Super Lucky

If it wasn't for comping...

2012-01-25T21:23:00.000Z

Today's blog post was inspired by this post over at the Compers Grapevine blog. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to relive some great comping memories Jane!

If it wasn't for comping I wouldn't have:

started a blog
a silly nickname
answered my front door to a Gold Radio presenter with £500 vouchers - and a cool bag full of bacon!

met Michael Caine at the BAFTAs after-show party
done the Supermarket Sweep trolley dash
been interviewed for Radio 1
camped in the backstage area at Glastonbury Festival (four times!)
cheered on Lewis Hamilton at the Brazilian Grand Prix

flown in a helicopter over Las Vegas
danced in a Reykjavik nightclub with Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch
Sent my parents to watch the Champions League final
Spent 3 weeks on a Lord of the Rings tour of New Zealand
Raised over £10,000 for Rainbows Children's Hospice at our charity events

Learnt how to make sushi
Stayed overnight at the Ritz
Started my own YouTube channel
Owned my dream car - a VW Beetle!

Spent a day in Paris with a fashion blogger
Set an alarm clock for 3.30am to win £500 in a text comp
met the most amazing friends on the Compers News forum, Twitter, Facebook and - of course! - in real life

What would YOU never have done if it wasn't for comping?!

Messy muffins: my Appliances Online comp entry!

2012-01-22T18:00:00.000Z

This is my entry to the Appliances Online Messy Kids Cooking competition!

Read all about the competition over at Baby Budgeting - to enter, you need to post a photo of your kids messy cooking experiences on your blog then pop back to Becky's blog and leave a link before 24th January 2012. You could win £100 Amazon vouchers, which I would immediately use to buy these fabulous Pac-Man cookie cutters!

I originally dug out some snaps from last summer to use, but then decided they simply weren't messy enough, so I used it as an excuse to get busy making these chocolate muffins! How disappointing that Ry doesn't fit into his chef outfit any more - but the Mummy's Little Helper apron seemed to do the job...

Much to my surprise, the muffins were delicious – I probably shouldn't admit that I ate 3 in one sitting though should I? Check out Libbie's recipe at the Good to Know website!

As well as the Baby Budgeting competition, Appliances Online are also giving £100 Amazon vouchers to creative families via the Red Ted Art and A Boy with Asperger's blogs - check them out!

Rachael's SuperLucky Story

2012-01-21T19:45:00.000Z

In November I put out a request for my blog readers to tell me their 'Superlucky Stories' – comping tales that have been inspired by my blog or comps that I've posted on the SuperLucky Facebook page! It's fair enough me banging on about my comping shenanigans and wacky wins, but it's much better to share stories from those of you that have been motivated to take up 'creative' comping yourselves – with great success. It goes to prove with a little bit of effort ANYONE can have a laugh and win prizes at the same time – comping can be a fun hobby for all the family, and Rachael's story today is a prime example!

Everyone who emailed a story is in a draw for a tin of yummy Biscuiteers treats, which will be announced when I've published all the entries. Thanks go to Rachael for today's tale and her kind words about me – I hope you and the family have some wonderful wins this year!

And now, over to Rachael...

Hello Di,

There are a lot of stories I could tell, and I owe you a endless amount of "Thankyous", for hints and tips you have posted, the linky blog competitions I have entered, your tireless crusade for fairness of competition rules for both promoters and compers, as well as the wonderful updates on your own competition entries, prize adventures and the crafty comps to inspire us.

Since reading your blog (and with your help) I have joined Kempsey Compers – a local competition club in the West Midlands and have attended one meeting so far – which I was buzzing from for weeks!

My children have also participated in many competitions, with my daughter scooping £200 worth of toys last year, as well as taking the spotlight in two newspapers for winning the title of "NFU’s regional young countryside reporter" writing about her brother Peter as a pig who was in need of an ASBO due to his late night slumber parties, resulting from global warming and environmental changes. She even had a certificate at school for her efforts and a lot of praise from her teachers – we were all very proud!

Peter (3) and Hannah (1) between them have won some lovely bits. Hannah has had £10 from Iceland for simply eating one of their sausage rolls and smiling for the camera, Peter won some Scooby Doo DVD's and activity books for colouring in, and in the Galt Toys Fireworks colouring competition you posted, he scooped some squidgy paints!

Even Daddy has joined in, scooping £50 from Argos for the use of a catalogue – he bought a new kettle and doesn't mind making the tea now!

We have participated in spooky pumpkin-making, lots of colouring in and we make our own postcards now after reading your tips to enter contests. I even made a furry tash to enter one contest too! We don't win all the time, but have fantastic fun trying!

Wishing you continued luck for all your competition entries ...and Ryland's!

Rachael

Facebook wall competitions - problems & solutions

2012-01-17T22:16:00.000Z

Despite there being strict guidelines on how you should run your promotion on Facebook, the majority of companies still ignore these, and persist with running competitions on their Facebook walls rather than using an App. Although it might seem like a lot of trouble to set up initially, in the long term it's much easier to use an App or a simple entry form for promotions – see this blog post for more advice. The simplest solution of all, which IS within Facebook guidelines, is to ask your fans to enter via email with their address details (and the answer to a question if you like) – you then have every entrant's contact details, and even if you don't hear back from your winner, you already have an address to post the prize to! If you go down this route, opening a Gmail account specifically for your Facebook competition entries is a good idea. The downside of email entry comps is that non-fans can enter – it would be easy for entry details to be shared on a competition forum, so entrants don't even need to visit your Facebook page.

If promoters are insistent on violating Facebook policy and running competitions on their Facebook wall, here are some warnings about what could go wrong, and advice on how to avoid the common problems.

First of all, you should be aware that there are many people on Facebook who have a second account set up for the sole purpose of entering competitions. This is against Facebook rules and gives the entrant a massive advantage – with this second account, where their only friends (if they even have any!) are compers, they can Share competitions time and time again without worrying about spamming people. Once you've chosen your winner, take a look at their Facebook wall – if it's nothing but the same comps posted or shared multiple times perhaps you should think again – or at least dig deeper to see if they have two accounts! It's not good practice to reward someone who violates Facebook policies with a prize, when so many honest people just use a single account.

And another bit of advice: NEVER run a competition where the comment/photo/video with the most 'Likes' wins. It breaks Facebook rules, is unfair and will result in you getting very bad publicity – it won't get you any more fans on your page either, as they don't need to Like your page in order to Like a post or photo! Read my blog on voting comps for more information and examples.

Types of Facebook wall competitions – and their associated problems

LIKE A FACEBOOK PAGE TO ENTER

The Problem: When your page reaches X thousand fans you choose a fan at random to win a prize – a simple way to get new fans, yes? BUT when you click on your list of Likers, you can only scroll (very slowly) through a list of the most recent 500 names – and there's no way to extract them as a list so you can choose one at random.
The Solution: There WAS a script here to extract a list of fans but Facebook changes have resulted in it being unusable – so there is NO solution to this problem. You will have to choose a winner from the most recent fans simply by looking at the onscreen list – which of course is hugely unfair! Still, you've learnt your lesson and won't do this again, right?

