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...

Most sweepstakes participants evaluate a contest by looking at the prize and asking one question: do I want this? That's a completely reasonable starting point. But there's a second question worth asking that most participants never think to consider, and it turns out...

There's a way to lose a sweepstakes prize that has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with preparation. It happens after the drawing, after your name has been selected, after the win notification arrives and the genuine excitement of having won settles in....