Scholarship Sweepstakes
Sometimes companies offering scholarship guides, financial aid, or college loans will offer scholarship sweepstakes. This incentive marketing tactic is done to entice new members to join their website or get approved for one of their loans. If the site is free, then the scholarship sweepstake is used to entice consumers to visit whatever affiliate sites they might be advertising.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why bother looking for scholarship sweepstakes? Aren't sweepstakes a scam anyway? Well, the concept of sweepstakes is not a new one and it's being used by even the most established companies. When is the last time you bought a certain brand of soda because the company was offering a special sweepstakes where one very lucky person gets the million-dollar cap? Or when was the last time you secretly saved a McDonalds game piece because collecting the other two matching pieces would guarantee you financial blessings? Indeed, if one is truthful to themselves, they will discover that they have probably participated in sweepstakes or other types of contests and didn't even think about it because a company they trust established it.
This is not to say that every scholarship sweepstake advertisement is legitimate. If something seems fishy, check the Better Business Bureau or ask other students perhaps on a college message board about the sweepstakes. Usually people will have no problems complaining about scams that have been around for a while. Remember, scholarship sweepstakes, just like any other contest should always have real winners. If they don't and they are not listed in the Better Business Bureau, proceed with caution when giving your information. Scholarship sweepstakes could potentially be used in phishing scams, in which Internet deviants extract personal information from unsuspecting patrons. This can lead to an email box full of spam or worse; electronically breaking into one's bank or credit card accounts.
So considering this, what do you need to do to start entering into legitimate scholarship sweepstakes? Well, believe it or not you automatically enter into many scholarship sweepstakes just by joining certain sites. Others may require you to fill out a separate form completely.
To get started on your scholarship quest, consider Free Scholarship Guide. This company offers scholarship sweepstakes of a whopping $5,000 biannually. On top of that, just as their name suggests, you can get a directory of free scholarship information when you join just like Fastweb.