As many have already done, I ventured to make a retweet to win bot on Twitter to investigate how many of the contests are real.
So far 21,000 contests have been entered and 67 have been won, giving a winning percentage of 0.31%. When I enter a given contest it gets an average of 41 retweets with a standard deviation of 104 retweets.
What kind of prizes can one expect?
An analysis of thousands of the entries revealed the following word cloud:
How many contests are actually real?
How many of the retweets are even real? Maybe not many of them. Suppose on average, a contest saturates at 40 retweets, giving me a 1/40 chance of winning. My winning percentage should be roughly equal to the 1/40, so given I won 67 contests there should have been ~3,000 contests that are definitely real. This is a very rough estimate.
However, I have actually entered 21,000 contests. Assuming the above, that means most of the contests are not real or have no intention of paying out.
Some physical prizes received
- Limited South Park Monopoly (worth $150)
- Workaholics bobblehead
- $50 gift certificate to Amazon
- $20 gift certificate to Amazon
- DVD of the Vatican Tapes
- DVD of Key and Peele seasons 1+2
- PS4 game Madden 2015
Total revenue: $70
A sample of the contests won included an autographed cookbook, festival passes, a mixing and mastering service, gift cards, and a signed CD.
Reference shelf
A short shelf of sources and related reading. Opens in a new tab.
