October 1, 2026
Bonus Entries: How Referring Friends and Following Along Actually Multiply Your Odds
An extra entry for following an account is real. An extra entry for recruiting five friends is a different animal.
The common bonus actions
Following an account, sharing a post, tagging a friend in a comment, or subscribing to a newsletter frequently earns one additional entry each, usually capped at a stated total so the same action cannot be repeated for unlimited credit. The rules list exactly which actions qualify and how many extra entries each one is worth, and that list is worth reading before assuming an action you already did counts toward anything.
What each bonus action actually costs you
A follow puts your account into that brand's visible follower list, and a newsletter subscription puts your email into an ongoing marketing relationship well beyond the single promotion, which is a small but real trade rather than a purely free multiplier. None of this is hidden or unusual, but it is worth being deliberate about which of these actions you are actually willing to take on repeatedly across many different promotions, since they accumulate quietly into a much larger footprint of accounts following and inboxes subscribed than any single entry made it feel like.
Connecting an account through a third-party widget
Some bonus mechanics ask you to authorise a social account through the same widget platforms, Gleam, Rafflecopter and similar, that host the entry form itself, which grants that widget a defined set of permissions on the connected account rather than simply confirming the follow happened. Reading what permissions are actually being requested before authorising, the same way you would with any third-party app, is worth doing here specifically because it is easy to click through without noticing what was granted.
Referral entries carry more weight, and more conditions
A bonus entry for each friend who enters through your personal link is common and can add up faster than any other single mechanic, but the friend still has to be a real, separately eligible entrant using their own name and email address rather than yours repeated. Rules commonly cap total referral entries per person, which keeps the mechanic from letting one aggressive entrant absorb a disproportionate share of the whole promotion by themselves.
The real size of a referral advantage
Because every other entrant has access to the exact same referral mechanic, the advantage from recruiting a handful of friends is smaller in practice than it feels while doing it, since the pool grows alongside your own entry count rather than staying fixed while only you add to it. It is a genuine edge at the margin, not the outsized multiplier it can feel like in the moment, and it is worth keeping that in perspective before asking more of other people's time than the prize actually justifies.
Where it turns into something the rules forbid
Creating additional accounts to refer yourself, or arranging for a friend to enter purely so you can bank the referral credit while they have no real interest in the prize, sits in the same territory as the entry-limit and group-entry rules that void a whole set of entries rather than just the surplus. A referral has to be a genuine separate person choosing to enter for themselves, not a workaround wearing that shape.
When a bonus action is tied to a purchase
A bonus entry offered specifically for buying something, rather than for a free social action, still has to sit alongside a free alternate method that grants an equivalent entry, exactly as the base entry does, since the no-purchase-necessary requirement covers every tier of entries a promotion offers, not merely the first one. A promotion offering extra purchase-linked entries with no equivalent free route to match them has the same underlying legal problem as one requiring purchase for the base entry itself.
Is it worth the extra clicks
A single share or follow costs seconds and is close to a free multiplier, worth doing on any promotion you were entering anyway since the marginal cost is nearly nothing. Actively recruiting several people to enter on your behalf is a bigger ask of your own time and theirs, and it is only worth pursuing for a prize substantial enough that you would genuinely want the people you are asking to also have a real shot at it.