FAQ

What price do you recommend selling the balloons for 

Most people sell the balloons for £3. Depending on how many balloons you think you can sell a £30 to £50 Amazon voucher is a good 1st prize – Amazon vouchers are easy to email to the winners.

How long do you think the race should be for

Allow 3 weeks to sell the balloons and let the race run for 1 week. You can do shorter or longer… but with longer races the leaders change less the longer it goes on.

I still have a few balloons registered but showing as inactive. Why would that be? Can I just make them active by clicking the tick? 

See the full answer for this here.

The inactive balloons are unpaid – there will always be some unpaid balloons.

We have a “cron” scan that runs every 10 minutes looking for payments. If you activate the unpaid balloons the cron will deactivate them within 10 minutes when it sees they’ve not been paid. It’s also possible they could get activated if a card payment clears at PayPal.

It’s most likely that people buying these balloons got distracted during the buying process and returned later setting up and buying a different balloon.

The only way to make the unpaid balloons active manually is to delete them and add them again in the admin area.

Can we sell balloons before the race starts?

Yes, all the balloons remain on 0km until the Start date. You should allow 2 extra days for free postal entries to arrive – so remove the “Buy a Balloon” button 2 days before the race starts.

As a charity with a local lottery licence already in place, I am assuming that we do not have to advertise that free entry is available.

Unfortunately you do still need to advertise the free entry – although you have a licence the software does not. The software with the “Free entry by post” is now a “Free Draw”.
Without the free post option the software needs an ELM licence (external lottery manager).

Would individuals buying a balloon via PayPal have to open their own PayPal account?

I’m pretty sure that when you get to Paypal you can pay by card if you don’t have a Paypal account. But – not every race uses the Paypal button, you could sell the balloons from your own website.
You can download the balloon images to add to your online shop – https://www.balloon.co.uk/csv/
If you do this I can take out the “get a Balloon” button and you could add a link from the wording to your own online shop.

You could also do both – add the “Get a Balloon” maybe a few days before the race starts and you might get some extra accidental sales from people who are just taking a look.

If you’re struggling to setup a Paypal account to sell your balloons we have an alternative here.

There doesn’t appear to be any easy option to buy multiple balloons? We were rather hoping that by keeping the price at just £2 we’d get people buying up to 10 but it looks like they have to visit paypal 10 times to do so – which is never going to happen.

UPDATE 10/12/2020 – For those who don’t have a PayPal account we’ve started a bacs payment alternative this includes multiple balloon discount.
No Fields Found.

UPDATE 23/07/2020 – You can now buy multiple balloons with the “Get a Balloon” button, you can test it here – https://www.balloonrace.com/test
This means if somebody buys 5 balloons the PayPal costs will be 16p per balloon.

See also video demo of the Get a Balloon button.

We can offer a discount for multiple purchase when using our bacs/credit card trial.

Another Update 17/07/2020 – We are adding multiple balloon purchase to the Paypal option but the balloons are not discounted for quantity. If you want quantity discount use Stay Connected Events.
Multiple balloons purchased will save on your Paypal costs:
Paypal charges 3.4% + 30p – so if 5 balloons were purchased for £3 = £15 – I think this would be 51p + 30p = 81p / 5 = 16p per balloon.

UPDATE 11/09/2020 – We’ve added a “cron job” that scans the site every 10 minutes looking for updated payments. This activates & inactivates balloons depending on their paid status. It’s particularly useful when card payments take a few hours to clear at Paypal. The cron has priority 1 – so if you activate an unpaid balloon the cron will make it inactive within 10 minutes.

Do you have any best practice to share about how to sell the race to parents. 

Create somewhere online to sell the balloons (from balloonrace.com for auto setup – or from your preferred Parent shop). Try to push that it’s environmentally friendly, fun and encourage everybody to add a message to their balloon.

Send out the link in the weekly newsletter.

Add the link to Twitter & Facebook posts

Some PTAs have shared the link with WhatsApp.

Here’s an example letter to parent from 2014.

Do all of the races go around an island, or can we choose a location? 

UPDATE 22/07/2020 – There is now a selection of backgrounds or you can upload your own background.
UPDATE 17/07/2020 – We’re adding a Halloween theme, Christmas theme & Rainbow pride theme.



See post on Uploading Backgrounds

I’m also thinking of introducing a prize for the furthest entrant, as we think some will buy from around the world.

