raffle.it as ‘curse free’ as with other charity auctions you can often pay over the odds or feel robbed after for spending more than you intended or than the object was worth. This is what we love about it too – you can spend a couple of quid and win something fabulous.

She has some interesting insights on how to play the game – check it out at on her blog http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/09/28/deborah-friedell/winners-curse/

36 hours…£67,000 of prizes…43 winners

In 36 hours we’ll be giving away £67,000 worth of prizes to 43 lucky winners…will you be one of them? Every prize is going so get your tickets while you can! Remember, every penny you spend on tickets goes to charity Mothers4Children.

Last chance to:
Get your Jimmy Choo’s for £1 http://raffle.it/raffles/20006
Win 3 limited edition Tracey Emin signed prints for £2 http://raffle.it/raffles/20056
Live in luxury for 8 days for £3 http://raffle.it/raffles/20017

Want the best chance of winning? WThese raffles haven’t sold many tickets, but we are giving away the prizes! Get in there now while you can!
An Asprey gorgeous evening gown, worth £2,500, yours for £3! http://raffle.it/raffles/20031
This Montblanc gold plated top quality pen – only £1! http://raffle.it/raffles/20035
or
The new Ralph Lauren Polo Baby Ricky bag? Again yours for just £1 http://raffle.it/raffles/20051

Giving to charity never felt so good! Play and Enjoy

Are you a charity? It’s your turn to benefit from Raffle.it!

Those of you who avidly read this blog will already know that sadly our Mothers4Children big win raffle is ending the 18th September. We’ve had great fun doing it…so have decided not to let the giving stop there! We already have a plan, and are working hard to help as many charities as possible. It is really simple. If you are part of a charity and want to know more then please e-mail us on charitybegins@raffle.it!

When will it all end?

We often get asked ‘When are the raffles ending?’ This is a question we’ve struggled to answer. We apologise now to anyone who has been confused by the estimated 14 days left displayed on the website. It says this because the timer is based on the frequency of ticket sales, if sales aren’t frequent enough it automatically states 14 days. Soon a less confusing system for everyone will be in place.

However! The end is in sight! I can exclusively reveal ALL raffles will end by the 18th September latest, regardless of how many entrants there are. This means there is a really high chance of winning on some of the raffles, especially those where not many tickets have sold!

So please, accept our apologies for the confusion, and take solace in that soon that amazing Gucci handbag or pair of Jimmy Choo’s could be yours.

What is this lowest unique number jargon?

To all of us here at Raffle.it the phrase ‘lowest unique number’ slips off the tongue easily, yet when we’re trying to explain it to other people we get a slightly blank look? As baffling as this is to us…we can see their point. It is one thing to come up with a great new concept – another to get people to have a clue what we’re talking about!

Therefore we decided to re-wind and make life easier for you. Clement and I took to the streets of Guildford on a mission to explain the game. So if you fancy knowing how to play, or want to laugh at us being cheesy then here is your opportunity! Let us know what you think…

Why so long?

Why so long to wait?

To make the Mothers4Children Raffle event as successful as possible we want to have loads of individual raffles running. These will be donations from celebrities, designers, brands and retailers, all rallying to support Mothers4Children. Some of the prizes will be completely unique, others aspiration items we’d all love to own.

To organise this takes time. Added to the donations we also need to ensure there are great and relevent reward vouchers in place for every player and again this is no small challenge.

Friday was the official anouncement of our partnership with Mothers4Children and we have given ourselves until the end of May to pull all raffles and rewards together. In the meantime we have dedicated Raffle.it to Mothers4Children to encourage lots more donations.

Make sure you get your name down for our invite only head start by registering at Raffle.it now.

Also if you are on Twitter follow @raffleit and send us the number you believe will be the lowest that no one of 499 other followers tweeted.

Free iPod shuffles anyone? Grab one in our Twitter Raffle

Simply follow @raffleit and tweet us the lowest number you believe only you will tweet.

Example:
If 10 people tweeted the following numbers: 1, 10, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 2, 8, 1, the person that tweeted number 4 would win the iPod as he tweeted the lowest unique number.

We’ll break this up every 500 new followers and send the person who has tweeted the lowest unique number an iPod shuffle absolutely free.

Can we say fairer than that? I don’t think so.

The Power of Love

So it’s official, we’ve taken Raffle.it on holiday in preparation for an incredible re-launch in June. We have partnered with the new charity, Mothers4Children.org to help them with their fund raising efforts.

