Comping is DANGEROUS

Last summer, I took a tumble at Go Ape. Had I not won vouchers in the Cadbury’s Freddo comp, I wouldn’t have been there. So, really, I guess, this whole sorry saga starts with Freddo. It’s thanks to Freddo that I upset my pinkie, and it’s thanks to Freddo that random klaxons of pain started tearing though my ribs.

Freddo has a lot to answer for.

Things quietened down over the coming months, however, and by December the pain train was paying only irregular visits. That is, until we reached peak advent.

You see, looking down, aggravates the old war wound. And using your phone for a couple of thousand Instagram comps involves a lot of looking down.

Next week, I’m going to the physio.

Don’t mug yourself people: comping’s not for fair-weather players. It’s an extreme sport, NO LIE.

Take it easy.

The little things in life

Never work with children or animals. I’ve tried both. Which is worse, I couldn’t say: cats by their very nature cannot, do not and will not cooperate; my first-born likewise.

That’s an exaggeration - he did cooperate once, when he was four. Since then, his behaviour has - as they say - explored boundaries. Combined with his extreme control-freakery, he’s not a natural at taking direction, generally only playing ball once you’ve tears in your eyes and are genuinely about to throw in the towel.

Exhibit A: Cooperating child

The net result is that every video comp I try to recruit him for turns into a complete ordeal with my wife asking why I keep putting myself though this. To be honest, I don’t really know. Time after time, I somehow manage to convince myself that if I chuck a kid or two into my video then the judges will love it. Sadly, and much to his frustration, the results don’t bear that out, making him even more reluctant to cooperate next time, meaning that the next video is even more likely to miss the mark. It’s a vicious circle. The cat, at least, is always consistently uncooperative.

There’s also the problem that having put in the effort, he feels the prize should be guaranteed. I get that. Failing to win an entry-form or like-RT comp is a statistical doddle; it’s also emotionally straightforward as there’s little to no investment. When you’ve spent hours on an entry but fail to make the podium, however, it’s disappointing, no matter how old you are. And more effort equals more disappointment.

He’s gutted that he’s not modelling for Gap, so I have to remind him how much he enjoyed doing his photo shoot. Likewise, he was disappointed not to win a heap of books when we spent the best part of a weekend turning a cardboard box into a Noddy car - but he was so proud of his work that he asked to do it again just a few weeks later. The video we made for an Oreo comp was an even greater success, although since that involved eating biscuits, perhaps there’s no surprise there.

There’s no point comping with children if they don’t enjoy the process. Of course, you could always say the same about adults.

If you have any tips for getting children to cooperate, PLEASE let me know in the comments below!

The wider world in 2018

When seasonal devastation abounds, the view through one’s fingers generally provides the ideal vantage point to look back upon the year. As it’s probably too soon to comment on how 2018 has treated me (after all, with a week to go, anything could happen), I find myself instead reflecting on some of my fondest memories from the last 12 months in the world of comping.

Personally, I'm always drawn to those stories with the kind of ridiculously mild drama that only a true comper will really appreciate - in other words, compers' problems.

The classic comper’s problem, of course, is winning more than you bargained for. Traditionally, this entails the logistical challenge of fitting, say, a year’s worth of cheese into a fridge the size of a biscuit. Less commonly, it involves winning a fridge large enough to hold not only said cheese, but also take the biscuit and one modestly sized person to chow in situ.

My heart was thus suitably gladdened when this indeed came to pass in Thailand, back in January, when a couple of lads who had won a refrigerator figured that the best way to get it home was on the back of a moped.

Less obviously droll, however, was Cadbury’s White Creme Egg promotion - a scavenger hunt plagiarised from the world of Willy Wonka, but with additional ick in the golden ticket, if the confectionery suffered anything like as much unauthorised unwrapping as I suspect.

Cadbury hasn't confirmed the volume of product spoilage, but I'm guessing it was outweighed by the value of the column inches the promotion acquired, given that round 2 is being promoted already, although (small print alert) the eggs aren’t being released till January.

When it comes to gaming the system with purchase-necessary competitions, there is of course a line in the sand. For the absence of doubt, contaminating food with cooties is over that line. Likewise, while wombling Lucozade bottles is perfectly acceptable, stealing McDonald’s Monopoly stickers at knifepoint is absolutely not.

I can understand someone's reluctance to munch through that much junk food, but it’s important to know when a promotion simply isn't for you. Case in point: US$300 prize money would never get me sitting in a coffin for 30 hours, but each to their own. As Tina Seelig might say, how you make your luck is a matter of individual choice (and to state the obvious, knife crime is a BAD choice).

For the purpose of clarity, it's always worth distinguishing between fortune, chance and luck. To return to Tina Seelig (with thanks to Di Coke for sharing this article!):

Fortune is things that are outside of your control, things that happen to you. I’m fortunate to be raised by a loving family. I’m fortunate to be born in this place and time. I’m fortunate to have blue eyes. Chance is something you have to do; I have to take a chance. It requires action on your part in the moment. Buy a lottery ticket. Ask someone on a date. Apply to a job. Luck is something where you have even more agency. You make your own luck by identifying and developing opportunities in advance.

A few years back, I chose to be more lucky - and so I am. I didn't get here by magic - anyone who makes the right decisions can make themselves equally lucky - if not more so.

To this end, I hope your 2019 is full of great opportunities and really good decisions!

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!

The only way is down?

