It’s possible, though not easy, to win swanky gadgets, lavish holidays and pocket ££££s without spending a penny. This is a step-by-step guide to comping, turning entering competitions into a profitable hobby, including sourcing contests, how many to enter, spotting more easily winnable contests and powerful free tools to super-speedily enter 100s a day.
Boost Your Income Checklist
Can competitions really earn you £1,000s?
Free iPod! Win £5,000k! Trip to LA up for grabs! While it sounds like spam, sometimes companies really do give away these freebies for nothing. The reason’s simple: it’s a cheap chance to promote their wares. Even giving away a £3,000 Maldives getaway is cheaper than a big national newspaper ad.
Add to that the chance to data-mine, collecting valuable information about potential customers, and it’s easy to see why these contests abound.
What is comping?
It’s about systematically doing 100s of competitions and putting in the hours rather than doing the odd contest you spot. Doing this, you’re statistically more likely to win big. Depending on your work ethic and luck, you could furnish your house, travel the world and boost your bank balance.
Often all entering involves is filling in an online form or sending a postcard, sometimes answering a question or tiebreaker. If you win, the promoter will call up, or the postman could just knock with a parcel.
It’s a way to grab fantastic treats you’d never normally buy. Collectively MoneySavers have scooped hundreds of thousands worth of prizes, from laptops to luxury breaks, iPods to film premier tickets.
Plus competitions are tax free, so unlike other ways to boost your income, the taxman won’t get any.
The proof of the pudding...
While we don’t want to give anyone the impression this is a sure-fire way to make cash, a little bit of inspiration may just help.
Some of this site’s compers from the competitions board have been very lucky, and indeed true to form lots entered our compers contest to find the best tales. Here’s a couple of the stories...
MoneySaver ‘SchizoMetric’- £8,000 of prizes.
“Overall, we've won about £8,000, enough to pay off £4,000 of my partner's debt and to have some nice things to keep for ourselves.
I'd always thought most online competitions were probably scams. I'd obviously seen the spam mails saying that I'd won £10,000 or a Mercedes Benz. Then I saw the “I won” section in the Competitions board, and saw winnings like all expenses paid holiday to Dubai, £3,000 and so many Wiis you'd think they were going out of fashion.
My partner took the same view I initially had, "Nonsense. They're all scams!" Shortly after, I proved him wrong by winning a £50 shoes voucher and a book. But no biggies, so I cut my losses for about 6 months and finished my final year studies.
In June 2008 I restarted and still wasn't winning an awful lot. Between us we’d won an ipod (£100), a set of 40 Blu Ray discs (£350), an iTunes voucher (£50), Center Parcs holiday (£1,000), insulation (£550), but compared to cash prizes/holidays it still didn't seem much.
Then, in December 2008, I got the most incredible call of my life. I'd won £2,000 CASH for a shopping spree, in a photography competition! This competition had taken some effort so not many people had entered, but still I hadn't held out much hope. Looking back, I'm not sure how we'd have afforded Christmas without it.
Now this year, my partner and I have already won a £1,500 holiday to Morocco (which we’ll either go on or sell) and a £1,200 laptop.”
MoneySaver ‘Lynsey76’ – Little wins make big treats
“Comping’s giving me the means to treat my family to days out we would not otherwise be able to afford. My first wins were all cinema tickets, and when my partner came out of hospital we saw 10 films for free! Then the wins started to roll in. I won tickets to see Alice Cooper and tickets to see Pink at her album launch party, a real money can't buy prize.
My best comping week was the week I went back to work after a year of maternity leave. I was feeling a little bit down, and was hoping for a good win to cheer me up. I got home from work to find I had won a National Trust Pass, a Loreal set, a HMV Voucher, two footballs and a family holiday to Butlins – so amazing, as we could not afford to take the kids on holiday at all this year.
MoneySaver ‘Eyeballpaul’ Clothes, mobiles, Jacuzzis and more
“My girlfriend won £2k worth of clothes vouchers last year, including £1,400 for Debenhams. Both our mobiles, my MP3 player and camera have all been won, as well as a plasma TV, jacuzzi and laptop. We will also be travelling the world with competitions wins this year; we will be going to Canada (7 nights), Dublin (4 nights) and Manchester (1 night).”
And the biggest reported single win on the forum … £20,000! Read MoneySaver ‘ToeJumpers’ Tale.
Yet even with these sexy stories it’s crucial to realise that you won’t immediately be frolicking in a bed of £50 notes. Unlike other money-makers, such as Survey Sites, eBay Selling and other ways to Boost Your Income, rewards aren’t guaranteed.