Right…. If you sell the balloons from your own shop you could add a field “Address” or “My Country” etc?

If you do the spreadsheet upload we have a field for a message – you could add each country in the message field?

If people pay by Paypal there’s no way of knowing – unless you add instructions in the body of your race page asking for location when they buy a balloon “Please put your location in the message field when buying balloons”

Is there a way people can pay by Paypal and cash or do we have to choose? 

Yes – there’s a 1000’s different ways to sell the balloons & it costs nothing to add them to the admin area. You can add them with or without the Paypal option.

We might need to change the dates, is this OK?

The admin area lets you change the dates once – so just email me if the system won’t accept new dates.

We would like to offer three prizes 1st 2nd and 3rd do you need to know that or does that info go on the poster we make? 

I would add these in the wording section of your home page & maybe add a link to your Facebook or School page.

How do we add our own poster? 

Usually a poster would go on your own website.

You can make a poster with these image downloads.

Do you have a jpeg image I can use and adapt for promotion please?

Sure, I’ve added this to the downloads page under “Promotional Image”:
https://www.balloon.co.uk/csv/

When I enter the details of the people buying the balloons do they need a separate password to each one?

If you’re doing a CSV upload they all need a unique password so I’ve populated these spreadsheets with passwords: https://www.balloon.co.uk/csv/
If you add them manually or from the front end (Get a Balloon button) no password is required.
The password was originally required when Children logged in to play daily games and boost their balloons, this was back in 2008 when we decided that less is more and simplified the race.

The cost is £39 – does this include the balloons? It seems to be really clear this is the cost but then I’ve spotted at the bottom of a demo page that the balloons cost a further 10p. 

£39 Is the total cost for the race with no extras. The sample race has a price of 10p per balloon because some people like to try the Paypal buying experience (Get a Balloon button).
If you use PayPal the costs per transaction is 39p for a £3 sale.
If you want to try our card payment we will also charge 39p for a £3 sale.

We are not set up for Paypal so would be using KindLink for our payment method. Few questions on this:

What is the customer journey for this – can they come to the balloon race site to set up their balloon and then we direct them to payment? I think this is a better experience to see what you’re buying before paying but it looks like we would have to do it vice versa and then manually allocate the balloons? Is that correct?

If they can come to the balloon site first, can we then direct them to the payment site on completion of their balloon request and then we authorise the balloon or something on payment?

If we have to take payment first, do we just collect their colour/name manually and create the balloons ourselves or can we offer them a link or something to create their own after payment?

When selling balloons from a third party site you must have a free postal entry button. Allow 2 extra days for postal entries to arrive. When advertising your race you must state that “Free entry is available”

I’ve not worked with KindLink before. Usually you’d make a landing page at wherever you’re selling the balloons from and include a link to the race page. Describe the race and maybe add the Leaderboard widget – send everybody to this page to buy the balloons (I’ll email you an example).
You could advertise the actual balloonrace.com link nearer to your start date although they’ll probably already have book marked it.
As the balloons are sold you add them to a Spreadsheet and upload them in blocks (username, balloon colour, message).
Keep your own records of contact details so you can contact the winners.

Alternatively you could set your balloon price to £0 (on balloonrace.com) and get everybody to add their balloons at balloonrace.com/YOURNAME – the problem here is that you’ll need to marry the payment up with the balloons and this could take forever (and you’ll end up with 3 extra balloons or 3 extra payments).

You can add a link to your third party payment page from the text on the homepage of your race – you should do this anyway as you might sell some balloons to somebody who is just having a look.

From your KindLink page – I guess you could do a link and ask them to create their balloon after payment. You’d need everybody to be honest and not add any extra balloons.
You can’t link direct to the payment page, each user must go to the home page and then the payment page (click the “Get a Balloon” button).

The short answer – link from one page to the other so you cover both all options.

When will I receive the invoice, I’d like to get it to the treasurer asap!

UPDATE: As some took too long to pay the race is now pay with order.

Old answer: I’ll send an invoice immediately after setting up your race (& you’ve got 30 days so no rush) which is usually within an hour of your order being placed. If you’re in the US I might be sleeping so it will take a few hours longer.

We don’t have a paypal account so we will be adding manually, however can we still have the comments bit you have mentioned?, no problem if not possible.

Yes – you can add messages in the admin area or by CSV upload – it will be clearer once you login. But – no emoji on the CSV’s or entries from admin.

