The notification that you've won a vehicle is one of the more surreal moments a sweepstakes entrant can have. For a few hours it feels entirely uncomplicated — you entered, you won, the car is coming. Then reality starts to arrive in pieces, usually in the form of...

The average person has more idle time scattered through their day than they realize — waiting rooms, commutes, the ten minutes before a meeting starts, the lag between finishing dinner and starting anything else. For sweepstakes entrants, that time is genuinely useful...

Ask someone who wins sweepstakes regularly how they do it and the answer is almost never what you'd expect. It's not a lucky charm, a special time of day they enter, or a sixth sense for which giveaways are about to pay out. It's usually something closer to a shrug...