1. Blog
  2. News
  3. PLEASE READ: Prizes temporarily lowered

PLEASE READ: Prizes temporarily lowered

•
By
News

I’m sad to announce that from today we are temporarily putting the daily Main Draw pot down to £200 from £500, the Video Draw pot down to £50 from £100 and removing 4 of the 10 daily Stackpot prizes. The Coronavirus crisis has hit many small businesses, including our own. We rely on advertising revenue to fund the free daily prizes, but the market has suffered badly.

This is a temporary change which we will review as the situation improves. We’ve never had to lower our prize money in our nine year history, but we are going through a crisis that we haven’t seen for many more. Understandably, businesses are having to cut their advertising spend, and this means we’ve been making a significant daily loss.

Since this time last year ad revenue is down by 62.5%, and our temporary prize reductions equate to about 50%.

We considered furloughing staff, but we want the team together to help us get through this. We’ve been working together to come up with new ways of funding the prizes, and we have some promising developments in the pipeline.

We also discussed whether we could introduce an additional paid subscription service, offering an ad-free interface, and priority daily reminders. This would cost something like £1 per month. At that price we would need 18,000 subscribers before it would allow us to put the prize money back to where it was, and probably even higher when the ad revenue came back. Perhaps we could donate a percentage of any excess to a charity supporting the NHS. This is just an idea, but we’re keen to hear your feedback in the comments below or by voting here.

This is far from the 2020 Vision that we had. Since we announced our £20,000 per day goal things have been tough. We had a legal battle with a paid postcode lottery service (come to think of it… I’ve not seen their ads for a while), an ex-colleague stealing from us, name change, GDPR, Google ads banning us, and the rest of the ad market being destroyed by GDPR. We had actually managed to get Google ads back in February, just as the crisis started to take hold.

The irony is that this is happening just as we were starting to become profitable again. We really do believe this to be temporary, and when the market returns prizes will be going up again, like in the good old days.

We all really appreciate your patience and loyalty.

Be safe

Chris & Team

Related Blogs

PMP Ya Later 2021!

•
By
News
Another (🤔) interesting year is over. 2021 was, of course, dominated by the pandemic and has ended in a cliffhanger as our scientists (🙏) work out quite what this new variant is up to. But, we’ve ended the year mostly vaccinated, having started it only a couple of days after the first vaccine was approved. And… PMP members collectively claimed over £283k for free! … Read more

We're 10 years old today!

•
By
News
10 years ago today I turned to my colleague at work and said “look at my new website”. After I convinced him it wasn’t an April Fools’ hoax, he became the second person to sign up to what was then called Free Postcode Lottery. … Read more

2020 Re-Vision

•
By
News
2020 is over! How was it? OK, it was awful, but some good stuff happened, most of which I suspect we’ll only fully appreciate in retrospect. For now, we can be pleased that 2020 did a lot for science, the air, the South Korean film industry, and for neighbours. … Read more

  • Just to say Hi and thank you for a little chance and some fun.

  • HELLO 🤗😍🤗

  • Would like to saythanks

  • Would like to say Hi.👍

  • £1 a month? Bargain! Count me in.

  • Hello Chris. Yes it is a tough call, but to keep the site running, you will have to cut your cloth according to circumstances. I can't see why anybody should complain about the down-sizing of the prizes. For those that wren't in at the beginning, Chris didn't start off with the level of prizes that they are at present, so the prizes should equate to the amount of revenue coming in. Carry on doing what you are doing Chris and before long this will be all behind us.

    • A riot on a free online lottery site? I'd pay to watch that 😁

    • I actually meant suspending fixed prizes on the bonus draws, so you were in with a chance to claim just your bonus amount as a prize for those. That would give a small saving that might be helpful or might be too small to be worth the fuss. Stopping bonus payments on the other draws would probably cause a riot.

