In 2011 I released my experiment into the wild with every expectation that it would wither and die, but 4 years on I’m astonished at how big FPL has become, how much press coverage it has achieved, and how much of a community has grown around it since we celebrated our last birthday. To mark the occasion I’m raising the main draw prize fund to £100 early, and putting the Survey Draw up to £50!

That’s an extra £40 given away every day, which totals £170 now (£100 Main Draw + £50 Survey Draw + 2 x £10 Stackpot) not to mention the Mini Draw and Bonus additions. That means that FPL gives away more than £62,000 per year!

I realise this breaks the convenient link between “% UK postcodes entered” and the main daily prize but we can return to that when we hit 11%, or 12%, or maybe something completely different… who knows? As long as you keep supporting the site by spreading the word I’ll respond by giving away more 🙂

The Last Year

How can FPL afford to give away more? Well, things have really been going our way recently. Last Summer we had a rush of press interest which led to coverage in The Sun, The Times, The Evening Standard, LoveMoney.com, Yahoo and on BBC Radio and even a TV appearance on London Live.

Your (polite) demands for extra daily prizes led to the creation of the Stackpot back in October which, of course, brought more page impressions per visit and therefore, more revenue. In November FPL won the Best Website Award in the Communities category at the Website of the Year 2014 Awards. After Christmas time we made some more post-holiday column inches in the Daily Mail, Telegraph and AOL. In February I finally got round to improving the daily reminder emails which has improved response rates and made it easier to signpost different pages and offers. Finally, in March we were asked to trial new software that allowed us to conceal a winning postcode behind a simple survey question provided by market research companies on behalf of big brands. It worked well so I introduced the Survey Draw.

The Survey Draw

Each time you answer a question market researchers pay us a small amount which becomes a significant amount when enough of you do it. The questions are fun and the answer you provide remains anonymous. Sometimes it asks you a sequence of questions but for each one you answer you gain an extra day of question-free access. It also lets me create FPL’s own surveys from which I have been posting the results on the Facebook Page.

Comments

These new pages have given FPLers more opportunity to post comments which, in itself, has become a defining part of the website and daily experience. Lots of you are voluntarily helping out people who post questions before I get a chance to even see them, and even more of you are (for some unknown reason) posting your postcode presumably in the hope that this improves your chances (I can confirm that, of course, it doesn’t). We’re even getting self-appointed FPL comedians like the controversial “Blind Bob Stoker” (an apparently Marmite character for many of you) posting jokes. And, like any online forum, we’re getting a lot of strangers bickering like siblings :-). But we’re also getting loads of lovely appreciative (and sometimes very flattering, if not over-exaggerated) comments. Here are a couple of my recent favourites (blush):

A young man with a heart the size of the Eiffel Tower designs a website and instead of lining his pockets, decides to give money away, for FREE, and out come the moaning minnies. There’s always the National Lottery if you don’t like Chris’s FREE draws!! – Linda Ibbetson

The absolute gentleman Mr Chris Holbrook who developed this, is not just a genius, he is IMHO very generous, his own sense of humor, which I find dotted all around the site, is priceless.
A laugh a minute coming here, its like winning every time I open the pages, just because I smile 🙂 – TJ Harris

Ahem… forgive my self-indulgence.

The Next Year

Since April the 1st 2011 3.8 million people have visited the site and over £45,000 has been won. Having undershot with my optimism when I launched the site my expectations for FPL’s 5th year are running high and I think that at least one of these figures will be doubled by the end of it. Don’t forget to do your bit (as well as increasing your bonus to up to £200) by posting your referral link wherever you can. I’m very grateful that continued growth of FPL has allowed me to quit my job and focus on continuing the site’s growth and there’s no way I’m going back 🙂

Expect a new site design (please don’t whinge – it’s a mess), more prize increases and at least one new daily draw…

Thanks all for your continued support. Good luck in year 5!

Chris