SHARING A PHOTO OR STATUS

The Problem: You ask your fans to SHARE a photo or status to enter a competition, but are you aware that you can ONLY see the names of fans who have shared with the 'Public' setting – therefore you're excluding entrants who have shared with limited friends. Most 'normal' people won't want to Share with their grumpy relatives or ex-boss, but if they restrict the Share to a certain Friends list then their name WON'T appear on your Shares list. Promoters, you can check this by looking at the number of Shares your competition post has; then counting the names listed. You'll usually be a few short of the total. Another problem with Share comps is that people will Share multiple times to ensure they appear regularly in the list of names – this is likely to be compers using a second account.
The Solution: When you announce the competition, state that entrants must Share with the setting on 'Public'. You could also ask entrants to Share AND leave a comment, then choose your winner from the list of comments rather than Shares, ensuring everyone has an equal chance regardless of how many times they shared. With this method, you should also be able to tag your winner's name in a reply to the competition post, congratulating them and asking them to check their 'Other' inbox – page admins can only tag names of people who've commented so this will only work with a 'Comment to Enter' competition.

UPLOADING PHOTOS TO A FACEBOOK WALL

The Problem: This should be a straightforward way of running a competition, but it's not. If someone uploads a photo to your Fanpage from a phone, sometimes it's not visible to you. The entrant can see it on your wall, as can their Facebook friends, but the photo has no 'globe' icon underneath it so it's not visible to the Public, and therefore the promoter can't see it. I have lost out on two prizes because of this and seen many others confused by it too! It's particularly frustrating if you need to be 'the first' to go to a shop and upload a photo, as if it doesn't work you have to come home and re-upload from your computer...
The Solution: You should ask entrants to email their entries – you can then add these photos to a Facebook album, and ask the entrants to tag themselves if they wish. Doing this also means your competition is sticking to Facebook rules AND you have an email address to contact your winner on! You can see an example competition album at The PrizeFinder Facebook page.

INFORMING A WINNER VIA FACEBOOK MESSAGE

The Problem: There are several problems here – the first is that some people have altered their privacy settings so they can ONLY receive messages from friends. So you won't be able to send them a message! The other problem is that you can't send messages as your company page. Facebook are trialling a system where you CAN message fans as your Facebook page, but it will be limited to certain fans. As it stands, a Facebook message has to be sent from a Page Administrator's personal Facebook account, so you'll need to mention the Facebook page you're working for. Another problem is the pesky 'Other' inbox, where Facebook files away any messages that aren't from friends – ALL winning notifications will be sent here. And it's not easy to find – users need to click 'Messages' on the left of their Home page before the 'Other' inbox pops up underneath. The majority of Facebook users don't even know this inbox exists – unlike normal messages, Facebook WON'T send you an email notification if you receive a message in your 'Other' inbox.
The Solution: When you announce the competition, clearly state that the winner will be notified by Facebook message – perhaps also mention that their Privacy Settings must allow messages from 'Everyone' and that they will need to check their 'Other' inbox to see if they've won.

INFORMING A WINNER VIA WALL POST

The Problem: Promoters can't get in touch with a winner easily – because they've entered a competition on your wall rather than an App, you don't have a contact email address. So you might announce the winner's name in a wall post, asking them to 'email address details to sillypromoter@naive.com'. BAD idea. It's against Facebook rules for starters, and secondly there are dishonest people out there who will see the status update, then immediately clone the rightful winner's profile and photo, respond to the wall post with a quick 'Thanks - have emailed!' and then whizz off their own address details to the promoter, hoping that the rightful winner never sees that wall post! Sadly, this happens regularly – pages like Secret Sales, Watches 2U and Weleda are recent victims of fraudulent claims. A second problem here is if your winner has a common name – you announce Jo Smith as your lucky winner, and two Jo Smiths leave a response on your post... which one's the winner? You'll probably have to give both of them a prize!

The Solution: Announce the winner in a wall post, but also send them a Facebook message (see above). In your wall post say something like 'Congratulations to our winner, Maisie McLucky – check your 'Other' Message folder for details of how to claim your prize!'. BUT you still need to hope that Maisie sees your wall post – and the likelihood is that, unless she has hundreds of friends who might 'tag' her name, she won't see it at all – only a small percentage of your status updates appear on your fans' NewsFeed!

HAVING A WINNER THAT DOESN'T RESPOND
The Problem: You've announced it on your wall, sent a Facebook message and have heard nothing from your lucky winner. Remember that this is YOUR problem - it's YOU who broke the Facebook rules by not getting email addresses, and you should do everything you can to get that prize to the winner.
The Solution: When you send your Facebook message, add in a line that says 'Please email us at sillypromoter@naive.com with your address details within 7 days or we will choose another winner' - then you can choose a new winner without worrying about the original winner demanding their prize in 6 months time! After 7 days, you should try again to contact your winner by checking their Facebook page for an email or web address – or by sending them a friend request (as you're unable to add a message to a friend request, they're not likely to accept!). When all these contact attempts failed for a friend of mine recently, he ended up phoning the winner's workplace (which was posted on his Facebook page) to let him know he'd won £100!

AND FINALLY...

Many competitions on Facebook are tainted by accusations of cheating. If you run your competition using an App, follow Facebook Promotional Guidelines and collect email addresses from all entrants, that's the best way to avoid these problems. If you do gather email addresses, you also have the advantage of adding prospective customers to your database (remember to give them an 'opt out' checkbox on the entry form though!).

Even the simplest of Facebook wall competitions should have Terms & Conditions including a closing date and entry restrictions (usually 'open to UK residents aged 18 or over'), full details of the prize and how the winner will be contacted (this is where you can include the extra information on checking the 'Other' messages inbox). Save these T&Cs as a Note on your Facebook page and you can just update them for each competition you run.

The IPM are working with Facebook this year to improve the Promotional Policy and make it clearer. This is likely to result in Facebook enforcing it more strictly - so as a promoter, you might as well get to grips with it now, and start running well organised, fair and fun competitions that DON'T BREAK THE RULES!

Further reading: How to run a Facebook promotion - without breaking the rules!
Making Voting Competitions Fairer

Weekend shenanigans!

2012-01-15T22:59:00.000Z

So, for the first time in ages we spent a whole weekend at home on our own in Nottingham, enjoying our new cookbooks, building train tracks and listening to S.C.U.M. But of course, I had to squeeze in a little bit of comping...

On Saturday morning I checked my emails to find a newsletter from Comet – "Win a treadmill!" Not my cup of tea AT ALL, but I know that lots of PrizeFinder members had gym equipment on their wishlists, so I though I'd share it on Facebook. Whilst on the Comet page I noticed a cheeky comp with Ecozone - be one of the first three people to upload a photo of your Comet receipt for their dishwasher tablets, and you win 12 boxes (worth almost £100)! Well you know me... I live round the corner from Comet, so I left the boys with their Duplo and popped off to get my photo (thanks to Brett the cashier for taking this snap!) - it's not too late to enter this one, the next ten entrants get a free box too - check out their Facebook page.

Then our friends Cath & Matt came round for lunch and babysat Ry for us whilst Rob and I headed off on a rare date... to the football!