The board of Mothers4Children are an inspiring bunch, Lisa Bilton, Yasmin Le Bon, Natalie Massenet, Trinny Woodall and Anya Hindmarsh. Between them they have created a charity that is set to improve the lives of many neglected children in the UK and Europe.

Lisa recognised that Raffle.it provides a perfect solution for charities trying to fund raise in this tough economic climate. As opposed to relying on auctions and the ever diminishing group of deep pocketed individuals, Raffle.it appeals to everyone by only requiring a tiny financial commitment.

To celebrate the launch of Mothers4Children, the girls organised an incredible lunch at The Mayfair Hotel for 200 of their closest friends. And we got to go along and explain how Raffle.it works.

I’ll add the video of Yasmin attempting to explain how our raffles differ from traditional raffles and how we got on with our biggest live raffle to date as soon as it becomes available.

On a serious note though Mothers4Children.org isn’t just for Mothers to help. I’m a Dad, most of the Raffle.it team are dads, uncles or big brothers and what we all take for granted is love. This is what is missing for most of the children Lisa and co are trying to help.

The cuddles I receive from my children on arriving home have almost magical properties, a sense of relief flooding over us and the weight of the day being lifted away. I can’t imagine what it would be like not to get these hugs. Money can’t buy love, but if we raise enough we’ll be able to help Lisa provide the support network and education required to help show many more children what it feels like to be loved.

If you’ve got something you’d like to donate for the Mothers4Children Raffle please complete this form and we’ll be in touch.

If you haven’t yet registered at Raffle.it, do it now. You’ll get early access to the raffles meaning you won’t miss out on the most popular unique gifts currently being pledged.

And if you’re on Twitter follow us @raffleit. We’ll mostly be tweeting the prizes being pledged but we’re also going to be running a cute Twitter Raffle, more on that in another post.

Raffle.it goes on holiday .. off line & crashing a charity golf day

Thinking of entering a house raffle? STOP read this first!

The credit crunch is biting hard now but also has the possibility of creating great opportunities. Our goal at Raffle.it is to help make everything affordable to everyone and it’s never been more necessary than now. House raffles are springing up all over the web and I’m sure all with genuine intent. However, many are being rushed, effectively just copying the couple in Devon that successfully sold 46,000 £25 tickets, gaining an enviable amount of free press coverage along the way.

In almost all cases these raffles are flawed and will be stopped by the Gambling Commission in due course.

The Devon couple are battling to convince the authorities that testing their participants’ ability to use Google was a sufficient test of skill. A test of skill is required to prevent a random draw being viewed as an illegal lottery. Other recent raffle operators are asking questions where they have given the answers in bold on the same page! One I’ve seem will rely on the National Lottery results some time in the future. These are all examples of illegal lotteries and will not be allowed to be drawn by the Gambling Commission. 

This is all very disappointing to us as it will no doubt damage the acceptance of raffles as an acceptable method of trade. The Raffle.it team have spent a long time creating a platform that is both legal and rewarding to all. We have a win all ways solution and we are very proud of it. We worked hard with the Gambling Commission from the outset to ensure that we didn’t fall foul of any legislation and didn’t accidently run illegal lotteries. Our raffles are based on a game of skill and do not rely on a random draw. Only one person can be right when using our Winner Identification Process. We also work with Retailers and Brands to ensure that everyone playing a raffle we host receives something worth, or potentially worth, more than the cost of the ticket itself. In the case of our first house raffle we have a nationwide removals firm giving every ticket holder a 15% discount saving between £30 and £115, and Firebox.com have kindly donated £115,000 in Gift Vouchers meaning every ticket holder will receive a no strings attached Firebox.com £5 gift voucher!!

So enter with confidence. The second the last ticket is sold, the winner is identified, no delays, no excuses and every single person that enters is informed via email. You get to see how many times each ticket number was chosen and can see with your own eyes how the winner was identified. Completely transparent, completely fair, completely safe.

We want to host your raffles and help you promote them. We take a small share of the ticket revenue in exchange for all banking, accounting, admin, hosting and marketing costs. It’s a win-win deal for everyone involved and takes us one step closer to our goal of making everything affordable to everyone.

What do you think? Have you had any experience of any of these other house raffles?

UPDATE (Thanks Jeff!): Here’s the link to our first house raffle .. http://www.raffle.it/raffle/10128