I’m in decline. You may have noticed that my blog posts are getting fewer and farther between. I’m likewise entering fewer comps, or to be precise, I’m entering fewer interesting comps.

A competition to win a £5000 holiday is, of course, interesting. But that’s not the kind of interesting I’m talking about. Most big-ticket competitions are tediously straightforward to enter and consequently have thousands of entrants. In other words, the chances of winning are very, very small.

That’s not to say impossible - I once won an iPad Mini from a pool of about 2000 entries, but that kind of success has since eluded me, and goodness knows how many comps I’ve entered since then. Not as many as some hardcore compers, I’ll admit, but a healthily obscene number all the same.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I prefer competitions with smaller odds. It’s not just that the likelihood of winning is greater (like, duh!), but the ones that are more challenging tend also to be more interesting.

Unfortunately, my wit has gone somewhat out the window of late. The spike in my first-born’s challenging behaviour is presently celebrating its six-month anniversary and I am wiped out. I used to be smart. I’ve got certificates and stuff. These days, however, I can barely operate a spoon.

Me, when I still had brains. By which, I mean hair.

As a result, I’m failing to enter so many of the effort comps that I’ve bookmarked that I might as well not bother with them at all.

But that’s not to say I’m thinking of quitting this game. Rather, I’m cutting my crack to fit my clock, or however the saying goes.

In my case, that means sticking to Instagram. To be sure, tagging and following is a pretty mindless way to enter comps, but (a) you can do five-minute micro-sessions when you’re grabbing a breather between arguments; and (b) the random draws are less opaque than those for Twitter comps (see Di Coke's post on the subject).

That last point is particularly salient, as it puts Joe Average Comper with 100 followers on the same footing as a comping blogger with 5000 followers. Well, theoretically, anyway. As with any prize draw, there’s nothing to stop a promoter from pulling names out of the hat till they find one they like, but I can’t imagine there’s that many bad eggs out there to make that worth worrying about. And in any case, I’m still managing enough wins to keep it interesting.

The bottom line is that this hobby is fantastically scalable.

If you want a hardcore comping session, then go for it. Enter hundreds a night if that works for you - it’s a numbers game after all. But if all you want is a bit of fun, then go where the odds are smaller. There might not be as many tellies and games consoles, but everyone needs protein bars and gin, don’t they?

How do you change your comping game when life gets the better of you? Do you focus on the big stuff, the fun comps, or simply pull down the shutters? Let me know in the comments below!

A nice problem

There’s a down side to comping: it develops tastes, creates needs.

Take confectionery, for example. It wasn’t so long ago that my idea of aspirational candy was a chocolate Matterhorn. That was back when duty-free shops the world over made like Fort Knox and stacked their king-size Toblerones like gold bars, and Alan Partridge scarfed a lap-full while driving barefoot to Dundee. Without doubt, Toblerone was the acme of sophistication.

These days, however, it's become a staple. Partly that’s because I can get my fix at Poundland, and partly that’s because I have over the last few years won a silly amount of top-end chocolate.

This year, in particular, my wins have become increasingly fancy (or increasingly grown-up, as my lad might say), culminating most recently in this great stack from Octo.

Clearly, this is made for posher folk than I. Consider, if you will, Exhibit A: this 100 g bar of raw white chocolate with salted pistachios retails at £8.50! Translated into Toblerone, that kind of dough would score a kilo of chocolate with enough change for post-binge Alka-Seltzer.

You can probably see where I’m going with this - yep, it’s one of those problems that gets little sympathy: I’m becoming a chocolate snob - worse, a cocoa bore. I’m currently so flushed with the stuff that I’m sprinkling my morning porridge with goji berries coated in raw chocolate. I look like a right middle class ponce, even though I wouldn’t recognise a goji berry if I woke up in a sack of them.

My so-called problem is by no means limited to sugar and spice. I recently won some serum - man serum, to be precise. I was planning to let my wife use it, but at her behest I gave it a go. Which is to say, at her behest and under her direction, as I had not the first clue what it was for or how it should be applied given that my skincare regime had never graduated beyond patching cracked fingers with hand cream.

Fancy serum

And here we are: one week of half-heartedly following her guidance and the dry, flaky bags under my eyes are now just regular bags, albeit marginally less creased. Which is great - but given that childcare commitments mean I can work only part-time, the idea of ponying up £50 for another 30 ml of this elixir gives me the heebie jeebies.

That said, it could be worse. During the advents, I won a month’s worth of la-di-da serum for my wife. It retails at £200, which in terms of sustainability presents a lifestyle choice between slightly smoother skin and feeding our children.

Insanely fancy serum

Suddenly, my Toblerone habit pales into insignificance.

Has comping actually driven up your consumption of things you once considered luxuries?! Let me know in the comments below!

Blurred lines

Obsession. Compulsion. There are times when the difference between the two isn’t so clear. The Great Oreo Cookie Quest is one of those times.

For the uninitiated, this app-based promotion is basically a scavenger hunt where you have no idea what you’re looking for. Actually, that’s unfair - there are daily clues, but in many respects it’s quicker simply to point your phone at anything and everything and hope for the best. (For a better description, see Di Coke's post.)

What’s up for grabs? Well, if you’ve time on tap, it’s easy enough to win yourself £15 of vouchers for the Google Play store. There’s also the star prize - a Galaxy J7 phone - for the first person to find all 390 items.

SPOILER! That prize has already been claimed, so if you’re planning to take part, you might as well put your feet up once you’ve bagged the vouchers.