Just before Christmas on the nPower League Facebook page I spotted a photo comp where the first 50 entries won tickets to a Home fixture in January – as there were only three entries it was a guaranteed prize. I decided to ask for Nottingham Forest tickets - I support Birmingham and Rob's a Gooner so it's a compromise to go and support the local boys! We knew it was likely to end badly - Forest are in the bottom three, while Southampton are top of the League. The 3-0 defeat was no surprise after Forest went down to ten men - at least Birmingham managed a hilarious 6-0 thrashing of Millwall though!

Still, on the way to the City Ground I stopped for a photo for the new McDonalds coffee comp - upload a photo of you with your 'Full bean' coffee cup to their Facebook App and you could win one of their daily prizes. You can enter daily, so I seem to constantly have the empty cup in my handbag at the moment!

The Kleenex 'Soothing Tips' competition has been running for months, but despite having my idea planned AGES ago I just hadn't had the time to film it. But today was so cold, and Ry's nose so snotty, I decided we should get to work... so here's our suggestion for how to soothe away colds this Winter - by making your own Tissue Fun Box! This is the first film I've made for ages and I'd forgotten how much fun it is... mind you, it does help to have willing co-stars.

As well as offering a £100 John Lewis voucher for the top Soothing tip photo and video entries, Kleenex are also asking for family memories this month - so they've got four £100 prizes up for grabs in total. Check out the details here.

So, that was my trio of comps for this weekend - as for this week, I've got some serious messy cooking to do with Ry for the Red Ted Art and Baby Budgeting bloggers comps!

Claire's SuperLucky Story

2012-01-13T17:35:00.001Z

In November I put out a request for my blog readers to tell me their 'Superlucky Stories' - any comping tales that have been inspired by my blog or comps that I've posted on the SuperLucky Facebook page! Everyone who emailed is in a draw for a tin of yummy Biscuiteers treats, which will be announced when I've published all the entries. I've already posted up Gill and Katie's stories, and today it's Claire's turn. I can relate to Claire's story as she's a stay at home mum and it's true that creative comping really does liven up the boring daily routine! I was absolutely gutted that her amazing Air Wick entry didn't get a look in for their Christmas competition - but that's what happens when it all comes down to a public vote unfortunately...

And now, over to Claire...

I don’t think I am a “lucky person” but I have won quite a few competitions.

The first was over seven years ago. I was in my local library browsing the Internet when I came across a competition run by Garnier Fructis, I didn’t enter competitions as a rule but I KNEW I had to enter this one. The prize was a one-week, V.I.P. trip to Cornwall with surf coaching and there was nothing in the world that I loved more. I submitted my 50 word reason why I should win and thought nothing more of it. Six weeks later I was in Manchester visiting a friend when my boyfriend called to tell me that a package had arrived for me from Garnier Fructis. I explained that I had entered a competition with them and it was probably some products they had sent as a runner up prize. The following week I arrived home and opened the parcel. It contained a letter letting me know that I was a finalist, a Polaroid camera and two sheets of A4 covered in questions with spaces for photos – and it had to be posted back the following day! I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening frantically filling it in and taking photos. Two weeks later I received my first ever winning phone call. I was SCREAMING.

Surprisingly, after winning such an amazing prize, it took me until this time last year to enter another competition. Mothercare were giving away a stroller. You had to write a letter to Santa, and take a photo of it for them. I was pregnant and needed a new stroller, so I decided to enter. Writing a little poem, cutting up photos of my family, me and my 2 year old stuck them all to a massive piece of paper along with enough glitter to build a sandcastle. Two weeks after Christmas they announced the good news, and I was ecstatic.

In the summer I saw that Appliances Online were running a competition to win a £240 dishwasher, I had never had a dishwasher in my life, and I desperately wanted to win, I worked really hard on my 3 photo entries but I was still in utter shock to find out that I had won!

It was around this time that I discovered SuperLucky, I couldn’t quite believe it, what a goldmine of information and creative competitions. As my partner works away from home I have found these competitions to be invaluable to my sanity. Completing a video or photo entry makes me feel like I have achieved something. They break up the nappy, feed, nappy, nap, feed, nappy, feed cycle quite nicely. I have since won £100 shopping voucher with Mecca Bingo for a video, and some of my photo wins have included a High Chair and £50 of baby food from Plum, a Nintendo Wii from Blue Dragon, a £50 Amazon voucher from Playpennies and £100 restaurant voucher from Nivea.

A lot of my friends now say that I am “lucky” but I would disagree. Most of my wins have been for competitions that require a bit of effort on my part, they are not random draws and some of my favourite entries haven’t won me prizes – North Face Zipper Act and Air Wick to name just a couple. When I win I feel like I am contributing something to our household income and that helps me to feel slightly less like I have lost my independence being a stay at home mum.

Although I haven’t won what some people may consider to be fabulous, or expensive prizes I am very happy with my lot.

I still have my fingers crossed that one day I may win a kitchen or at least an oven (as we have been without one since moving house last February) I just need to keep my eye out for the right competition!

Well Claire, have you entered the amazing Telegraph tiebreaker competition to win a £20,000 Wickes kitchen? They're already given three away (one to a PrizeFinder member!) but there are still two left to be won on 19th January and 13th February. Good luck!

Creative comp round up: Jan 2012

2012-01-09T08:41:00.001Z

Here are a selection of comps that need a little bit of love and attention – don't forget I'm always busy adding creative comps to the SuperLucky Facebook page and the PrizeFinder's skill-based category, so check those out too!

Organix are awarding their fan of the week with a Treasure Tin - upload your photo of your child enjoying their food to the Facebook App, a winner is chosen every Wednesday.

Win tickets to the FA Cup Final by uploading a photo of you supporting your team at the FA website, or by tweeting it. There are five pairs to give away, each one goes to the photo with the most votes in each round of the cup - read more details here.

McDonald's Coffee Time App offers loads of daily prizes including Kindles, book tokens, magazine subscriptions and iTunes vouchers. To enter, upload a photo of your McDonald's FullBEAN coffee moment. Winners are judged, but I can't find any terms and conditions to say when the comp ends or how many prizes are given away each day! Enter here.

At Life in a Breakdown you can win £60 to spend at Amazon by creating a Pinspire collection of pet images - get your entries in by 18 January 2012.

Skyscanner are giving away 5 copies of the 'Unusual Hotels Europe' book - to enter, email news@skyscanner.net with 'Unusual Hotels' in the subject line, telling them in 150 words or less about the most unusual place you've stayed. Read more details here and enter by 20 January 2012.

Photobox are giving away three photo acrylic blocks to their 3 favourite photos of 2011 - read details on their blog and upload your photos to the Facebook page by 20 January 2012.

Lynn emailed me to let me know about the brilliant Best Western wish list competition - make a list of 12 experiences you'd like to try this year in the UK, and they will choose one of the lists and help you fulfil the list (to the value of £6000) - the winner will be required to blog about their experiences. I'm so excited about making a list for this one! Enter here by 23 January 2012.

