Now that you have decided you want to seriously commit to this endeavor, you need to invest a little time and money. Having the right supplies on hand will make your hobby much more enjoyable. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a late breaking contest come up and there you are, with no 3x5’s prepared, no envelopes in the house, and no cash to buy postage stamps.

Let’s discuss the financial output of sweepstaking. When you begin, you need to look at your budget and estimate how much you can set aside to accommodate your postage cost. Don’t stretch yourself financially. To enjoy your newfound hobby, you have to set some limits on yourself. You read all the great winning success stories on the web and in the contest publications, and you want to just jump right in, send out hundreds of envelopes, sit back and wait for the UPS truck to back up with all your goodies, right?

Well that makes wonderful dreams, but it’s not reality. After you look at your budget, decide how much you can comfortably spend on postage. Now we can start determining how many entries you can afford to send out.

A 100 roll of stamps as of March 2009 costs $42.00. Now if you feel you can stretch your budget to accommodate that, then you now have a figure to use when estimating how many entries you can send out. In one month you have roughly 24 mailing days (excluding mailing holidays). If you have 100 stamps to work with and 24 days, you can estimate sending 4 entries a day. Now if we are dealing with postcards, that require 27¢ postage, then you are working with different figures. This is not an exact science, it is just one formula you can use so you don’t get yourself in trouble financially.

Sending out 100 entries a month would be considered very moderate, especially when you see how many sweeps are available to you throughout the month. If you are limited to a tight budget, you have to be very selective of the sweeps you enter. You also have to make allowances for those late breaking sweeps that seem to show up at the most importune time.

If you subscribe to a contest publication, go through it and see how many sweeps have deadlines within your accounting postage month. Pencil in on your contest publication how many entries you want to send. Using the above formula, you can project how many you are able to send each month.

Now we have your postal cost estimated. This may seem mundane, especially when you are so pumped up to begin winning, but if you are in this for the long haul, then it is necessary.

Brick upon brick, line upon line, steady she blows. Here’s where one of the great bonuses of sweeping comes in for you. It’s that wonderful attribute called "patience."