"Actually, if you pay for something with no guarantee of services rendered, I'd rather call it a 'gamble'." Which is one of the reasons I myself never go in for contests, but lots of other people do enter them, and lots of other people do well out of them. And many if not most of those competitions have entry fees. Indeed, I think (may be wrong) that $20 is way at the low end of what the entry fees for these contests usually are.