Think of comping as a potentially rewarding hobby, rather than a potentially underpaid job.
The spirit of comping is that it’s a bit of fun, rather than a dead cert money-spinner. Hours can be long, payouts poor and your bum won’t thank you for sitting at the PC all day.
That said, for those who catch the bug, these become minor details as they enjoy the spirit of community on the board and hopefully prizes flooding in, in return for their hard graft. It’s also fun to drool over all those prizes!
Step-by-Step Guide to Winning Competitions
There are no guarantees here, every prize should be thought of as a bonus. Yet approach it systematically and you can make the most efficient use of your time and hopefully up your chances.
Step 1. Protect yourself from junk mail, spam and cons
Before starting, a few easy steps can slash they amount of bumf you get through your letterbox or in your inbox and any scammers.
Opt out of further contact. There’s usually a way to choose not to get ‘further communications’ that should stop any bumf. Though be careful with the wording. Sometimes alternate ‘check boxes’ mean different things – the first an ‘opt in’ the second ‘opt out’. Yet careful reading beats this. If there’s no way to opt out, think carefully about whether you really want to enter.
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Err on the side of caution.
Try not to give your details to a site that looks dubious; if unsure, ask the friendly folks on the Competitions board.
- Don’t use your banking passwords.
If a competition requires a password, don’t use the same passwords for banks or email accounts or anything else you want to remain secure.
- Use a separate comping email address.
Get a spare email account; as well as being a quick way to check if you’ve won owt, this means less spam to other email addresses. As a powerful free option, Gmail is among the best.
- Join the telephone preference service.
If you’re putting your home number, and don’t want spam, join the telephone preference service register at TPSOnline (see the Stop Junk Mail guide). Under government regulation, it’s illegal for UK companies to call any individual who has indicated they don't want calls.
Yet if you’re serious about avoiding calls, it’s worth getting a separate competitions ‘bat-phone’
- Post. All members of the Direct Marketing Association agree to a Code of Practice not to send junk mail to any individual who has indicated they don't want it. To stop the junk you simply join the mail preference service register at MPSOnline
For a full guide to stopping nuisance calls, letters and emails, read the Junk the Junk guide.
Step 2. Finding the right competitions
The easiest way to do this is use the massive wealth of information MoneySavers have collated in the Competitions Time forum board. Most days at any minute, there are hundreds of dedicated compers who love to share the competitions they find; knowing that while it diminishes their chances of winning that contest, the shared research increases the opportunities.
Don’t just pick at random, systematically work through the competitions on the board, so you don’t miss any beauts.
Fill out soonest closing first.Thread titles are written in a specific format, with the end date in the title, eg, ‘E: 31/05 Win a Fortnum & Mason Hamper worth £250’.
Thanks to MoneySavers sticking to this format, there’s a way to sort the threads by expiry date. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the forum board to the ‘display options’ box. Now select from it sort threads in order of ‘thread title’ and select ascending. This will sort the competitions into chronological order.
Then work your way through the posts, starting at those ending soonest. The first time will take several hours, as there are so many comps posted.
At the end of a session, write down the end date of the last competition you entered.
This way you have a record of where you got up to for the next time to come on.
- Speedily open lots of links.
Often competition board threads involve lots of links to different contests. Users of the free Firefox browser can open several threads all at once with the free Snap Links add-on, which lets you draw a box around a group of threads and open them all. Just right click and drag.
- Pick the right contests for you.
It may sound obvious, but focus your time on entering contests with goodies you actually want to win. If the prize is an Old Trafford tour with Alex Ferguson, but you can’t stand footie, give it a miss. As well as freeing up your time, it could make another MoneySaver’s dream come true.
Of course with some contests there is the option to try and sell the prize on eBay, but do remember you’re entering the contest based on someone else’s effort to find it, and by doing so diminish their chances, so it’s worth considering the ethics before doing this.
Also check for exclusions and travel requirements in the small print. If a comp requires hauling your butt halfway up the country to take a mid-week mini-break when you’ve no holiday allowance left, move on.
- Extra effort competitions are good.
Lots of people are lazy, so anything involving a smidgen of extra effort will get dramatically fewer contestants. So if a comp involves penning a poem, writing a comedy tie-breaker or snapping a photo, try your luck – you might be the only person who enters!
Postal-only comps are a decent bet for the same reason, especially those involving a cut-out slip few people have. There’s a ‘sticky’ thread at the top of the Competitions Time board listing all postal competitions.
