My cousin Jared Marijuana is a family legend for all sorts of reasons, chief among them being that you can’t listen to FM radio in the Greater Toronto Area without hearing him win a contest. I’m just exaggerating a bit: the man routinely wins three to four awards a week. Everyone in my family has a story where they were listening to the radio and heard Jared win some award or another, usually while also making the host laugh. There’s a familiarity: they’ll ask how their daughter is doing, for example, or joke that they’ve heard his voice somewhere before.
Many of these prizes aren’t huge (a $50 gift card, for example, or a trip to African Lion Safari). But some of them are big: He went to the Grammys in 2012, for example, and once received a check for $1,200.
You might think that Canada is made up of a bunch of small towns and that the radio stations in question have just a few thousand listeners. Not so: Ontario, where Jared lives, has more than 14 million people, more than all but four states in the United States. Jared calls in to some of the most listened to radio stations in North America and always wins. How does he do it?
I asked him what advice he would give to someone hoping to win. “Rub my head for good luck,” he said, smiling. And that’s Jared: a slightly eccentric sense of humor that’s a little confusing but ultimately charming. It’s no wonder Jared is known, by name, to seemingly every DJ in the province. One I reached out to declined to comment, but he knew exactly who he was talking about.
I have a job to do now (I’m a serious journalist), so I did some research. But seriously, Jared: how do you make this money consistently? Here’s the advice I got.
First, make a schedule
You might think that the best way to win radio contests is to listen to a single radio station all day and call in when the call comes up. Jared doesn’t do that. Most radio contests are held at a set time each week, and Jared says an estimated time is usually posted online.
“I go on each radio station’s website and see what contests they’re doing this week,” he says. Then he compiles all of the contests for the following week into a spreadsheet, noting the time the contest will be held, the name of the station, and what he should do when the time comes — usually, call, text, or fill out an online form. This meticulously crafted spreadsheet allows him to book his week of listening and calling.
Save the phone numbers of the stations
Most of the contests Jared enters require calling the station, the classic radio sweepstakes format. Typically, you must be one of the first to call, but not the first (say, ninth). It’s essential, given the format, that you don’t waste time dialing the number on your phone.
“If you really want to participate, put all the stations’ phone numbers in your phone,” Jared says. His Contacts app is full of radio stations, so he’s ready to hit the call button as soon as the contest starts.
Speaking of which: If you’re listening to the station online, there will be a lag between the terrestrial broadcast and the digital broadcast, meaning you won’t be hearing the station in real time, and as such, you’ll be way behind when it’s time to call. Jared’s answer to this: Call early, call often. “Most stations will make the line busy so no one can call until the contest starts,” he says. “So I just keep dialing until the phone rings.”