SheepskinLife are running a recipe competition - submit your recipe by email or by posting on your blog. Prizes are a 12 bottle case of wine and a selection of tapas. Unfortunately the competition involves voting (although I can't see how!) - read the details here and get your entries in by 31 January 2012.

At Avon Connects you can win £150 of make up and accessories by leaving your funny baby or pregnancy story - the five finalists will go to a public vote to decide the winner unfortunately. Closes 31 January 2012.

TopFruit are giving away 3 prizes of £1000 or €1000 to their three favourite 'abandoned gym' stories - submit yours at the Facebook App by 31 January 2012.

ZAGG are giving away a Sony camera to their favourite picture on the theme of New Year - you can enter up to 5 photos by posting them on the ZAGG Facebook page by 31 January 2012 (open worldwide).

Carling are giving away loads of tickets to the Carling Cup Final (ah, I DID enjoy last year's!!) - to enter, upload a photo or video of your 'brilliant' moment. Each fortnight the two entries with the most votes will win 24 cans of Carling, and a pair of tickets to the final. Five entrants will also be drawn at random to win a pair of tickets! From the ten most popular moments, one grand prize winner will be chosen who will get their moment displayed on screen and in the Cup FInal programme, as well as receiving a trophy on Cup Final day. Enter on Facebook - there are just two rounds left, closing on 20 January and 3 February 2012.

Yorkshire Tea are giving away 50 Morphy Richards kettles plus a year's supply of Yorkshire Tea - and 100 runners up will win a year's supply of tea and a pack of limescale-removing Oust. To enter, just upload a photo of you and your kettle to their Facebook App before 8 February 2012.

Win one of two personalised iPhone or Blackberry cases - to enter, design your own case at www.mooskins.com and then email a screen grab through to info@buystudentart.co.uk - read more details at www.buystudentart.co.uk and enter before 18 February 2012.

Tell myjobsplace where you would like to work and why, and their three favourite answers will win a £50 voucher of their choice. Post your entries on their Facebook wall by 28 February 2012.

Design a poster by uploading a photo and text to the Kuoni Facebook App and you could win a £2000 Kuoni gift card. Enter here by 29 February 2012.

Tesco Magazine Kids Book Club are running a story competition for kids to win a family zookeeper day and overnight hotel stay at the Cheshunt Marriott - there are three separate age categories, the story must be 200-300 words and about health, and entries must be in by 15 April 2012.

Martin Gerrard London Estate Agents have an advert on the back of the 263 bus, which goes from Holloway to Barnet. Take a photo of you or your partner with the bus, upload it to Facebook and if it gets the most LIKEs you win a European city break for two. Enter by 30 April 2012.

Blog Comp Linky: February 2012

2012-01-07T22:23:00.000Z

Welcome to my blog comp linky for competitions that are closing in FEBRUARY 2012. If you're hosting a giveaway please add it to the list, including the prize and the closing date - and your blog name if you can fit it in! You can access this post and the JANUARY linky via the links on the right hand side bar.

Please note, competitions MUST be hosted on a blog and they should be open to UK entries. For advice on running blog comps and more info about Rafflecopter check out this blog post.
If you want to enter these competitions but aren't sure how, check out my post on How to Enter a Blog Competition for advice!

Don't forget to add your blog giveaway to www.theprizefinder.com too!

My 2012 wishlist

2012-01-07T22:07:00.000Z

Have you written a prize wish list for 2012? I always enjoy collating one and try and mix up the prizes: big ones, little ones, obscure ones, gifts for the family... so at the end of the year I've got a good chance of ticking at least a couple off!

This year I've got a good feeling about winning a car; it's been ten years since I won my Beetle and though I've come close to winning a Renault Windster and VW Tiguan in recent years, my entries haven't quite made the grade. I'm looking forward to doing a few entries for the ASP Hair photo comp to win a Fiat and have also upgraded my camcorder to enter the JVC Fiat 500 comp too!

When I won my Beetle in 2003 I sold my Ford Fiesta and spent the money on a Mac PowerBook. I still use it now, but Ry has broken off a couple of the keys, the battery lasts about 30 minutes and it doesn't close any more, so a replacement would be fab - I'll have to get organised and enter the Bupa video competition to try and win myself a MacBook Air!

Anyway, back to my 2012 prize wishlist...

• A car
• Lake District holiday
• Cottage holiday or National Trust vouchers
• MacBook
• Trip to Peppa Pig World
• Trip to the new Legoland Hotel (opening in March!)
• Year's supply of shoes... for Ryland!
• Reiss vouchers
• Food mixer (for mum in law)
• Spa day
• Cutlery (for mum in law)
• Garden vouchers (for my parents)
• Michelin starred meal (London would be nice, Spain even nicer!)
• Supermarket vouchers
• Musical instruments for Ry
• Veg box deliveries (I've won these 2 years running & they're fab)

Wishing you all LOADS of luck with your comping this year... I'll keep you updated on my wish list progress!

2011: ...you lose some!

2012-01-02T09:05:00.000Z

I blogged yesterday about some of the fabulous wins I had from creative competitions in 2011, but of course I don't win EVERY competition I enter – that would be boring! Here I'm looking back at some of my favourite losing entries from the last twelve months...

One of my favourites comps last year was the Cadbury Spots v Stripes Double Challenge - you had to make a video of yourself doing two things at once, one of which had to be a sport. I did Karate/Chopping:

I also filmed and edited another daft entry for my friend Lisa, 'Wash Cycle'. We had to finish in the top ten to get judged and unfortunately didn't get enough votes, but 'Karate Chopping' is still a favourite of Ryland's so it was definitely worth doing. I was delighted when a friend of mine Evelyn bagged the £5000 top prize though!

Other losing entries were my frightening 'Snout Pout' for the Wicked Pig competition - it was nice to see SuperLucky reader Viv win the top prize of a holiday in this comp!

...and though my day spent in a banana suit for the TopFruit comp didn't win me £500, another of my blog fans Jen won the cash (all Jen's winnings go towards her charity work so a very worthy winner!):

I loved the Maris Wine 'Green Dinner Party' competition, and we made a broad bean risotto especially for the photo. We didn't win - but another SuperLucky reader Lucy won the wine-tasting trip to France!

There were a whole host of comps to celebrate the Royal Wedding, so I donned my wedding dress and posed for random photos at our local street party. I didn't win a thing with my photos, but we had a right good laugh.

In Summer Pink Lady launched a weekly photo comp to win lovely prizes, and with a bit of Facebook badgering we managed to convince them that the voting element was a bad idea after the first week. Winners were picked at random and I didn't win, but I still love this photo and I'm sure I'll be able to recycle it for a future Pink Lady comp.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup ran their 'secret ingredient' recipe competition with a different meal to cook every month - my friend Emily bagged a trip to Sorrento with her lovely lasagne; I entered this one for the spaghetti bolognese comp, Ryland thought it was hilarious.

We made a video for the Frank's Red Hot competition too - this competition had some seriously good entries! When Ryland is grumpy this film of Daddy is guaranteed to put a smile on his face...

Ryland, Nana and I had fun making and decorating our Olympic diving team gingerbread men for the Co-op's bake off, although dunking them in green jelly didn't prove as successful as I'd hoped! Fingers crossed I can recycle this for a few Olympic-themed comps this year...