You’ll also stand a better chance with highly localised competitions, for example tickets to a nearby theatre in a local paper, also attract fewer entries.
- Tie-break entries.
A number of competitions involve coming up with phrases or tie-breaks. If you’re a word smith this can be an easy way to help improve your chances.
To do this, always read through the companies own marketing literature; they’ve often spent time developing the brand, and will want something that fits it; so that’s your clue. Then keep them short and punchy. For inspiration a few web sites list past winning slogans which can help spark ideas, see winspiration and, for rhymes, Rhymezone.
- Find the answers.
If you’re looking to answer a question, some useful websites can help. The OneAcross allows you to search for answers to crosswords. It also has an anagram solver; plug in a word and it’ll instantly generate hundreds of possibilities, for example, did you know that Martin Lewis is Mini Wastrel?
Of course there’s also good old Google and Wikipedia for quiz questions. And most importantly you’ll find other compers posting answers on the forum, so do help them out if they’re stuck too.
Plus, to save time, users of the Firefox brower can use the Split Panel add on. This lets you split existing browser windows in half, so you can see two web pages at once. This way you can copy and paste answers at speed.
- Keep track of what you’ve entered.
Some promoters exclude people who enter multiple times. To keep track of completed contests, simply ‘thank’ the MoneySaver who posted the competition, by clicking the button below their post (you must be registered and logged on to the chat forum to do this).
Your username will appear in the list of thankers. (And yes, if you needed any more incentive, this means comp posting is a fantastic way to build up ridiculous amounts of thanks!). And always read terms and conditions to check if it’s one per household; rules vary for every competition.
Thanks to the Competition Time board’s users, especially Comping Queen ‘VelvetGlove’ (see her comping guide for lots of the tips in the steps above). The aim of this guide is to complement the forum board; hopefully it will mean more competitions posted, and more prizes for MoneySavers.
Step 3. Use clever tools for speedy competition entries.
Now it’s about taking a technological grip so you can enter more contests but spend far less time doing it. Many top compers entering 100 comps a day exploit special tools and tricks to turbo charge their competition entering, whether it’s online, email or postal comps.
Use your web browser’s “auto-fill” system.Web browsers such as internet explorer or firefox are what we all use to access the internet. Most have an option allowing them to remember your details and fill them in automatically. Then the next time you start to enter the same thing. Just type the first letter and a suggestion list appears.
Though be wary about doing this on shared computers, as it can be a security risk.
Internet Explorer. Go to Tools, then Internet Options and click the tab for Content, then press the AutoComplete button. Put a tick in the box to select AutoComplete for Forms.
You can also set Explorer to remember passwords for certain sites by ticking the box that says “Prompt me to save passwords”. Yet this can be a security risk. If you have any problems, Microsoft has a guide to its Autocomplete function.
Firefox. Firefox comes with a basic form filling function. Go to Tools>Options> Privacy and make sure "Remember what I enter in forms" is checked. Yet this doesn’t always fill out forms correctly first time; it’s worth downloading the Autofill Forms and Infoform Firefox add-ons, which are slightly more sophisticated.
Firefox also comes with a Password Manager that saves the passwords you use to log in to websites. Look under Tools, Options and select the Security button. Then tick the box marked “remember passwords for sites”. See Mozilla’s full guide.
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While you can set browsers to remember basic information such as names and addresses, they aren’t that intelligent and often put the wrong info in the wrong fields and saving passwords this way is not that secure.
Roboform. The free web program Roboform (an alternative for Mac users is 1Password) is a form-filling weapon that easily outguns just typing. It stores info such as addresses, phone numbers and postcodes and uses them to automatically fill in online forms.
All the details are stored in one vault on your computer; all you need to remember is the crucial master-password to access them. Find out how to use Roboform for comping
AutoHotKey. To get things done at top speed, there’s a way to create your own keyboard shortcuts for things you write over and over again. Here, instead of fiddling with the mouse, you just press a couple of keys to make details appear. So for example, holding down the Alt key and pressing ‘4’ will write the second line of your address.
To do it use the free AutoHotKey software, which allows you to program your own shortcuts. Then you need to write a ‘script’; a plain text file with personalised instructions for the program. This sounds uber-nerdy, but is actually pretty simple. Find out how to write an AutoHotKey script
Use a Word Template. As a backup to all the technology just setup a Word document with your particulars on, ie, name, phone number, address. Then went you want to fill in a form, just highlight the info and copy and paste it into the boxes.
