As a woman over 40, I’m constantly getting ads for the Fab Over 40 contest. You may be tempted to enter and wonder if it’s a scam. I’m here to break down the details of why you may want to enter or avoid this competition.

Scam Elements of the Fab Over 40 Contest

The Fab Over 40 contest offers you the chance to win $40,000, a luxury spa-cation, and a NewBeauty magazine cover feature. It is backed by celebrities, promoted heavily, and gives money to charity. So, what might be scammy about it? Plenty.

Everyone is a Fab Over 40 Finalist

Did you enter the contest? Congrats, you are a finalist “in your group.” Making everyone a finalist and separating them into smaller groups help the content drag on forever. It also helps everyone feel like they could really win this with just a few more votes! And that leads us to the next scam element.

You Can Buy Your Way to the Top

Voting once a day in the Fab Over 40 contest is free, but if you want to win, you need to hustle up the cash for those paid votes. You have a much better chance of buying your way to the top than asking friends for free votes. But please, don’t waste your money if you don’t have it, thinking you’re going to win and get $40k in the end. It’s most likely not going to happen.

There Are Tons of Groups

If you check the contestants page, next to their photo, it will say they are a certain place in their group. There are tons and tons of these groups. If you want to see all the women in that particular group, just click where it says “In Their Group.” I circled it below:

Most of the Money Doesn’t Go to Charity

With all those paid votes, the company that runs this contest is making loads of money. After doing some research, the average amount that goes to the charity is around 25%.

The Company Does Tons of These Contests

The company behind the Fab Over 40 contest is Colossal, and they also run all these other scam type contests. I wrote a post on their America’s Favorite Couple Contest when my friend was in it a few months ago. I did a lot of research on the company and the contests at that time, and cover a lot of it in that article.

Cover Feature is Just a Paid Ad

The cover feature is an ad they have purchased from the magazine. New Beauty magazine doesn’t even promote this contest on their social media.

Why Would Someone Enter the Fab Over 40 Contest?

Now that I’ve broken down all the ways the Fab Over 40 contest is a scam, I’ll cover the reasons people continue to enter these contests and why some people actually enjoy it.

One thing kept coming up in the comments on my America’s Favorite Couple article- they were having fun doing it. People had fun having a reason to share their stories.

Sometimes it’s hard to promote yourself, your business or your cause online. Entering a contest like this gives you an incentive to keep sharing to earn more votes.

It’s free to enter and your friends can vote for free. So, if you go into just looking to have fun and share a bit of yourself online, then it may be beneficial to try it.

Unfortunately, don’t expect to actually win. And don’t drive your friends crazy by constantly hounding them for votes because you’re “so close” to getting in the next round.

After a while, people will get tired of it.

Are You in the Contest?

If you are in the Fab Over 40 contest, feel free to leave a link to your voting page in the comments! And share your story about why you entered and how it’s going.

This article isn’t written to make people not join or drop out, it’s really just to paint an honest picture of this contest, and what you can (or can’t) get out of it.