Argos ran a great comp on Facebook where you could upload a photo every day featuring the new Argos catalogue and their favourite won vouchers. I made a few losing entries, but this helter skelter one was my favourite.

To end the year I dressed up a an elf to sing the new Toys R Us ad - the winner of a £500 shopping spree was drawn at random, but there were very few entries for such a great prize!

With creative competitions like this, I never feel too disappointed if I don't win because I've still got a great photo or video to entertain the family with - and it's a bonus if one of my comping friends or blog fans picks up the prize.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of you embarrassing yourself in photos and video comps this year - so get out your fancy dress costumes and I'll see you on Facebook!

2011: You win some...

2012-01-01T12:03:00.001Z

At the end of each year I like to have a look back at my competition successes, but for 2011 I also want to mention a few of my favourite failures, which you can read about here! I put more work than ever into my competition entries last year and with my husband and son as my enthusiastic sidekicks my YouTube channel certainly makes interesting viewing...

So, 2011 brought me a total of 165 prizes worth over £23,000 - I was amazed when I totalled this up yesterday! Many of these prizes were from blog comps (via my monthly Blog Comp Linkys) but most were from creative competitions promoted on Facebook.

My first big win of 2011 was a day's shopping trip to Paris with £500 to spend with Ford Ka. This was my first visit to Paris and although I only spent a few hours there I was itching to go back - as luck would have it I bagged a weekend trip with Lending Stream in a voting competition a week later!

As well as all my new French clothes, I also grabbed an Alexander McQueen scarf in the Müllerlight Treasure Hunt (LOADS of you got fabulous prizes in this one thanks to my Facebook posts - it was a race to the finish line for many though!), some £170 Carvela boots, £175 to spend at the North Face and £250 to spend at Sweaty Betty.

I got back into the radio comps in Spring and won tickets to the Carling Cup Final (to see my beloved Birmingham City beat my husband's beloved Arsenal!) on TalkSport, a Nokia E7 on Absolute (for being the fastest texter!) and an amazing Live like a Princess prize on Gem106.

Whilst at Wembley I took a photo for the Fairtrade Fortnight week of Facebook competitions - you had to 'show off your label' to enter. METRO liked my entry so much they printed it in the paper, although I couldn't get enough votes to win the challenge! Some of the daily photo challenges unbelievably had more prizes than entrants, so it was no surprise when my comping friends and I picked up dozens of fabulous runner-up hampers between us for our daft photos.

In 2011 I also discovered the benefits of blogging for compers - understandably, bloggers' competitions get very few entries. I picked up two iPhones from Priceminister's generous promotion, and a £20 voucher for being one of the first entrants in the Blog an Avo comp.

There have been other comps this year where I bagged a prize for being an early entrant - the first 50 videos in the Fearless Fred comp got £50 cash, and the first 10 in the Cafe Collection Queen of Chat video comp won a case of wine. It's worth keeping an eye out for these type of comps as if you're able to rustle up a photo or video quickly you're guaranteed a prize. I will always post links to comps like these on the SuperLucky Facebook page as soon as I find them, so make sure you're a fan!

2011 was the year of silly comps, which are definitely my forte as since becoming a Mum I have no qualms at all about embarrassing myself. Singing karaoke with a wig on, wearing a tissue box on my head, changing t-shirts as fast as I can, singing the Toys R Us ad... if it's daft, count me in!

I roped in Ryland to help me out with my video comps this year with huge success. Our recipe for purple swamp pasta won us a £3500 trip to Sorrento, we won £500 vouchers when Annabel Karmel judged us the best video in the 'Baby Gaga' competition and WOW Toys chose our video as their £1000 cash winner too.

I also managed to get hubby to help out with our Father's Day video, where you had to show how Dad helped out round the house with a Toblerone bar. This took an absolute age to make, but it won us an amazing trip to Switzerland!

I did well in the daft photo comps too; my 'Hoxton Fin' won me £1000 of hairdressing at Toni and Guy and my Lidl 'Spot the Bus' photo won me a 40 inch TV and Blu-Ray player.

And who can forget my favourite photo of the year, for the Asda 'show us something that needs a good clean' comp, where I won £300 of cleaning products:

Of course 2011 wasn't just about MY prizes. I know that lots of you have been entering these creative comps too and it's been brilliant to see your amazing wins - in particular I'm looking forward to seeing Ian Graham in the Autoglass TV ad this week!

As for my 2011 prize wish list, I managed to win 4 things off it - a Smart Trike, trip to Paris, £500 supermarket vouchers and nine handbags! I'll be compiling a 2012 wish list this week...

Finally, I must thank everyone who has taken the time to vote for me in comps over the last year. As you know I work really hard at getting promoters to make voting comps fairer and judge them, but if I can't change their minds I really appreciate your help with votes.

Wishing you all the best of luck with your 2012 creative comping!

Gill's SuperLucky Story

2011-12-24T14:45:00.000Z

A few weeks ago I put out a request for my blog readers to tell me their 'Superlucky Stories' - any comping tales that have been inspired by my blog or comps that I've posted on the SuperLucky Facebook page! Anyone who emails me a story will be entered into a draw to win some tasty Bicsuiteers biscuits. If you're interested in taking part check out my post here.

Today's guest post is from Gill, who this month has won a fabulous £2500 of holiday vouchers in the Wonderful Pistachios competition! To enter, you had to upload a photo showing how you crack a nut in an original way. This was originally a voting competition but with a bit of persuasion we managed to change the promoters' minds. Unbelievably, for such a huge prize this competition had JUST 27 ENTRIES. It's a prime example of how easy it is to win creative competitions if you can come up with an entry to catch the judge's eye! Here's Gill's winning photo:

And now, over to Gill...

Hi Di, as you know I love your blog and the creative type comps that you feature so brilliantly. I also love seeing what other people have been up to with their entries and this in turn inspires me to even greater creativity in my comping challenges. I’ve been lucky enough to win everything from a car to holidays, but its always been those comps with an effort factor which have resulted in the best prizes.

Here is an email I sent to Compers News last month:

"I'm delighted to report that thanks to Di's invaluable advice in her Comping Online column and her SuperLucky creative comps blog, my wins have never been so frequent! Facebook is certainly becoming a popular way for companies to promote their products. I love entering the creative and sometimes quirky competitions promoters are using to attract fans to their pages. It's also lovely to see the entries made by other compers and receive and send appreciation for well-earned wins. Di is doing a fab job at dissuading promoters from using, often unfair, vote counts in favour of judged entries.

Here is a picture of my daughter who helped me with an entry to the recent Ecover competition where two winners were chosen, one by vote count and the other by a panel of judges. I am pleased to say, my picture was chosen as the judges' favourite and I am now the very proud owner of an iPad 2! (Although, I think I will have to share it with my daughter!)

It's certainly true that a litle bit of effort goes a long way. Other Facebook wins have included a Boo Box from Total Greek yoghurt (a creative recipe competition), a Halloween box from Heinz (a creative competition to decorate a can of beans!) and a goody bag of hair products from Charles Worthington (another creative photo comp), and who knows what's around the corner!”

