Okay, so I got a submission today from a blogger who seemed pretty excited about a blog raffle she had started on her site. She was selling tickets for one dollar a pop and was going to give half of the money she raised to a random winner.  I totally commend her for trying to think outside the box and everything, but from my research it looks like holding a raffle on your blog is totally illegal.

I had meant to do a post on this earlier, but forgot about it until this blogger’s raffle submission today (I’m not going to link to her blog or embarrass her, and I’ve encouraged her to start a new legal blog contest and get back to me). 

I haven’t done any really extensive research on this, but from what I can tell you are only allowed to hold a raffle if you are a charity or a non-profit, and even then there are strict state and federal laws that apply.  If you want to know more you can check out this raffle FAQ or a story about a dude who got into some big trouble for holding a raffle on his website. 

So don’t start a blog raffle, dude.  You can give prize money away in exchange for backlinks or publicity or whatever, but when you start selling tickets I think that is considered illegal gambling.

Blog contests are starting to become more and more popular out there, so the faster this is common knowledge the better.  If you have a blog it would be totally awesome if you mentioned to your readers that blog raffles are against the rules.  Thanks, dudes and dudettes!