That is, unless you’re particularly fond of obsessive compulsive behaviour, in which case, the pleasure of collecting items grows exponentially the further you progress. This is in no small part down to the fact that some of the items are nigh impossible to scan.

Take milk, for example. It must have taken me an hour to scan this one.

At this point in the game, I had fewer than ten items to collect, while the player in pole position had only one. So … everything to play for, right?

It had taken a few hours to get this far, and was plainly going to take hours more. By all rights, I should have conducted some sort of cost-benefit exercise with my time, but logic had plainly gone out the window by this point. By hook or by crook, that milk was getting scanned.

Thankfully, a kind-hearted fellow comper put me out of my misery with the following recommendation: froth it up a little and snap from above.

Ker-ching! Item scanned!

I did it! I scanned the milk!

I must have spent just as long fumbling with Google Image Search, trying to find a hatchet that would scan - no easy task when the app thinks they’re all axes. My doggedness paid off eventually, but when I realised I now had to scan an ice axe as well, my heart sank. I must have pointed my phone at a hundred ice axes, only to have the app think they were hammers, nails or, on at least one occasion, a stethoscope.

By now, I’d reached seventh place on the national leaderboard - woohoo! Unfortunately, the player who had been leading the pack had managed to find the last item on the list. Game over, in other words. Except for the fact that I hadn’t checked the T&C at this point, and spent another couple of hours banging my head against the wall, trying to scan pliers and coconuts before having the common sense to check the small print.

By the time I downed tools, there were three items I’d failed to scan, and a further three I’d failed to identify at all. Which was more frustrating I couldn’t say; however, the sense of relief as I was released from my obligations was overwhelming. My shoulders buoyed as their invisible burden was lifted.

Now all that remains is to spend the vouchers - has anyone got any recommendations?

Have you been playing the Great Oreo Cookie Hunt? And if so, how have you got on? Let me know if you need any clues!

Deadwood

Recently, I’ve not been enjoying the comps. Sure, I’ll always love winning, but the process of entering has been leaving me cold. I’m bored by forms, muddling my closing dates and drawing a blank with ideas for effort comps: in short, the mojo has taken a sabbatical.

And yet I can't get comping out of my head!

Some of that, of course, is compulsion (another good reason to ease back), but another part is the desire to get my head in the right place for the season of comping bedlam commonly known as December.

As I’ve said before, the advents can take a lot out of you, so it’s important to prepare as best you can - and to look after yourself as you go.

My last week has therefore focused on deadwooding my social media feeds to ensure I receive a better stream of interesting content once the season - and my mood - pick up.

Deadwooding Twitter is probably the easiest. With an app like ManageFlitter it’s a doodle to review your follows and remove any that are no longer of interest (for more details, check out Di Coke’s post). That said, unless you’re approaching your 5,000 follow limit, there’s no urgency here, as the average Twitter feed is such a barrage of jibber jabber that the likelihood of a decent, low-odds comp falling in your lap are marginal. Indeed, most seasoned compers will tell you that the best way to enter Twitter giveaways is to take the bull by the horns and go find them yourself. In this regard, Nikki Hunter-Pike’s Tweetdeck tips are essential reading.

Onto Facebook then. Personally, I have little love for Facebook. I’ve no desire to spam my entire family with comps, but since Mark Zuckerberg now shares my every last like, reaction or comment with my entire social circle, I seem to have no choice in the matter. Furthermore, while Facebook is happy to unlike pages off its own bat, it appears less keen for users to do so under their own steam. Sure, you can unfollow pages as and when they come into your newsfeed, or go to your likes page and unlike to your heart’s content, but either way, the process is plodding and painful. To this end, I prefer UnlikeIt - a really simple app for removing like clutter. Yes, it can be a little slow, but given that Facebook refuses to support it, we’re somewhat over a barrel.

Finally, Instagram. Until the middle of 2016, follows were listed in chronological order, making it relatively easy to thin out old, redundant profiles. All that changed when Instagram introduced the present pointlessly opaque system. Now, the profiles at the very top of the list are the ones with which you have most interaction. The rest? Well, they’re just tossed in with no regard for order whatsoever. Thankfully, however, this update islimited to the app only. The desktop version of the site still shows follows in chronological order. In other words, if you’re logged in on your desktop, just pull up the list of who you are following, scroll to the bottom, and deadwood your way up.

BUT HOLD YOUR HORSES!

Before rushing off on a mad orgy of unliking, know this: massive unfollow binges put your account at risk of temporary suspension. This is because such behaviour is often associated with automated tools that can contravene the various social media platforms’ terms of use.

Furthermore, unliking promoters simply because their giveaway has closed and you didn’t win is a bit, well, mercenary. Give these guys a chance! That said, if it’s six months down the line and not one of their photos, memes or messages has had the remotest impact on you, then they're wasting their time marketing to you, and it's probably best for both parties for you to be honest about that.

Good luck getting those newsfeeds back in hand!

If you'd recommend any apps for managing your social media profiles, let me know in the comments below!

Comping on #WorldMentalHealthDay

I’m not a hardcore comper: I can’t do forms. Any sort of forms really, although application forms are the worst. Possibly it’s because I don’t see things so black and white; possibly my thinking is too lateral for silos; possibly I’m just an overthinker. Case in point.

The short of it is that I suck at forms - including web entry forms. At best they bore me; at worst they depress me. Even with Roboform, Fillr or any magic wand of wondrousness, entering and re-entering my address into a hundred-odd forms in a single sitting is like putting my mojo through the mangle.  It takes a special kind of focus that I simply lack.

