I'm not a writer and I'm not a blogger, so we'll keep this brief. My name's Liam, and throughout 2025 I ran a prize competition business from the ground up - handled the legal setup, built the brand, sourced prizes, managed the marketing, ran the draws, dealt with customers, and learned exactly where the landmines are buried. That firsthand experience is what these guides are based on, and it's also what eventually led me to build RaffleHub.
Where I'm coming from
By day I work in tech - I'm a Cloud Consultant for a Managed Service Provider, which means I spend a lot of time solving operational problems for businesses. That background turned out to be surprisingly useful when it came to understanding what a competition business actually needs from its infrastructure. But the competition side wasn't theoretical - I was in it properly, running live draws, managing entries, handling payment issues, figuring out what ad creative actually converts and what wastes budget.
I'd spent years entering other people's competition websites before deciding to run my own, which gave me a decent picture of what good and bad looked like from a customer's perspective. What I didn't fully appreciate until I was operating was how much complexity sits behind the scenes - the payment processors that won't touch competition businesses, the legal requirements that aren't clearly documented anywhere, the operational rhythm of keeping multiple draws running simultaneously without things falling apart.
I worked through all of it. Some of it the easy way, most of it the slightly more expensive way. I even ended up producing my own ad creatives, which is about as far outside my natural comfort zone as it gets - but you learn quickly when the alternative is paying someone else for something you don't yet understand well enough to brief properly.
Why I'm writing this
When I was getting started, the available information was either too vague to be useful or buried across a dozen different places with no clear thread connecting it. There's plenty of content online about competition businesses, but very little that treats you like someone who actually wants to understand the mechanics and make informed decisions.
These guides are my attempt to fix that - a straightforward, practical account of how this type of business actually works, based on having operated one rather than having observed one from a distance. The aim is to reduce the friction and confusion that slows most new operators down in the early stages, so you can focus on the parts of the business that actually matter.
What is RaffleHub
RaffleHub came directly out of the infrastructure problems I encountered as an operator. When I started out, the realistic options for building a competition website were either commissioning a custom build - which costs thousands and leaves you dependent on a developer for every change - or piecing something together with WordPress and WooCommerce, which works until it doesn't and requires constant maintenance. Neither option is designed for competition businesses specifically, which means operators spend significant time working around limitations rather than running their business.
RaffleHub is the platform I built to solve that. It's a purpose-built SaaS platform designed exclusively for launching and running online prize competition businesses - with the mechanics of a competition business already built in and working from day one.
The key things it handles out of the box:
- Purpose-built competition engine. Automated ticket numbering, per-user and per-draw ticket caps, instant wins, countdown timers, and entry exports - no plugins, no custom development required.
- Payments that work for competition businesses. Pre-integrated with competition-friendly gateways like Paytriot, with a checkout flow designed to minimise the friction that costs you entries at the final hurdle.
- Zero technical maintenance. Fully managed hosting, security, and updates. Your site doesn't go down on the night of a live draw because someone forgot to renew a certificate.
- Straightforward branding controls. Logo, colours, and layout are all configurable without touching code, so the site reflects your brand rather than looking like everyone else's.
- Operator admin portal. A central dashboard covering competitions, orders, customers, and winners - giving you a clear, real-time picture of how the business is performing.
The short version: RaffleHub handles the technology so you can focus on sourcing great prizes, marketing your brand, and building a customer base that comes back draw after draw.
A note on references throughout these guides
You'll see RaffleHub come up regularly in these articles - partly because it's the platform I know inside out, partly because the references are genuinely useful illustrations of how things work in practice, and yes, partly because I'd like you to consider using it. I'd rather be straightforward about that than dress it up as something else.
That said, the operational and strategic content here applies regardless of which platform or approach you use. The legal framework, the marketing fundamentals, the operational rhythm - none of that is RaffleHub-specific. These guides are written to be useful wherever you are in the process.