    • You spotted my schoolboy error there, Graham, thanks for that. What I should have said was the Main Draw & Bonus Draw prizes PLUS the winners My Bonus amount. Sorry for the confusion.

    • Good idea for bonus draws, terrible idea for the main draw, imagine a lucky new player winning 1p - nope, me neither !! Maybe re-brand the bonus draws as "Win Your Bonus", keep it as three draws, £5+, £10+ and £20+, so those who've built up more get extra chances. It would be a noticeable difference to those who've only just qualified for the draw but a lot of eligible players have a bonus big enough that it wouldn't be a blow and it would save £245 a week from the budget. Maybe use that to fund a couple of extra Stackpot chances for everyone

    • Couldn't agree more, monkee, and with OFW below. PMP have to do whatever they see as necessary to keep their site going. As a suggestion, how about just paying the winners' My Bonus amount on the Main & Bonus Draws for now?

  • The main attraction is that it is Free, so please keep it free, and we'll see it through together with smaller prizes comparable with your reduced revenue. Once things start to recover, you'll probably get even more ad revvenue, as businesses strive to regain lost trade. OldFatherWilliam

  • There is no point to the site if a subscription is required, even if it is just to make it ad free. Personally, I have taken advantage of some adverts, but generally I ignore most of them along with the surveys, seeing as I generally get screened out, or they are not available to me. Having said that, I sincerely hope that the site survives for the sake of its 6 or 7 employees and for those that enjoy visiting for the chance of a small monetary gain, but in the grand scheme of things with the veritable sh1tstorm that is hitting the UK's overall health, not to mention wealth, PMP (very sadly) really is a mere bagatelle. A great idea, Chris, great run for your money so far, fingers crossed that PMP is able ride out the current tumultuous upheaval.

    • To clarify. A subscription would never be required. The suggestion is that it might be subsidised by a paid service.

  • I look forward to the daily "interruption" of a painless flutter. Have also responded to a few adverts. Stick to the business model and stay solvent. Keep your customer base intact.

  • Hi Chris,

    I hope I'm with the majority of the longer term members when I say that we want/need you to survive. Most of us have never won, so we've not lost anything at all, just a bit of opportunity. Personally, I think your USP is it being free. I doubt that I would pay to play. It would just become a discretionary spend like Lotto, golf club subscriptions, newspapers etc, so as I'm retired, I'd probably just stop. I think a 2-tier service where people paid for ad-free might work, but they might feel that they are funding the prizes for the non-payers.

    You can't run a business on a loss making basis for too long, best to nip it in the bud before it becomes unsustainable.

    You certainly have my support with this temporary reduction. I suspect ad revenues will jump sharply once it all comes back as advertisers fight for market share.

    Good luck Chris and team, and thank you

    • That's more or less my mixed feelings neatly explained.

  • I still think of this as FPL, so I'm not sure how I'd feel about a small subscription meaning it was no longer free. I get why, and fully understand, I'm just not sure how I'd feel about it. I often try to do as many surveys as I can to bring in revenue, but I usually get screened out and I've been rather distracted lately too. I think reducing payouts to suit your budget makes perfect sense and is more than fair, and wish you luck in keeping everything going until the situation improves and you can start aiming for your 2020 vision again. Stay safe and well and have a virtual high-five from me. Thanks for all you do.

    • I read it as optional too, but I think matching prizes to revenue makes more sense and my personal feelings on paying a small fee are mixed. Fortunately in the past revenue increased meaning more draws and bigger prizes but trying to maintain those if the money isn't coming in would kill off this fantastic site. It's a tough call either way.

    • I interpreted the idea as that the site itself remains free but members could choose to pay £1 a month for an ad- free version. Maybe this isn’t right and it would have to go to completely subscription only? Either way it would only be temporary. Normally, I wouldn’t consider a subscription but in this case I definitely would, if it gave the site a chance of survival.

  • Can we donate towards this? Or if we win, give a proportion back into PMP.