As the old saying goes, “The best things in life are free”. It’s hard to tell if whoever said that was referring to love, friendship, good health or prizes from competitions(?!), but either way winning a prize is a pretty good feeling! Especially when you don’t have a lot of money to treat yourself.
I was messaged by a reader of this blog suggesting that I try entering the many competitions out there and I was a bit sceptical at first. But after looking into it, there are people out there that win thousands of pounds worth of prizes every year. They must be really lucky? Well, not really…. obviously luck is involved but the reason for their repeated wins is the sheer volume of competitions they enter each day. (Here is a newspaper article on one such person: Winner)
Spending hours each day entering competitions did seem a bit boring to begin with, but I thought I would give it a go as a kind of experiment for a month or so to see how I got on. Many of the competitions I entered haven’t ended yet so there is potential for more prizes, but so far I have won: a copy of Modern Warfare 3 for Xbox 360 (Thanks to Geektown.co.uk), a £10 Red Letter Days voucher, a packet of Walkers Sensations and a packet of Skittles. Ok it’s not an amazing haul for the hours I have put in, but it’s still over £50 worth of prizes, which I am hoping is just the beginning! Somebody has got to win, and it could be you! Or even better, me!! There is a much better chance of winning a competition for a few thousand pounds then there is of winning the lottery, and the majority are free to enter so there really isn’t much to lose besides your time – which you probably have plenty of at the moment.
So where to start?
Obviously any sites you regularly visit that have competitions running are worth entering but there are also dedicated competition finding websites.
Two that were suggested to me were Loquax, which I haven’t really used; and the forum on Moneysavingexpert.com (Getting started guide + FAQ here: FAQ) which has more than enough competitions to keep me occupied when I have a few spare hours. It is quite useful because there are hundreds of competitions being listed throughout the day with links to them (including the answers!) and there is an ‘Enter’ icon that you can click which displays a tick next to any competition you have entered so you don’t waste time on the same ones. It is basically like a data entry job, except you are constantly entering your own details! (Tip: use ‘Autocomplete’ to make it easier).
I have settled in to an evening routine of a few hours of competitions whilst listening to music or watching TV and winning a few prizes has encouraged me to continue and hope for a big win! You have more chance of winning the smaller prizes though really because they get less entries. You can always sell anything that you aren’t interested in, or give it away as a gift.
So what is the catch? Why are these companies giving away their things for free? Well there are several reasons, the main ones being to promote brand awareness and attract people to their site; but also to create revenue by sharing your data with other companies. Sounds a bit sinister? It isn’t! The good thing is that the majority of competitions have tick boxes that you can click if you wish to receive no further contact from them or from third party companies so you won’t receive an endless stream of junk mail. However, a lot of sites will require you to sign up to their e-mailing lists to be eligible to enter competitions. For this reason I recommend setting up a new email address with the sole purpose of using it to enter competitions. My system is to use my new email account for most of them, but I do discover new sites that I am interested in and don’t mind being contacted by, so for those I use my usual email address. Another benefit of competitions!
One other site that I have started using on a daily basis is: The Free Postcode Lottery
Once you’ve registered and entered your address, all you need to do is check it every day and if your postcode is drawn then you click to claim the cash. It starts at £10 and if no-one claims then it rolls over and the next days prize is £20 (and so on). The highest I’ve seen it so far is £70. Not bad for spending a few seconds a day checking a website!
Clearly, the amount of time I have spent entering competitions compared with what I have won isn’t the equivalent “wage” of even the lowest paid occupation, but when you can’t get a job and have plenty of time on your hands it’s definitely worth a try, you will almost certainly win something if you enter enough of them. Maybe even the £120,000 free to enter prize draw from ‘This Morning’….? Actually, don’t bother – I am going to win that one!!