Can we limit the free entry by post to one per household and mention that on our marketing?

I like your thinking – I had the same idea for 1 free limit per household.

My solicitor wouldn’t allow this. The reason is that you can set the balloon price to 1p and sell 100 to everybody. The free entry only get 1 so they have no chance of winning.

If like most you’re selling the balloons for £3 – virtually nobody will use the free entry because a stamp costs 74p. But if your 1st prize was a Tesla and your balloons were £50 each then everybody would use the free entry. So although it seems silly it does control things getting out of hand.

I have tried to change the start and finish time to 6pm a few times and it does it then when I log back on it is back at 12pm again. Please could you help?

Unfortunately all races need to start & finish at 12 midday.
It’s possible to change the time to 6pm…. & if you never login again I think it will stay at 6pm.
But in the past people have logged in accidentally and all the balloons have started moving before the start – this is not good… you then have to delete all the balloons and add them again as I have no control over the km.
If you really really really want a 6pm start – you could untick “active” on all the balloons – that way they will stay on 0km no matter what & change the start time to 6pm – log out.
Then at 5.30pm you login and tick them all active. Balloons move at 13 minutes past every hour so don’t make them active before 5.30pm. Change the time back to 6pm and log out. Refresh the home page to make sure the timer has 30 minutes remaining.

We’ve got 84 balloons uploaded so far and fortunately the admin load hasn’t been too bad! Just so I know ahead of the start of the race on Monday at midday, what can I expect to happen? If I upload a balloon with, say, 5 mins to go before the race, will it be included? What happens when the race starts? I’m wondering if I need to email all participants with any info at all. By the way, I’ve shared your site with my network of PTAs and also with our local cub and scout group. 

Great work – 84 balloons @£3 each & your page looks great.
Right…. you can add balloons all the way to midday. At midday nothing visual happens although the map view will show the balloons moving. At 13 minutes past midday all the balloons will move. You’ll probably have 2 or 3 joint leaders and at 13 minutes past 1 you’ll have a leader.
So…. In theary you could add a balloon at 12.10.
You could still sell balloons after the race starts – they have little change of winning but some people like to donate and track their balloon.

We are sharing our balloon link on our Facebook pages but the link is giving us this error message
404 – File or directory not found.

UPDATE 03/10/2020 – I think this must be fixed as emails on this have stopped.

Old answer: Yes I’ve had this problem before – on the internet a link should be a link, but with Facebook things are different.
The only solution I have is to state – “If the below link fails please copy & paste it into your browser”.

I’ve heard some positive comments about your virtual balloon race website from some other community fundraisers. I was wondering if it’s possible to have a ‘lantern’ race (rather than balloons)

I’m currently adding a Pride balloon and 4 Halloween balloons to the race. Once a balloon is added it’s there for every race to use.

To add a lantern will cost £150+vat. I know this sounds expensive but it has to be designed & made in 4 sizes and we have to make it available on the database.

Otherwise a standard race is still £30+vat

If you opt for a ‘get a balloon button’ can there  be another payment option for participants to get a balloon if they haven’t got a paypal account?

We only have Paypal as a built in option. I could add the “Get a balloon” to your wording section and link it to your own page/shop. Then you’ll need to add the balloons with a CSV upload. https://www.balloon.co.uk/csv/
UPDATE 05/12/2020 – We’re doing a trail of taking card payments for you & then send a bacs – are details here.

Can you let me know if on the page there is space to ‘sell’ the charities story?

The whole central section of the page is for your own content.

Can participants just choose colour and name or is there an option of a tag?

Yes – the message on the balloon really helps with creating a buzz:
Also, we’ve added a Pride balloon, a Duck & Halloween designs are on the way.

It would be great if you could send me a screen grab of a previous race that has happened as on your demo one I can only see the balloon.co.uk blurb.

Our Lottery Director has raised some concerns around gambling licences as he sees it as a licensable activity.

UPDATE 03/11/2020 – We’ve received our “Legal Classification Advice” and now that every race has a “Free entry by Post” button (which is compulsory) there is no requirement for a gambling licence or an ELM (External Lottery Manager). Even if you have your own licence you still need to display the FREE postal option.

