New free house competition relies on advertising

13 October 2009

You could win a house for free worth £425,000 in a new competition announced today – as long as you can find the entry route! To do so, players will have to click ads on a new website set up by British couple Paul and Michelle Wood in the hope of finding the ones that reveal how to enter for free. Instead of charging players, the couple are hoping to raise at least £900,000 by selling ad space on their site to advertisers looking to capitalise on the excitement generated by the competition.

Homeowners are regularly coming up with new and ingenious ideas to sell their home in this market. This new competition, which is scheduled to start on 2 November and last 84 days, gives players up to 20 chances every day of entering the competition by answering the daily question that is hidden amongst the ads. If they answer correctly, they will have up to 7 days to answer a weekly question, in the hope of being one of the 21 finalists. A solicitor will pick the winner at random and if all goes well, one person will win the detached home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, absolutely free.

In terms of how the couple are hoping to finance the prize, there are similarities with the pixahome.com concept promoted by Tim Bawtree a few months ago. Also free, the competition requires players to simply follow Tim via Twitter. Separately, Tim hopes to sell pixel block ads at $100 to advertisers on his website. Unfortunately, given players have no real incentive to click ads and due to the large number of ad blocks presented on the grid, the competition has so far failed to gain any momentum. This could also be due to the fact that this is Tim’s 3rd attempt at giving away his property through a competition, after failing to sell enough tickets in his previous ‘Win a Cheltenham House’ competitions.

Although the winahouseforfree.com competition differs in many ways from pixahome.com, they will have to find a compelling reason for advertisers to take part. While players have more of an incentive to click the ads on their site, they will only be taken to the advertisers’ website if the ad is not linked to an entry route for the competition. From here, it is likely that many players may go back immediately to competition website to try to find the entry route again, which would lead to relatively poor quality traffic for the advertisers.

At the same time, this is an interesting attempt at selling a property without charging players to enter. After all, one of the biggest issues homeowners faced last year was finding ways of structuring their competition to satisfy the requirements of the UK’s Gambling Act 2005 and the UK's Gambling Commission. Given it is free to enter, the competition falls outside of the Act and is therefore unlikely to face any obstacles from a regulatory perspective.

We wish Paul and Michelle the best of luck with their competition and look forward to seeing if advertisers embrace this new concept. If so, it could prove popular with both players and homeowners alike.

If you’re looking for other ways of winning a house for free, why not take a look at our directory? Fair Exchange are currently running a free competition giving away a £400,000 apartment in London to be chosen by the winner. All you need to do is register and play their ‘Mix for Bricks’ game on the Fair Exchange site. Entries limited to UK residents only - good luck!

Let us know what you think about these new ideas for selling your home. Can this be an viable way of bringing advertisers and players together, or is it one step too far if you're not representing a big promoter, newspaper or TV company?

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