..... oh, and round the corner then came the veg box and tuck box from the Anorak pimp your pumpkin comp (from your blog, thank you!), Harris Taskmaster paintbrushes (Facebook Halloween photo comp, your blog again!), Nivea goodies (photo comp), and not to forget the Campbell’s soup mug (!!!), and just this morning a lovely handbag from the Marks and Speccer pass the parcel comp .... and these are just the Facebook wins.

I really can’t thank you enough for flagging up all those comps which I love to get my teeth into!! Keep up the fab work.
Gill

Carrot meringues: a recipe for the Love the Garden competition

2011-12-20T17:45:00.000Z

I'm a big fan of the Love The Garden blog, particularly as they promote a regular competition to get creative with veggies. I love cooking with home grown veg, but unfortunately we have more of a patio than a garden and all we have room to grow is herbs, chillis and tomatoes... I hope to rectify this when we move to our next home!

For the October competition I made gazpacho and this month it's the turn of the humble carrot. Typically, I've left it to the very last minute to enter, as to take part you need to post your blog before midnight on 21st December - read all about the competition here.

I particularly wanted to have a go at this month's challenge because one of the most fabulous dishes I've ever eaten involved carrots – it was this amazing dessert at Noma, a meringue snowman with carrot sorbet and passionfruit mousse. So fabulous I had to sneak a photo with my phone!

Inspired by my happy memories of the little snowman, I set to work on my own take on a carrot pud...

First of all, I made little meringues
Ingredients (makes 24 small meringues)
4 egg whites (at room temperature)
115g caster sugar
115g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 110ºC, and line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper
Whisk the egg whites in a bowl until they stand in stiff peaks
Increase the speed and gradually add the caster sugar.
Sift a third of the icing sugar into the mixture, and fold in with a rubber spatula. Sift in another third and fold in again, and finally the remainder.
Use two dessertspoons to lift blobs of the mixture onto the baking tray.
Cook for 80-90 minutes, then leave to cool on a wire rack.

And then I made carrot filling
Ingredients
300g carrots, chopped
Juice of 2 clementines
100ml whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon cumin

Boil the carrots for 8 minutes, drain and blend with the cumin and clementine juice until smooth
Whip the cream until thick, then fold in the carrot mixture
Sandwich the mixture between the meringues and serve with a dusting of cumin

...not quite up to the high standard of Rene Redzepi's handiwork, but they certainly tasted great!

Christmas Comps for Kids

2011-12-18T09:07:00.001Z

There's lots of excitement in our house at the moment - not only is it Christmas next week but it's Ryland's second birthday on Boxing Day, so we have much planning to do! As always though, there's still time to squeeze in the silly comps, and I've rounded up a few here that should entertain the little ones!

Ry and I had fun last week with the Ella's Kitchen 'Big Brussels Challenge' - they want your ideas for how children can play with Brussels sprouts! Email them to funstuff@ellaskitchen.co.uk before 22 December, and five winners will get £50 ELC vouchers plus Ella's goodies. Read more info at www.ellaskitchen.co.uk - here's Ry playing 'Spot the Sprout' (and not doing very well....)

Gardening with Children have a great Christmas Quiz that you can do with the kids, you could win these Kids standing raised beds. Find the questions here - get your entries in by 31 December 2011.

There are several colouring and drawing comps about but you'll need to be quick with a few of them!

If you live in Lancashire your 5-10 year old could win a trip to the gritting depot, and see their chosen name on the side of the gritting truck! To enter, name the gritter - entries in before 20 December please! There's also a colouring sheet to download, and favourite entries will appear on the website.

Brother Max are giving away a goody bag in their colouring competition - print off the picture of Rudolf or the Snowman from their Facebook page, colour in and email back to marketing@brothermax.com before 22 December 2011. If you send your entry to Mummy Mummy Mum too you could win a set of bath toys - again, closes at midnight on the 22nd!

Colour in the Nutella Christmas stocking and upload to their website before 23 December 2011 and you could win a stocking full of art goodies.

Design a Christmas scene featuring your favourite POP characters and you could win lots of toys and Wii goodies. Upload your picture here by 25 December 2011.

The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust are giving away a family sleepover at a Holiday Inn, plus a Timmy DVD and book. Print off the colouring sheet and post in the box at your local WWT centre before 30 December 2011. A winner at each centre will get a DVD and book, so it's worth going out of your way to drop your entry off if it's not too far away!

Scootrix want you to design a new wheel whizzer - download the PDF and submit your design before 31 December 2011, and you could get 20 sets of whizzers made up for you and all your friends (five runners up get a Scootrix starter kit). Entrants must be 3 or over.

Oxfam are giving away arts and crafts kits and Roald Dahl prizes in their Farmyard colouring competition - download the colouring sheet and post to Oxfam by 24 February 2012. There are 3 age categories, 0-6, 6-12 and 12-16.

And here are some photo competitions that you can involve the kids in:

Itsy Bitsy Bargains want to see your photos of Christmas kids or Holiday Homes - prizes are a pirate or fairy stool and a Cooking with Kids Pizza/Cupcake Set! Enter on Facebook before Boxing Day.

Photobox are giving £500 John Lewis vouchers to the funniest family photo - there are also prizes in each of three 'Wimpy Kid' categories - Bad Christmas Presents, Embarrassing Families and Christmas Dress-up. Upload your photos at wimpy kid.photobox.co.uk before 31 December 2011. I'll be getting my old dears drunk on sherry for my Christmas Day photoshoot!

Finally, don't forget to check out last week's recipe comp round up because you can always get the kids involved in your cooking and photos too - as you know, Ryland loves to 'help' in the kitchen... at least now he know how to use his dustpan and brush to help clear up afterwards!

STOP PRESS!
Halfords are giving away a £150 voucher - upload a photo of your child's drawing of their dream bike on Facebook before 3 January 2012!

Katie's SuperLucky Story

2011-12-17T14:51:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I put out a request for my blog readers to tell me their 'Superlucky Stories' - any comping tales that have been inspired by my blog or comps that I've posted on the SuperLucky Facebook page! Anyone who emails me a story will be entered into a draw to win some tasty Bicsuiteers biscuits. If you're interested in taking part check out my post here!

Today's guest post is from Katie, who I first encountered online when she pipped me to the post in the FairTrade voting competition earlier this year and bagged herself a luxury London break! I was most disappointed she didn't invite me along, but we kissed and made up and now I am in awe of her AMAZING competition entries - particularly the incredible food structures that have won her £1000 with Birdseye and a trip to New York with the NY Bagel Company!

And now, over to Katie...

A Gucci Handbag, an iPad2, afternoon tea at Claridge's, a widescreen TV, a trip to New York...just a few of the things I've been lucky enough to win in 2011 thanks to Super Lucky!

It was this time last year that my foray into the murky work of comping began. I started noticing all the Christmas giveaways on Twitter and joined in with a few until, one fateful day, I won a £25 spa voucher. That was the day I was bitten!