UPDATE 24/10/20 – After closing the site for 4 weeks we’re getting closer to our relaunch. I’ve been given the go ahead from my solicitor to add a FREE entry by post button – this changes the software from a lottery to a free prize draw. The free entry button will be compulsory on all races. Unfortunately my website guys are too busy to implement the changes at the moment and I think it’s possibly down to staff on half term holidays.
Even though the site has been inactive for 4 weeks the traffic has continued to grow exponentially and on 18/10/2020 it finally colapsed with more than 200,000 page views. So we’ve used the downtime to help with scalability going forward. The backend database was 11 years old so that’s been renewed and moved to a faster server.

UPDATE – 22/08/2020 – We’ve applied for a Gambling Licence
We are looking into this as of 17.07.2020. We have a Gambling Licence solicitor specialist advising us and we may need to change the software to allow free entry into some races.
However depending on where you are in the world the laws will be different.
If you’re a UK charity with a lottery licence you may just need a Small Society Lottery Licence from your local authority @£40 (if your 1st prize is less than £20,000 and the Charity is the beneficiary).
More information on this here.

I was going to apply for a non-commercial society lottery licence, a simple form to fill out and a £40 fee. If we were to offer a free entry shop purchase then we wouldn’t need the license??

UPDATE 03/11/2020 – With the free postal button compulsory on all races you do not require a local lottery licence. The balloon race is a “FREE DRAW”. If you would like confirmation and a copy of our 22 page “Legal Classification Advice” please request from david@balloon.co.uk

I work for a charity so need to maximise income as we have been hit hard with COVID pandemic. I am looking to set up a race up over the school holidays, how many balloons are included in the £30.00 + VAT?

Unlimited balloons

How easy and time consuming is it to set up a race?

It could take 5 minutes to add a bit of wording to your page. If you use Paypal you can add the email and share links to your race page.
If you want to sell the balloons from your own website it will take longer to setup. You’ll need to build a shopping option for the balloons. Then as you sell the balloons you’ll need to upload them by CSV… which can be tricky.
But… you’ll probably save 15p per balloon depending on how much your bank charges for your website sales (this is usually Stripe).

What is the latest time before the start that we can we sell balloons?

You can sell balloons online up to 2 days before the start date. You should then remove the “Buy a Balloon” button to allow 2 extra days for postal entries.

Presumbly its not possible for anyone to buy a balloon after the race has started?

Yes – but they have less chance of winning. Some people just like to donate and add a message to a balloon so they don’t mind. Balloons in last place move faster than the leaders. But – you control the the “Buy a Balloon” button so you can remove it…. and it should be removed 2 days before the race starts to allow equal chance for postal entries.

I am curious as to the possibility of you using sailboats.

Yes it is possible to add a sailing boat. I’ve recently added ducks and Halloween balloons.

The cost of adding a custom balloon is £150+vat and once it’s added it will appear on all races going forward. To add a balloon (or boat) means making the balloon in 4 different sizes and additional work on the database.

The problem I found with the Duck was – that once I added it everybody want more options and colours… rather than 1 Yellow duck…. so I had to invest in more colours.

If you add a boat it will most likely be that some will want a Red boat and some will want a Blue boat and so 1 boat will not be enough.

The next problem is the scale. If you just have 100% boats in your race the scale doesn’t matter – but if balloons & boats are mixed together the scale doesn’t work as a boat should be 1000 times bigger than a balloon. I got around this with my Halloween theme by adding the images onto the balloons. So an image of a Witch on a balloon works and it keeps to the whole thing a “Balloon Race”.

You might want to think if you want boats or a boat icon on a balloon. Either way the images need to be simple because on the leaderboard widget the balloons are tiny.

The next problem is I’m now having to build custom lists of the balloons. If you’re running a duck race you probably don’t want all the balloons in your drop down list of options…. you just want ducks (or boats). This is an update I’m working on as the list of balloons is getting longer and longer.

It usually takes 3 to 4 weeks to add custom balloons.

How long would you run the sale for? 

3 Weeks is good. It means the start of the race isn’t too far away (run the actual balloon race for 1 week).

What payments channels would you recommend apart from PayPal.

To sell balloons on balloonrace.com and have them added automatically we only offer PayPal.


Parent Pay is popular. Whatever 3rd party location you choose the balloons can be added by CSV upload. You can use fake emails if you want and keep the real emails on your own system.

You must offer a Free Entry by Post option when selling balloons from your own platform.

Another option is to set the balloon price on balloonrace.com to £0 and let everybody add their balloons for free. In the body text of your page add a link to a just giving page/donation site and ask for donations.

See our alternative bacs payment to your account: