There are constantly new apps coming out. Actually, over 1,000 apps are submitted per day. We all have apps on our phones. For my grandma, her five apps include Yelp, Facebook, Gmail, the Food Network App and I'm pretty sure Solitare (most of which she doesn't really know how to use). Most young people have at least three times this amount of apps and we are constantly on our phones. While I am sure most of us would like to get paid for all that time we spend on our phones, we don't. With all that time on our phones, we also watch a lot of advertisements. There are ads on just about every app, even on my grandma's solitaire games.
When a group of Washington State University students released an app this April that gives some of this advertisement money back to app users, I was interested. Grattis is a free lottery app. Players watch an ad then receive a ticket, with their ticket they pick numbers and then enter their ticket into either the daily drawing or the weekly drawing. Every day there is a fifty dollar drawing and then every Friday there is a two-hundred and fifty dollar drawing. Winners can receive their winnings via (yet another app) Venmo or a check that is mailed to them.
So after all the information. Here's what I think of the app.
I first downloaded the app to do this review. It's probably something I would have thought was too good to be true otherwise. The fact that Thad Lewis and his cofounder go to my school peaked my interest, so I decided to give it a go.
The app is super easy to use. You start off by verifying your phone number and then creating a username. The registration took me two or three minutes. Then there is a little tutorial that tells you how to use the app, which was short, something I always prefer. The app itself is pretty uncomplicated. There is the main page that allows you to watch ads and enter your tickets, there is a winner's page and that's about it.
You can enter your tickets right after you watch an ad or you can wait and enter them later. Overall the app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. The ads you watch are about 25 to 40 seconds. The ads to get repetitive but I used the app while watching TV, so I didn't just sit and watch the ads. The app also does not have a lot of variety in the ads that you watch, it is pretty much the same thing over and over again.
My favorite part of the app though is something that you might not think about after initially downloading the app. After the app becomes profitable, a portion of the winnings every week will be donated to a charity of the winner's choice. It's amazing when young people donate to charity and make that a huge part of their business.
Overall this app is what it's marketed to be.
While I didn't win any of the drawings I entered, I do like the concept. It is amazing that eleven people can envision and create and app like this. If you have some free time (which most of us college students do in the summer) I would recommend trying out the app. It's easy to use and doesn't take up much time to potentially win some free money.