And so I quit them. Why, after all, pursue something that makes you unhappy? Surely, that’s the very definition of madness?

And yet … Here I am. Staring down the 50th web form of the night. Telling myself that I WILL win that holiday.

I’ve gone months without a web-form bender and suddenly the wagon is rumbling off without me. How did it get to this?!

I’ve written elsewhere about my need for validation. But this is different. This is big-game hunting. Holidays - strictly holidays. This isn’t about savouring the fleeting high notes of a protein bar or a bit of milk, it’s about needing a break - needing light at the end of my tunnel.

That’s why these binges always focus on weekend breaks and holidays. As my dad used to say, sometimes it’s better to travel than to arrive.

That maybe so, but this kind of travelling always seems to be less about the dreaming and more about the bulk deletion of marketing emails.

There’s also the uncomfortable truth that despite completing hundreds of these web forms, I’ve won precisely nothing. Why? Because thousands of other people have entered them too! The odds of winning such comps are microscopically small, and if - like me - you have a limited tolerance for web forms, it’s worth remembering this.

Comping should be fun. If you’re not enjoying it, take a break. If you can’t handle the process, try something different. And if it feels like an obligation, stop.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dry Season

The last few weeks have been dry, which is to say I’ve had, six, maybe seven weeks without a wining notification of some kind. Some folks might call that bad luck. I say pish: there’s a world of difference between bad luck and the temporary absence of good luck.

Anyone who thinks it’s bad luck not to keep winning may as well jack it in right now because, as any comper will tell you, you’re always going to lose more than you win. Dry patches may not be fun, but they’re built into the game - as statistically inevitable as night following day.

Grumbling fixes nothing. Worse still, it’s a heinous waste of time and energy that could be better spent in so many ways!

Relying on the odds alone isn’t enough; success also requires a positive mental attitude. In other words, when you find yourself in the midst of a dry spell, see it as an opportunity to improve rather than waste it dwelling on the perceived failure.

For instance, if you’re not updating your spreadsheet or sending thank-you messages to promoters, you’ll have more time for other comping-related activities. For starters, you should be chatting with your comping buddies (if you’re shy, then just think of it as networking!). While you’re at it, invest in all those other comping groups you’re a member of: share comps, notify winners, discuss best practice - whatever's appropriate. This karma pays back!

More practically, learn a new skill to improve the technical side of your comping. If there’s a social media platform you don’t use (such as Snapchat, Instagram or even Twitter), now's the time to learn the ropes (see, for example, the guides by Lorna Beattie [Snapchat] and Di Coke [Instagram]). Alternatively, build on your existing knowledge to raise your game to the next level; for example, Nikki Hunter-Pike has a brilliant guide to Twitter lists.

Remember also that being lucky isn’t confined to your track record with giveaways - celebrate any and all luck as it finds you, and if that includes being reunited with your lost luggage, then so be it!

Finally, while there’s naught to gain from mourning what might have been; there is everything to gain from reflecting and persevering. For example, if you haven't won a creative competition, ask yourself: What went well? What could have gone better? Is there anything you can learn from the winner? In short: keep calm & carry on!

How well does this advice work? Who can say? But since starting this post yesterday, I've had two winning e-mails! :D

How do you cope with the dry season? If you have any advice, let me know in the comments below!

Good Luck, Bad Luck

Have you ever won something twice? I have. Twice.

The first time was back when X-Men Apocalypse was released, and I won merchandise from two different promoters. This was especially sweet as I was able to share the spoils with the little folks in my life that I’m encouraging to be as geeky as me. That said, I was also left with two X-Men tees - one medium, one large - that I will never wear, but still haven’t had time to put on eBay. It’d be great to think that they’ve only matured in value since the film’s release, though somehow I doubt it.

Fast-forward to this summer, and I found a super-low odds competition to win tickets to the football. Sure, it was only a pre-season friendly, but it was premier league opposition - a perfect opportunity to for my first-born to see his first match.

Bums on seats is clearly an issue for friendlies: two days later, I found a second competition. This time the shirt sponsor was giving away 250 pairs of tickets to the game.

It was a sign: one giveaway with barely a dozen entrants, and another with an absurd number of prizes - surely I could score a winner?

What I failed to account for, however, was my summer itinerary.

The summer itinerary is something that happens *to* me every year.

The process unfolds as follows: the school year finishes and my wife places a calendar in front of me; my eyes glaze over, and an hour later, the next six weekends have vanished in a haze of ink and sighs.

Oh well, I thought. Good feeling or no, planning one’s life around wins that are yet to materialise is the cornerstone of gambling addiction. And so, without an another thought, I consigned my little jolly to the trashcan.

Two days later, I received a winning e-mail from the first promoter: Congratulations! You’ve won three tickets to the match!

I sighed, and asked them to redraw - the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to decline a prize.

And wouldn’t you know - the second time was just around the corner. Adding insult to injury, I won another two tickets to the game - giving the declined prize a grand value of £50.

It just goes to show that some you win, and some you lose. And sometimes, clearly, you do both.

Have you ever won the same prize twice? Have you ever had to decline a prize? Share your story, whether happy or sad, in the comments below!

Prize piles

The last few weeks haven’t been kind. I blame the change in routine. No longer can I use my lunch break to search Twitter for short-lived comps with precious few entrants. Instead, I’ve been sitting down in the evening to run my searches and trawling through page after page of irrelevant US posts. The fact that I’m exhausted by this point only compounds matters.

