FAQ: Contest Votes, Promotion, Rules and Pricing
Voting Now does not sell contest votes directly. It sells promotion that brings real people to your entry, priced the way advertisers price leads, with a quote agreed before anything runs. There are no bots and no fake accounts, the organizer's rules decide what counts, and nobody can promise a win. Each answer below is the one given on the page that covers its topic.
Rules read before any budget
Every job starts with the contest's published rules. If they forbid paid promotion, you hear a plain no first, before anyone talks about money.
A free first reading
Send your contest and get a free reading of its rules and audience. A plain yes or no comes first, and a quote follows only after a yes.
Real people, never bots
Entries are promoted through ads, native PR, creators, blogger groups and our own social accounts. Each person who arrives decides alone whether to vote.
A quote before anything runs
Promotion is priced the way advertisers price leads, against a quote agreed in advance. We publish no success rates and no vote packages.
Every state, every kind of contest
A county fair, a city's Best of poll, a school vote or a national photo contest: the work starts from that contest's own rulebook, wherever it runs.
Honest about the limits
The organizer counts the votes, so nobody outside the contest can decide the result. We decline political votes, and we say so when the best advice is to win the free way.
Send the contest link and its rules
Send the link, the closing date with a time zone and the published rules. That is all it takes for the first reading.
We read the rules and answer first
We check who may vote, how often, and what the organizer may void. If the rules forbid outside help, the answer is no and nothing is spent.
A written quote and channel plan
You get a quote and a plan in writing: which channels, which audience, which days. Nothing runs until you agree to it.
Launch, report, stop on time
Promotion runs on the agreed channels and you get reports as it goes. If the organizer changes the rules, we stop and tell you why.
A contest vote sits under two rulebooks, the platform's and the organizer's. Meta's Spam standard lists offering anything of monetary value in exchange for engagement as a covered behavior, and the Santa Barbara Independent says it will disqualify a business that offers voters incentives of any kind. Voting Now reads both rulebooks before it plans anything, and a clause that forbids outside promotion ends the job.
Contest platforms check votes as routine. Easypromos runs each vote through 11 security controls and does not count one that fails any of them, and Woobox says voting fraud is becoming more common as contests grow popular. Voting Now promotes to real people who choose for themselves, at the contest's own pace, and none of this is a method for getting past a check.
Under 16 CFR 465.8, buying fake indicators of social media influence for a commercial purpose can violate the FTC's rule, which is one reason Voting Now promotes to real people and does not bring in bought counts. The FTC's Endorsement Guides also require a paid creator to disclose the connection clearly. Whether outside promotion is lawful for a given contest is a question for a lawyer, and Voting Now takes no political or governmental votes.
No quote promises a win, a ranking or a vote count, because the organizer counts the votes and applies its own rules. The Santa Barbara Independent, for one, says it will disqualify a business that offers voters incentives of any kind. Nothing runs before the client approves a written quote.