I carried on comping (Haha 'Carry on Comping'...I digress), occasionally winning the odd thing; I kept noticing the same familiar names popping up on 'the circuit', Di Coke in particular. So....I stalked her. It turned out she ran an amazing blog all about competitions. From that day, Di has been my comping Mister Myagi. I have learned her ways. I know that the best way to photograph food for a recipe competition is on a large, plain white plate. I know that competitions requiring a little extra effort are the ones I'm more likely to win and I know that voting competitions are the Devil's work!

Perhaps one of the most valuable things I've learned from Di is to stand up for yourself in the comping world and if you think a promoter has breached their terms and conditions, say so. I've won two iPads and, randomly, an apple tree through mistakes on the part of the promoter.

I love the SuperLucky Blog and Facebook page as I know if there's a competition worth entering, Di will tell us about it. I no longer wake up during the night having cold sweats that somewhere there's a competition to win a tea cosy I haven't entered (ok I haven't actually done that but I COULD have done).

I get sad when I read people hating on 'compers' and sites like Super Lucky, The PrizeFinder and Loquax etc. I think there's a misconception out there that compers are 'prize pigs' who'll enter any competition for whatever they can get, regardless of whether they're even a fan of the company promoting it or whether they'll actually get any use out of the prize or not. Well to those people I'd just say that competitions are run as promotional exercises. Most of the competitions I enter are with companies I feel an affinity with as they wouldn't really get my attention otherwise but some competitions that I've entered have actually brought certain brands and companies to my attention and I've become a fan in the process. I won £1000 with Birdseye earlier on this year (as seen on SuperLucky!). I'd never really eaten that much of their products before but you'd better believe I'm 'Birdseye till I die' now! If that's not a positive outcome for Birdseye I don't know what is!?

I enter competitions to give my day a little magic, to experience things I'd NEVER be able to afford/arrange/imagine myself and to give my friends and family a little bit of that goodness too!

So thank you Super Lucky and may we all continue to be lucky in 2012!
Katie

Recipe Comp Round-up: December 2011

2011-12-14T19:55:00.000Z

Christmas is definitely the time for eating, so what better way to celebrate than by rustling up loads of delicious recipes for cookery competitions. Here's the latest ones that I've found - remember that most people will be super busy preparing for Christmas and won't have the time to concoct amazing entries so if you can spare an hour or two you'll have a great chance of winning.

With recipe comps that require a photo, try and bend down close to the plate rather than take an overhead shot. Think of those lovely photos you see in magazines! Where possible - even if it's not required - include the promoter's product in the shot. That will get you Brownie points and prove you cooked the dish especially for the competition!

First up, Delamare Dairy want you to upload recipes and photos of your Christmas dishes created using any of their products to their Facebook wall. Five winners will get a stocking of Delamere goodies! Be quick though - deadline is Friday 16 December 2011.

This isn't strictly a recipe comp, but Asda want to know your top tip for Christmas dinner. You could win a hamper of Extra Special goodies. You have the opportunity to add a photo - it's judged, so yours should stand out from the crowd if you do! Enter here - again, entries need to be in by 11am on Friday 16 December 2011.

The Co-op are giving a prize of an Internet television to the best gingerbread man. To enter, upload your photo to their Facebook App and get enough votes to be in the top 20 by 20 December 2011. The top 20 are then judged and the most original will win the TV. I don't mind the voting element here because you need to make the effort to do a good entry, so there are fewer people entering and really you shouldn't need more than about 25 or 30 votes to make the top 20. Also, every voter gets entered in a prize draw and three will win £100 Co-op vouchers. My entry is the Olympic diving team and if you'd like to vote for me it would be much appreciated. As you can tell, I haven't used writing icing before - I think I need a bit more practice....

The regular Love the Garden competition for bloggers is asking for carrot recipes this month and will be judged by the lovely Niamh at Eat Like A Girl - to enter, you must post a carrot recipe on your blog. The winner gets £200 to spend at a restaurant of their choice - read more details at www.lovethegarden.com and get your blog post up by 21 December 2011.

Fish is the Dish (I love their logo, it's the same typeface as mine!) are giving away three £30 Delish Fish hampers to the three best photos of your fish dishes - enter at www.fishisthedish.co.uk by 31 December 2011.

Fancy a trip to Korea? Submit your best Korean inspired recipe (photos welcomed, and you can enter more than once) and you could be one of five winners chosen to go to Korea and go on a food date with Super Junior (now I just LOVE that name!). Check out all the details at sharehansikrecipe.hansik.org - is it wrong that I really fancy all those handsome young Korean chaps on the website?! Enter by 31 December 2011.

George Wilkinson Bakeware have launched a pesky voting competition - upload a photo and recipe to their Facebook App and the one with the most votes wins £400 of bakeware. I've asked them to reconsider; they have stated that voting will be monitored which is a start! The App is currently down so I can't check the Terms and Conditions - but don't make the mistake I did and paste in a really long recipe - it needs to be less than 500 characters! Enter by 31 December 2011.

For the mummies out there, Plum are offering a £50 Plum Baby hamper for your Christmas baby recipes - two runners up will win £25 hampers. Email your recipes to yummyyummy@plum-baby.co.uk with ‘Christmas Baby Recipe Competition’ in the subject heading and read more at www.plum-baby.co.uk. Enter by 31 December 2011.

A great unusual competition is to design a beer inspired by Divine chocolate - you need to send a recipe idea along with a name and a reason why you want to brew beer to ninkasi@school-of-booze.com. The winner will get to brew their beer at Brewster's Brewery in Grantham, Lincolnshire (and receive two cases of the bottled beer!) and the winner and four runners up win five bars of the Divine Chocolate that inspired their recipe. Read more information at www.school-of-booze.com and enter before 31 December 2011.

Win a Siemens oven by submitting your recipe using Heinz canned soup to Delia Online - four entrants will be shortlisted and win a digital camera, which you must them use to film your recipe. These clips will go to a public vote to decide the winner - there are only 15 entries so far and I'm not surprised! Enter by 31 December 2011.

Win a family overnight stay at Alton Towers Resort (on a fixed date of 12th February 2012) by creating a recipe with Crusha Mixa or Crusha desserts. Upload your recipe with a photo (I bet if you take a great fun photo it might sway the judges' decision!) at www.crusha.co.uk before 2 January 2012.

Again, not strictly a recipe competition but the opportunity to cook with Levi Roots at a Sizzling Pub! You need to complete the sentence 'I should cook with Levi because...' on the Sizzling Pubs Facebook App - closes 4 January 2012 and the prize must be taken on 30 and 31st January 2012.

Sudocrem want to see your 'Christmas Creations' and Aggie MacKenzie will judge the winner. The winner gets a 3 day cookery course in France plus £200 towards travel costs. Two runners up receive a £150 Selfridges hamper and £75 Marks and Spencer vouchers. Upload your recipes and photos to their Facebook App before 4 January 2012.

The Bramley Campaign is looking for a special recipe to celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The winner will receive £500 and their dish will be sold exclusively in Sainsbury’s. To enter, upload your Bramley apple recipe at www.facebook.com/BramleyApple. There will be a shortlist of seven regional winners, which will be put to a public vote during Bramley Apple week in February to decide the overall winner. All seven finalists will receive a limited edition Bramley Diamond Dish. Closing date for entries is 16 January 2012.