I’m working to fix this, of course. But in the meantime, I’m reminding myself about my luck credentials by dusting the virtual trophy cabinet, which is to say, working on my Winspiration Pinterest board.

Mostly, my prizes come in drips and drabs, so I can only really snap them one at a time. Last December, however, was my most successful month ever - in fact, things went so well that my wins were stacking up on my desk faster than I could find homes for them. At one point I was even thinking: Is this what it feels like to be Di Coke? Because if it is, she must feel BRILLIANT!

And that’s when I remembered prize piles.

When I first started comping, I used to pore slack-jawed over the winners’ stories on Prizefinder, gasping at the heaps of things some people were winning on a monthly basis. And I thought: one day, this will be me. And so it was - I was living the dream!

Dry spells are an inevitable part of comping, but it’s how we cope with them that defines us as compers. So, when I realised that this beautiful moment was unfolding before me, I captured it, intending full well to use it in my next trip to the luck recovery clinic.

Some of my wins from December 2016

When I look back on this picture, I think YES - I really can do this! I may not be able to make an actual pile in any given month (read, most months), but I'm a total advocate for snapping every last win for posterity. The prize spreadsheet is undoubtedly great, but never underestimate the emotional value of those Kodak moments!

Celebrating past glories is just one salve for bruised luck muscles - the best recovery programmes always draw on a combination of therapies. How do you massage your luck back into shape again?!

The week I missed a week

Last week was extraordinary. My son lost his first tooth and he came home from school delighted that he was going to get a fiver. He was convinced about this fiver. No matter what we said to suggest that five pounds might not be on the cards, he wouldn’t have it. So I wrote him a letter from the Tooth Fairy, snapped it quickly, and popped it on Facebook to give my family a laugh.

A week later, my post had had 4000 shares. Heart FM had also got on it and posted the letter on their various local Facebook pages, so it had a few thousand more shares too. As Andy Warhol would no doubt have said, everyone goes viral once.

Anyway, my comping went out the window as I attempted to replicate the virality on Twitter by making an account for the Tooth Fairy. Truthfully, the endeavour met with limited success; however, it did align with one of my resolutions for this year: familiarising myself with Tweetdeck. I make no claim to have got it licked, but I’m certainly going to be better prepared for the next Twitter party.

The main thing I’ve learned from this experience is that when the time arrives for you to go viral, broadcasters and media companies will be in touch. They will ask to share your content - and promise to credit you. You will be flattered. Your content will spread farther and wider. However, you won’t see how far and how wide it has gone, because all those likes and shares will accrue to the media company, extending their “reach” - in other words, their currency with their advertisers. If reach is the sort of thing you need, then think carefully about your wording when you grant permission.

I had no way of monetising my Facebook post, so the matter was academic. My only condition was that Heart also tweeted a message about oral hygiene - which they did!

How does this relate to comping? Simple: I just wish I’d used the letter as a competition entry before posting it online - now that everyone’s seen it, I can’t imagine it has any comping currency at all!

EDIT: A company has just offered my lads a generous bunch of kit to encourage them to maintain good toothbrushing habits, so I'm counting that as a win! I'll tell you more about that soon...

New Year’s Resolutions: 2017

The advent hullaballoo has died down and the leftovers have nearly all been eaten, so that must mean it’s time to start thinking about the year ahead. Experience suggests that an excess of resolutions tends to end in an excess of failures, so I’m limiting myself to three key areas for development:

1. Better organisation. Last year started well. I got myself a special notebook for comping so I could keep a to-do list of creative comps while staying on top of deadlines. Around the middle of the year, factors beyond my control blew all but my most basic routines into smithereens and I totally failed to get the plates spinning again. Simply put, I’m anticipating that 2017 will be better than 2016, so I have no excuse not to get my comping diary routine back on track.
2. Less comping for protein. I love Instagram. What it lacks in huge competitions, it makes up for with relatively low-traffic giveaways. These smaller odds are great, but I do have a tendency to get carried away, and before I know it, I’m following dozens of protein-bar pushers. This wouldn’t be so bad if I was looking to build up a six-pack, but given how wholeheartedly I fail to exercise, the gains from these snacks really won't be the ones they’re designed to realise. To top it off, loads of these companies seem to be pushing vegan or paleo diets, neither of which interest me in the slightest. In other words, I need to work on my focus.
3. Run my own competition. I keep saying I’m going to do it! I just need to get my act together and tweak a couple of things on the blog first … Honestly!

Did you keep your comping resolutions last year? What are your resolutions for 2017?

The season to be jolly

Humbug.

The advents are coming.

I’m assuming you’ll want me to expand upon my earlier statement, so: “Bah!”; and a further “humbug” for good measure.

I don’t actually hate the advents. But I am wary of them.

It was 2014 when I first tackled the advents. Thanks to Di Coke’s tips, I was - for a newbie - relatively coordinated and pretty efficient, and as a result, I comped HARD.

‘Hard’ is of course relative: I comped much harder than I’d ever done before - not as hard as some folks, certainly - but well beyond my natural appetite.

I was putting so much effort into chasing that winning buzz that if I wasn’t comping, I was itching to get back to it, to tick off the ever-growing list of draws closing that day. Those comps were on my mind A LOT. And when the season came to an end, I was bereft. It was Christmas Day, and instead getting stuck into the festive cheer, I sat there all fidgetty, thinking, ‘Damn! What do I do now?!’ That hole lasted well into January, accompanied by the longest period of low mood that I’d ever experienced.

