Jim Karpen Tips

Free online lotteries

June 2000

If you like playing the lottery, you'll like the online lottery sites-because the cash is real and the playing is free. The only one that appeals to me is iWon because it's less crude than the rest and is actually a useful site.

The concept is simple: it's a Yahoo-like portal that gives you an extra incentive to visit. Each time you click on a link, you earn "entries"-up to 100 a day. Those entries give you a chance to participate in the regular drawings: $10,000 each day, thirty $1,000 awards each week, $1 million drawings each month, and a $10 million annual drawing.

Each link on the site has a red number to the left that indicates how many entries you receive for clicking. Want to do an Internet search? It'll get you seven entries. Check the weather? Five entries. Read a news story and get four entries. iWon uses the same Inktomi search engine that was used by Yahoo until very recently. And it uses the Looksmart directory, which is among the best. It uses Gist's TV schedules, just as Yahoo does. In other words, it's a bona fide portal, but with an extra twist.

Your total number of entries is constantly tabulated in a small status bar that runs across the top of the page. You can see how close you are to the 100 daily maximum. And you can also follow your accumulated totals toward the weekly, monthly, and annual drawings. Of course, you can continue to use the site once you've reached your maximum number of entries; your clicks simply no longer add to the totals.

iWon also has many of the other characteristics of a portal site, such as personalization and web-based e-mail. It offers top news as well as sports, business, and entertainment news. A section titled features gives you the best of the Internet in categories such as Computers, Entertainment, Games, Health, Movies, and Relationships.

If you don't want utility but just want to gamble for the cash, here are some of the others. FreeLotto lets you pick six numbers for free and offers a $1 million daily jackpot. To use this site and all the others, you must first register. Then you pick your numbers and click on a banner ad to submit your entry. LuckySurf.Com is similar, but in addition it has smaller prizes for matching as few as two numbers. iWin bills itself as the largest games and prizes community on the Internet and offers "dozens of games, thousands of prizes, millions of dollars, lots of fun, all for free."

© 2000 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#222)