By Victor Brown ยท Last updated
Questions and answers
No. Voting Now does not buy contest votes for any entry, in any contest or poll. What we sell is promotion of the contest entry: our own social channels, partner groups and bloggers, native PR and ads that bring real people to it, priced the way advertisers price leads, with a quote agreed before anything runs. A rule that forbids outside promotion ends the conversation at the rules check, and we say so plainly. Read the full answer
Through promotion rather than a vote package: you send Voting Now the contest link, we read the rules, and our ads, PR and creator posts bring real people to the entry. Each person decides whether to back it. If the rules forbid outside promotion, the work stops before it starts. At no point does a package of contest votes change hands, and nobody can promise you the win. Read the full answer
No. Voting Now guarantees neither a win nor a tally, because the people who see the promotion decide for themselves and the organizer decides what counts. What we commit to is the promotion agreed in the quote: the audience, the channels and the length of the run. If a seller promises you a place on a contest leaderboard, ask who controls the organizer's count. Read the full answer
Contest votes inside the rules come from people, so what you can buy is promotion that reaches them, provided the organizer's terms permit paid promotion. Read the fraud clause and the limit on repeat choices first: the Arizona Daily Star allows one every 24 hours and disqualifies anything involved in suspected fraud. We plan around limits like those, disclose every paid post and agree a quote before work begins. Read the full answer
Start with the contest's official rules, not with a seller. If they forbid vote farming, inducements or third-party help, paid contest votes are off the table and the only question left is whether you enter on your own. If they are silent, ask the organizer. Voting Now prices paid promotion the way advertisers price leads, with a quote agreed before anything runs. Read the full answer
No. Voting Now does not sell bulk votes for any online contest. A sudden block of them lands in the organizer's records under your entry's name, and the organizer decides what happens to it. Promotion brings people in at the speed real interest moves, which is slower and, frankly, the only speed a rulebook expects. Read the full answer
Pay Meta for ad space, never a seller for likes: an ad can send people to the Facebook or Instagram contest post, and liking or voting stays their decision. A reward tied to that click is the kind of exchange Meta's Spam standard covers, so we never attach one. The page running the contest sets its own rules on top of Meta's, and those get read first. Read the full answer
Buying votes on Instagram for a contest is not a service Voting Now sells. We run paid promotion instead: ads, partner groups and bloggers who show the entry to real Instagram users, who then pick it or not as they choose. Before any of that starts we read the contest's terms, and if they forbid paid promotion we decline. Fake followers, likes and views stay out, since 16 CFR 465.8 covers fake indicators of social media influence. Read the full answer
Yes. A business can advertise its entry in a newspaper readers' poll wherever the rules allow it, as long as no voter is rewarded. The Arizona Daily Star says entering its readers' choice contest is free and that spending money with the paper does not affect results, so an ad in the paper buys reach, not a place. The Santa Barbara Independent disqualifies businesses it finds offering voters incentives. Read the full answer
The organizer decides, under its own published rules, and no agency, ad or creator post changes that. Organizers count, review and disqualify according to their rules, and some combine the public count with a judging panel. Promotion only changes how many eligible people see the entry and choose to support it. Read the rules for who audits the count and when results are announced, because the decision sits there. Read the full answer
Yes. Bloggers paid for a contest post have a material connection under the FTC's Endorsement Guides at 16 CFR 255.5, and the guides want that connection disclosed when a significant minority of readers would not expect it. Free or discounted products count as well, even when no post is demanded in return. We settle the label with each blogger before the post goes live. Read the full answer
No. A page of glowing reviews proves little on its own, and the FTC treats fake testimonials seriously enough to have written a federal rule against businesses that create or sell them. Judge a seller by what it says it does: a promotion provider names its channels and reads the contest rules, while a seller of counted contest votes names a number. Read the full answer
Voting Now gives no method for adding fake votes to a WhatsApp poll and will not run one. A WhatsApp poll is answered by the people in the chat, so a fake answer needs a fake member, which is the fake-account route this agency refuses outright. If a poll in your group looks rigged, raise it with the group admin and keep a screenshot of the result. Read the full answer
The organizer is the one to report vote manipulation to, because the organizer runs the count and applies the fraud rules. Write to the contact named in the official rules, say what you saw and when, and attach screenshots of the count. In Park City, it was the organizers who suspected the fake votes came from software-generated emails. Read the full answer
A voting competition is won by the entry that brings the most eligible people back within the organizer's limit, so start from that limit. Pittsburgh Magazine allows one pick per hour per category; the Arizona Daily Star allows one every 24 hours. Build the list before opening, pace it across the window, and stay clear of anything the rules call stuffing. Read the full answer
Questions about a specific contest or poll
Send the link to your contest or poll with your question. We read the published rules first, so the answer comes from how that one contest counts votes and not from a general promise.
The contact page lists the ways to reach Voting Now.
Send your contest link for a plain answer
Send the link, the closing date and the rules. You get a written answer on whether outside promotion fits, before any budget is discussed.
Send a link