There were, of course, other factors contributing to my mood (not least the sleep deprivation associated with having small children!), but anyone who has seen gambling addiction first-hand will recognise that these are the signs of compulsive behaviour.

Now, let’s not over-egg the pudding. Comping is hardly a vice, and it’s undoubtedly more benign than gambling. All the same, it still feels great to win, and it’s understandable that people enjoy winning as often as possible.

The important thing, however, is to be aware of when this changes from a hobby to an obsession. So, if you find yourself starting to neglect your chores (or even your family) in order to squeeze in a few more entries, please take a break. To borrow the words from the Gamble Aware campaign – when the fun stops, stop.

I like to liken the advents to a bottomless pitcher of eggnog: novel in moderation but impossible to finish - and by God will you suffer if you try!

Hoe Hoe Hoe (Christmas Dad Joke #17)

So, let’s keep things merry this Christmas - here are my recommendations for keeping the fun flowing:

• Don’t enter everything! Focus on the prizes you really want.
• Set time limits not entry targets.
• Take regular breaks – look after your eyes as well as your mental health!
• Download a red-screen app such as f.lux or Twilight to protect your eyes from screen glare once the sun goes down (and help you sleep after a hard night of comping!) 
• Socialise – chat with fellow compers on Facebook (or whatever other forum you prefer).
• Be creative – break up the form filling with more challenging comps.

Now go out there, do your prep (see appendix!), and enjoy yourself!

How do you comp through December? Do you enjoy the advents? What are your tips for staying sane in this hectic period?

Appendix

I mentioned Di Coke’s tips - they’re available here

I also recommend Grant Robson’s post on surviving the advents

If you know of any other posts on the subject, please post a link in the comments!

Looking for the edge

Would you like to win more?

That’s one of those rhetorical questions, isn’t it?

A more literal question is: how much harder do I need to work to improve my win rate?

I was pondering this just recently so conducted a quick poll on Facebook to see how many comps folks enter every week, and how well they do.

Lest I offend any statisticians out there, when I say ‘quick poll’, I mean a small convenience sample that totally fails to represent the wider comping community, and likewise fails to use mathematically consistent units (after all, it’s possible to complete a whole bunch of entry forms in the time it takes to finish a tie-break or tap out a droll anecdote). In short, the kind of survey that obtains data good enough for naught but spurious hypotheses and quack statistickery. But since such data works so well for the Great British press, it’ll be perfectly sufficient for our present needs.

Indeed, for the purposes of this post, all we need to know is that the best result was a reported win rate of 1.6 per cent; the worst, 0.03 per cent. Well, a couple of folks did report a win rate of nil, but I’m assuming this was for dramatic effect. In any case, the mean win rate was under 1 per cent.

So what does that mean?

On the one hand, I can take solace that my win rate isn’t so bad. It doesn’t top 1%, but it could be much worse. On the other hand, if I want to average an extra prize a week, elementary maths suggests I’ll have to comp at least 100% harder. 

Or will I? The other interesting thing I observed was that those compers who entered the most competitions tended to have the lowest win rate.

While this observation absolutely doesn’t reflect win value, it is an advert for focusing your game. Indeed, the person with the best win rate reported entering about 30 comps a day, but winning 15–20 prizes a month. How did she do it? By focusing on two things: creative comps and wishlist comps.

Now, as the person who conducts your annual review will tell you, no one has weaknesses - just scope for improvement. So, if someone more successful than I kindly shares the source of their force, I figure they’re pretty much spoon-feeding me opportunities for development.

Identifying the areas for improvement is one thing. Making objectives specific, meaningful, attainable, realistic and trackable is quite another (I can’t believe I’m actually talking about SMART targets of my own volition - I can only apologise!).

Take creative comps, for example. I was pretty sure there wasn’t much more I could do: I’m a member of a Facebook group for creative/effort comps and must check Loquax and PrizeFinder for creative comps every other day. I may not have the wit or skill to enter everything I find, but I certainly enter what I can. I must have scratched my head for a good half hour before it came to me - those three little words that everyone longs to hear: “comment to win”. That search string has so been added to my daily routine!

As for wishlist comps - this area has never been my strong point. For starters, most of my wishlist is too vague - I might as well type “win nice stuff” into Google. Secondly, I just don’t try hard enough to win these things! True, any basic giveaway listed on the main prize sites is going to have thousands of entries, but the bottom line is simple (if clichéd): you have to be in it to win it. So my pre-new year’s resolution is simple, if a little bleedin’ obvious: take time out to define my targets and then actually work towards them.

To this end, I’ve started by working on my wishlist bookmarks - searches for everything from spa breaks and Macbooks to wellies and razors. Last year, I found a competition for an electric toothbrush that - besides me - had just the one entrant, so I’m hopeful lightning can strike twice.

In closing then, it bears repeating that throwing more hours at this game isn’t necessarily the answer. There’s always something we can improve. At the same time, however, don’t try to change everything at once: no power lifter bench-presses 400 pounds on their first visit to the gym - improvements come in increments!

How many competitions do you enter in an average week? What’s your win rate like? What are your tips for improving comping success?

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus

Comping isn’t a sexy hobby. There - I’ve said it. Sega isn’t making a videogame franchise for compers; Her Majesty won’t be knighting anyone for being really good at it; and the odds of the BBC replacing the Great British Bake Off with Extreme Comping UK are so long as to be nonsensical.