- Quick E-mail contest entry.
Draft a template email with your name, email, address and telephone number, so you can fire it off quickly. Remember to leave a space for the answer
- Postcard contest entries.
Never pay for postcards; cinemas, libraries and TK Maxx tills always have plenty of freebies. Also buy a sheet of sticky labels and print out stamps with your details on to really speed up the time taken.
With stamps, the only difference between First Class and Send Class is that with First Royal Mail aims to deliver your letter or packet the next working day. It aims to deliver Second Class on by the third working day. So unless the closing date’s near, don’t buy first.
Superdrug regularly runs 5% off stamps sales; use them to stock-up. These are always included in the free weekly MoneySaving e-mail.
Step 4. Count your winnings!
The small print usually explains whether you will be contacted by email, phone or post. Often the postie will just turn up with a parcel (every door knock is exciting!). Depending on end dates, you could be notified the next day or next year.
For a tiny minority of competitions, promoters ask people return to the site to see if they’ve won; again this will be in the terms and conditions. You could try googling your name to see if wins appear.
Do check e-mail spam folders in case an important communication’s slipped through. Always read all e-mails carefully; winning notifications often don’t have obvious subject lines. And don’t forget to post on the ‘I won I won’ board to share the good news!
Keep tabs on prizes
It’s worth keeping a list of prizes you’ve won, in case they don’t materialise. Usually promoters are not purposely withholding the goodies, they just need a little nudge now and again.
But if it doesn’t arrive after a few polite prompts, it could be worth getting in touch with the Institute of Sales Promotion, the promotions industry’s trade association, which lays down the guidelines promoters must follow. Compers report that it’s fab at investigating missing prizes. The best way’s to email complaints@isp.org.uk.
And do post your own competition finds too.
The competitions board is a community, and etiquette dictates that you post your own finds, as well as looking at the ones already posted. It’s unscientifically believed that not reciprocating with other compers actually decreases your chances of winning.
Though don’t worry too much to begin with, the board is a friendly place, and you’re allowed to walk before you can run. Find out more on finding and posting new competitions
Competitions Q&A;
How many competitions should I enter?
A. While blind luck is out of your control, you do have control over the number of comps you enter. After some highly sophisticated number crunching, we came up the following surprising statistic: the more you enter, the bigger the chance of winning. So get that mouse clicking!
The trick’s setting a weekly target. Of course, the number depends on your spare time, but a poll of 200 compers on the competitions board found that 86% enter over 50 comps a week. This might sound like a lot, but the auto form fillers can help.
To give you an example of an average return, MoneySaver JadeCripps says:
“In 2008 I won £1713 worth of prizes. For that I put in approximately 1500 hours or four hours per day. I enter on average 50 to 500 comps per day and have calculated my win rate at being 1/1000 comps entered. Seeing as this worked out at £1.14 per hour, it’s only worth doing if you enjoy entering comps.”
Do I have to pay tax on my prizes?
A. No. Just like betting in sport, your winnings in the UK are tax-free. The only exception’s if your employer runs an incentive competition for staff, eg, the salesperson who sells the most cars wins a trip to Ibiza.
I’ve seen competitions websites that charge a fee to see their listings. Are they worth it?
A. No. When looking for comps, you may come across websites and magazines charging to view lists of contests. Yet never, ever pay to register with a competitions site. Often they’re just the obvious contests, and can’t compete with the army of kindred spirit compers using the forums.
How can I check that a competition’s legit?
A. Sadly dodgy comps abound on the net (sorry, you haven’t actually won £200k in the European lottery). If you’re worried about the legitimacy of a contest, ask on the forum, and MoneySavers will check it out.
There’s a voluntary stamp of approval for competitions provided by the Institute of Sales Promotion To include the stamp logo on a competition’s advertising, promoters must get it approved by the ISP’s legal experts, who will check it conforms to Advertising Standards Authority codes.
Do bear in mind that the stamp is an indication of legitimacy, rather than a guarantee. If you are worried about a competition with the stamp, contact the Institute.
Always avoid those which ask for credit card details or other information you would not be happy to disclose.
Is it worth entering ‘pay to enter’ contests?
A. Generally not. Most contests are for promotional purposes, those that require fees are essentially lotteries and gambling. While the cost of a stamp or cheap phone call is usually fine, beware this is taking away from any winnings.
Be extremely aware of premium rate phone contests too, you could be listening at £1 a minute for five or ten minutes before you hear any details. Most of these type of contests tend to be scams.
