Guest Author - Jennifer L. Thompson

With the holiday season quickly closing in, gift-giving is on the forefront of most of our minds. Here is a list of inexpensive gift ideas for the sweepstaker in your life:

Basic supplies:

Someone who enjoys sweepstaking by postal mail will always enjoy having extra supplies such as pens, plain white 3x5 cards, plain 3x5 notepads, #10 envelopes, stamps, and standard size postcards (available at your local post office). For a more personal touch one could create a kit that would contain all of these items in a hand-decorated box for easy storage. This could be done for less than $20.

Fancy #10 Envelopes:

Decorated envelopes, either pre-printed (readily available through your local printshop or conveniently online), or ones you have decorated yourself, will be a welcome gift. Also stickers, or other simple embellishments for envelope decorating, will do nicely for those who enjoy this aspect of the craft.

Sweepstakes Newsletters:

Many sweepstakers will enjoy newsletter subscriptions as gifts... (it's the gift that keeps on giving). Some of these would include Sweeping America, Best Sweepstakes Newsletter, Rags to Riches, Winning Ways, and more. Many are available in an online format as well as the usual paper format, with subscription prices starting at about $15.

Return Address Labels:

Always handy when contest rules allow them, these are time-savers as well as decorative and functional.

Gift subscription to Club Pogo:

I recently received my Special Edition Four Year Badge for being a member of Club Pogo, started in quest of winning prizes, and continued for love of the site.

Pogo has a wide variety of games available, ranging from word games, to card games, to board games, casino style games, and more, with many awarding tokens for playing. Tokens can then be used in exchange for entries into drawings for cash prizes of $50 daily, $250 weekly, and $1,000 monthly along with drawings for various other prizes.

Tokens can also be used to "purchase" items for your Pogo "mini" (a character that is displayed along with your screen name that can be personalized in great detail), and for various other purposes, such as playing the slot machines and some of the other casino-style games.

Many of the games will also award a jackpot spin after reaching a certain score, from which you can win tokens, Pogo merchandise, and progressive cash jackpot prizes of up to $4,999. Other features too numerous to mention abound throughout the site. Subscription prices are $5.99 a month, or $39.99 a year, with a free-trial offer available.