Few civilians will salute your dedication to your art. Some will even sniff at it.

I did a quick straw poll of my Facebook friends to gauge their opinions on the matter. I got two responses: a positive comment from a fellow comper, and a like - from my mum.

Based on that convenience sample then, I’m assuming at best that my friends have the same interest in comping as they do in the shoe size of my neighbour’s plumber; or at worst, are so cheesed off with Facebook incessantly interrupting them with the tedious minutiae of my comping activities that they’ve muted me already.

A lack of enthusiasm I can live with. More disheartening, however, are the stories I hear about people laughing at compers - ‘you're wasting your time with competitions - no one ever wins them!’

Notwithstanding the fact that belittling people for enjoying themselves is a pretty pathetic form of bullying, the suggestion is plainly fallacious, as a brief review of the facts will testify: pull out your phone, pull up your spreadsheet and smile sweetly. If you feel it necessary, then by all means draw attention to your most recent wins (or your most impressive, if you feel that would be the better response) - the important thing to remember here is that it doesn’t matter if you win big or you win small: either way, you’re a winner.

And it’s not just prizes that make a winner - it’s attitude too. What’s the one thing that repeat winners share? Determination. Whether you call it perseverance or plain stubbornness, no one gets through the first couple of months without it. I can't begin to imagine how many thousands of competitions I’ve failed to win. Such trivia I shrug off with the day’s dandruff (at least, I would if I had hair). If I can handle a quiet week, I can certainly dismiss a doubting Thomas.

‘You’re just lucky - I never win anything.’

I tell you what … I’ll see your old chestnut and raise you another, because the harder I work, the luckier I get.

To be sure, there’ll never be Olympic medals for comping. But if there's one thing this hobby has in common with the innumerable sporting disciplines out there, it's that if you want to win, you’ve got to train the right muscles - in this case, your luck muscles.

(At this point, I should stress that if you’re after a luck coach, I’m not your man - not because I’m prohibited from sharing such arcane knowledge by some shady guild of freemason compers, but rather that I’d be selling you short. Anyone who wants to be more lucky should start by reading Di Coke’s Superlucky Secrets - and then reading it again!)

It has been said that jealousy can play a part in some folks’ attitudes. But, as my old man used to say, never attribute to malice that which can be put down to ignorance. It’s amazing how many mockers and gloom-mongers button up once they’re on the end of a larger birthday gift or an extraordinary little treat.

To paraphrase Gershwin: keep the laughers busy - that’s how people are.

After all - you’re the winner, aren’t you? Who's got the last laugh now?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of negative comments because of your comping? What’s your approach to dealing with negativity?

Stack that cheese

Ghost town competitions. There’s probably an official name for them in the comping community, but that’s what I like to call super-low entry comps - the ones where the number of entrants doesn’t even hit double figures. The comps that have flown under the radar.

I confess that I’ve never asked, but I’m pretty sure that promoters hate it when this happens. They’ve endeavoured to create buzz around their brand, but for whatever reason, it just hasn’t happened.

Understandably, some of these promoters aren’t in a hurry to announce their winners. They’re not exactly leaving the masses hanging, after all. They also have plenty of other, more pressing, demands on their time.

With notable exceptions, most people are only human, and it's all too easy for these demands to muscle their way to the top of their to-do list. Before you know it, that little job of picking a winner gets put off, postponed and sometimes even forgotten entirely.

For me, this period is even more excruciating than waiting for a big-prize announcement - at least with big prizes, I can be reasonably sure that the chance of winning is minimal and I might as well forget I entered in the first place. If, however, my odds of winning are better than one in ten, it just eats me. (I imagine it's even worse if it's a low-entry effort-based comp where the other entries are a matter of public record and you know - you just know - that that your entry was, objectively speaking, way more totally the awesomest!)

Anyway, back in May, Pilgrims Choice ran a competition to win a heap of cheese - which is to say, a heap of cheese vouchers (a year’s worth of cheddar delivered on a single pallet would be a bittersweet prize, to say the least). They asked to see Joe Public’s cheesy dance moves. Sadly for them, Joe Public was shy. Despite the company having many thousands of Facebook followers, only three were inclined to share a video.

(At this point, I should stress that my entry was categorically NOT as awesome as humanly possible; I was simply one of the three people to share a video.)

The competition closed, but no winner was announced. Folks kindly asked on my behalf whether the winner had been chosen - still there was silence. I followed up on Twitter - still nothing. One of the other entrants asked too. Nada.

And so the pursuit of cheddar fell down my to-do list, displaced by the obscene number of tedious chores associated with parenting, and by October, I’d largely forgotten the competition. Until, that is, on some hashtag day or other, I found an excuse to tweet the promoter about an altogether unrelated matter, and by way of a blag, sent them a link to my video. They liked it enough to send a few vouchers my way, blessing me with cheese and the warm sense of reassurance that, although it might not have been quite what I had in mind, at least it hadn’t all been in vain and, perhaps more importantly, I could draw a line under it.

But fate snatched that pencil from my greasy paw - a week later, the promoter contacted me on Facebook to let me know I’d won the May competition after all!

I’d love to say it was my nudge that edged it, but the very next day, one of the other entrants contacted me to congratulate me - it turned out that she too been seeking closure, and just a couple of days prior had contacted the promoter to see if any winners had been announced.

Cheese aside, there are some key lessons takeaways here - and perseverance is just one of them. The most important of all, however: never underestimate the value of being part of a community!

How good are you at playing the waiting game? What’s the longest you’ve had to wait? Do you find yourself getting more impatient with low-entry comps, even if the prizes are smaller?

Desert boots

The past few weeks haven’t been so kind to me (Instagram, was it something I said?!), so that probably means it’s time to mix up my game a little. Among other things, I'm giving special consideration to checking out some old haunts.

In the grand scheme of things, Pinterest is one of my oldest stomping grounds. But it's been a while - I haven’t won anything there since my first year of comping. In fact, it’s pushing two years since I’ve paid it a second's thought, in a comping sense at the very least.

Back in my first year of comping, however, I won a couple of prizes through Pinterest - one for a Father’s Day board and one for a board dedicated to outdoor living. The Father's Day board was my first ever attempt at a Pinterest comp (and it shows!) but fortune smiled on me as there weren't many entrants; the latter one, however, took a lot more effort, but as it was for a £100 Wild & Wolf voucher and there was plenty of time to work on it, I figured it was worth a crack.

I was still a total novice when I put this board together, and was yet to see any of the guides to making kick-ass boards (such as Di Coke's tutorial or the tips available to Compers News subscribers), so there was no way anyone was ever going to think my higgledy piggledy effort had been put together by a professional...

Where it did succeed, however, was in the comments. Pinterest is (spoiler!) a highly visual social media channel, but people forget that a picture says a thousand words, and quite often, that leaves too much to the imagination. In this case, I figured that promoters like folks to engage with their brands, so I made as many puns as I could based on the words “wild” and “wolf” and the company’s different product lines ... and you know what? It turns out that someone out there does actually like dad jokes!

Happy days, but as I mentioned, I've not been back to Pinterest for a while now. Perhaps it's about time I reacquainted myself...

Do you ever get dry spells? How do you turn round your luck? And have you seen any good Pinterest comps lately?!

Select it. Project it. Expect it. Collect it.

Mostly, I don’t hold out for specific wins. Sure, hope springs eternal, but that’s not quite the same as hardcore expectation. That’s not to say I never follow the mantra - I expected pretty hard for a summer holiday, to the extent that I even renewed the first-born’s passport. But nothing did I collect. Maybe I didn’t project hard enough…

Projecting and expecting is possibly easier with the creative comps. You put more into them - and sometimes you even get to see the competition, so you have an idea of how good you are doing versus the pack. That said, it’s easy to lose objectivity here - the two weeks my wife entered the Chicago Town dance-off I was convinced she was going to be the winner. She didn’t even place on the first week, and I was mad as a cat in a hot tin bath. Not least as it was her first attempt at comping, and she dances a million times better than I do.

But back to the moment: I am, as we speak, once more on max expectation.

Joules recently ran a competition to write a wee children’s book. The prize is not just a £1000 Joules giftcard, but also a Micro scooter (something from my wishlist!) and a heap of Puffin books. By my own broad measure, that makes the prize niiiiiiiiiiiice, at the very least.

Per the Joules logo, the lead character of my story is a hare (not a rabbit - I checked!); he rides a scooter and his best mate is a puffin. Heck, I even named him after the company’s CEO and the puffin after one of their tweed blazers! Too much, perhaps? After all, nobody likes a try-hard … Oh well - the deadline is now well past, so it’s out of my hands … All that’s left to do now is to expect - harder than I’ve ever expected before - till the end of October.

In the meantime, if you’ve got any spare capacity for projecting or expecting on my behalf, I’d be very grateful!

Do you project, expect and collect? Are you waiting to collect anything particular right now? Perhaps you entered this one too? If so, do you fancy sharing your story? You can see mine here if you want to compare!

Wasabi's theory of relativity

Nerd question: I’ve heard lots of compers say that the big one is just around the corner ... but just how big is that biggie?

Personally, I concentrate hardest on the smaller, more frequent wins. It’s not that I dislike big wins (as that would make me a fool) but I do have a fondness for smaller odds, and smaller odds tend to be associated with smaller prizes. The stats certainly bear this out for me: nearly half my wins this year have had a face value no greater than £10.

In the world of seasoned compers, this possibly marks me out as a part-timer. So be it. But it does mean I’m never blasé about £50 prizes, and if I’m lucky enough to score a £100 win you’ll find me high-fiving the mirror and whooping like an immature ambulance. On the few occasions I’ve topped the ton, I’ve actually felt a little unwell, like I’ve been on the waltzer with a belly full of fizzy pop and candy floss. I daren’t imagine what would happen if I won a car, but I’m pretty sure it’d require a doctor.

In any case, the fact remains that for me, a £100 prize is exceptional. As such, I’d call it a biggie. However, if I was winning a prize of that size every week (let me imagine that for a second!) then no doubt my opinion would be different.

In short, “big” is relative.

Does this mean we need an objective metric-style system for measuring prize size?

Certainly, we could always assign a bunch of adjectives to a vague set of boundaries, such as under £50 being “modest” and over £1000 being “jumbo”, but it’s all a bit arbitrary and far too hard to remember.

So, here’s my plan: let’s call all our wins “nice”.  You’ve won a pen? Nice. A luggage tag? Nice. A £100 watch? Ah, you’re right, that is better. Have another “i”. Niice. A £200 giftcard? Niiice. A Hyundai IONIQ Hybrid car? You can type those vowels yourself!

Are you you due a biggie? And how big is a biggie anyway?!