Total Greek Yogurt are putting together a charity eBook of recipes - to enter, submit your recipe using Total Greek Yogurt on their Facebook App before 20 January 2012. Recipes will be shortlisted and then put to public vote - the winner will get an iPad2 and iPhone 4S, the runner up gets an iPad2 and ten other runners up will get Total Yogurt goody boxes.

Amy's Kitchen have launched a competition and would like to see your vegetarian, vegan and Free From recipes. The winning recipe gets an iPod Nano and a selection of merchandise, and the 3 runners up also win Amy's Kitchen merchandise. There are some great detailed Terms and Conditions describing the judging criteria here. Upload your recipes to their Facebook App before 31 January 2012.

Win a tagine filled with £50 of Al'Fez goodies - enter your favourite Moroccan themed recipe that uses Al'Fez products at www.alfez.com by 2 February 2012.

Win £1200 of top-of-the-range Hoover products by uploading the recipe for your 'best dish' to their Facebook App. Videos and photos are welcome! The winner will receive a stainless steel built-in oven, 5 burner gas hob and black freestanding dishwasher and three runners up will receive a dishwasher. Entries are judged, you can enter up to three times and the closing date is 29 February 2012.

Good luck - and as always, please let me know here or on Facebook if you win any of these comps!

Merry Christmas from the O2 Santa!

2011-12-12T11:26:00.000Z

I couldn't resist tweeting the O2 Santa this morning when I saw his fab YouTube video asking for your Christmas wishes!

And this is what I got in return - a Christmas greeting for you lovely lot... hope you all have a gorgeous Christmas!

To get your own special video message from Mr Claus, just tweet @o2 with the hashtag #o2santa!

Hair we go! Win a Fiat 500 in ASP's creative photo competition

2011-12-05T21:52:00.001Z

I'm currently knee deep in competitions for the January issue of Compers News that's on deadline this week, but I thought I'd take a break to let you know about this amazing competition that Steve the Editor found in one of his (ahem!) hair magazines.

New haircare brand ASP are giving away a Fiat 500 car and two iPads. And guess what? It's the ultimate creative competition - you need to buy a product, take a photo of it AND write a tiebreaker! And not a SNIFF of a public vote - how good is that?

To take part, take a photo of a Kitoko Advanced Hair Therapy product (including yourself if you wish!) in an interesting, unique, glamorous, or unusual location. Submit your photo to competition@ASPhair.com with a short sentence (20 words max) about why you love Kitoko. All photos will be uploaded to Facebook.

For full details check out the ASP Facebook App - you can enter up to four times and it closes on 30 March 2012. The photos will be judged on their 'individuality and creativity' -the winner gets the Fiat 500, and two runners up get iPads.

I've investigated the product, which is only stocked at hair salons, and to find your nearest stockist you need to contact a local distributor - you can find details at www.affinage.com/uk/distributors.html

OK, you've got almost 4 months so I expect to see some AMAZING entries, ladies! (oh, and gents too!) ...good luck!

"Congratulations, you've won an iPad!"

2011-12-05T08:20:00.001Z

It seems many compers received this email in their inbox last night from Gardening Express...

Dear Di

Congratulations, you've win (sic) our iPad competition.....

that is if your name appears at the bottom of this email.

Hmmmm, not exactly the kind of email most of us would like to receive! I regularly get emails with 'Congratulations' in the subject, but they're usually from the same source so I always open them expecting the worst. But when a company actually puts text in the body of a personalised email suggesting that you've won a prize... well, for that split second your heart jumps and you feel that rush of excitement ...and then you realise it's just a joke. Well, that sucks.

Gardening Express have felt the wrath of the public after this faux pas - just check out their Facebook wall! There are a lot of very upset people, and who can blame them?

But what should you do if you feel let down by a promoter? Your first port of call should be the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) where you can register your complaint online. Promotions in the UK are regulated by the CAP Code, and Rule 8.2 states "Promoters must avoid causing unnecessary disappointment".

If you have a problem with a promotion you can also contact the IPM (Institute of Promotional Marketing) at complaints@theipm.org.uk - although they will often pass your complaint on to the ASA for investigation.

And of course, if a company has upset you, show your disapproval by 'Unliking' their Facebook page too! I was actually lucky enough to win £22 to spend at Gardening Express last year. The postage was £7.95 and all the plants I bought died within a month. Needless to say, I don't bother with their promotions any more...

Blog Comp Linky: January 2012

2011-12-04T17:52:00.001Z

Welcome to my blog comp linky for competitions that are closing in JANUARY 2012. If you're hosting a giveaway please add it to the list, including the prize and the closing date - and your blog name if you can fit it in! You can access this post and the FEBRUARY linky via the links on the right hand side bar.

Please note, competitions MUST be hosted on a blog and they should be open to UK entries. For advice on running blog comps and more info about Rafflecopter check out this blog post.
If you want to enter these competitions but aren't sure how, check out my post on How to Enter a Blog Competition for advice!

Don't forget to add your blog giveaway to www.theprizefinder.com too!

IPM to help revise Facebook Promotion Rules

2011-12-03T09:20:00.001Z

If you're a comper then you've probably heard about the IPM - Institute of Promotional Marketing (previously the ISP, Institute of Sales Promotion), the trade association that represents promoters, agencies and service partners engaged in promotional marketing. Their mission is to 'protect, promote and progress effective promotional marketing across all media channels'. If you have a complaint about a promotion then you can contact them at complaints@theipm.org.uk and they will look into it.

The IPM published a news article yesterday announcing they'll be working with Facebook UK to redraft their promotion rules, after receiving a rise in enquiries about what the rules actually mean. Since the last revision of the rules in May, many promoters, bloggers and compers have been confused about what can and can't be done on Facebook. The rules aren't easy to find and many companies aren't even aware they exist! Few people know that ANY competition run on a Facebook wall is breaking the rules - a separate 'App' (tab) must be used.

I blogged in July about how you can run a Facebook promotion without breaking the rules. The main problem with running a wall promotion (for example, comment/like/share to win) is that a promoter isn't getting a contact email address from entrants, so they have to announce the winner in a wall post (against the rules) or send a Facebook message (also against the rules). Many entrants won't be lucky enough to spot a wall post announcement in their Newsfeed (it's impossible to guarantee fans will see every status update) and others will have activated Privacy settings to prevent receiving messages from non-friends. If a message is sent from the promoter it goes into the 'Other' inbox, which members don't receive notifications about and is hard to find (see screenshot below). If you're not a regular competition entrant, you're not likely to know about this Inbox and can miss out on prizes as a result; this isn't fair as it's the promoter who's actually at fault.

Facebook promotional policies state that all competitions must be run using an 'App' (ie. accessed via a separate tab on the Facebook page) yet strangely Facebook have not developed a simple sweepstakes or competition App to enable promoters to do this easily. The only Apps that are available - from NorthSocial, Wildfire, Binkd etc - all cost money; money which many small companies don't have. So it's no wonder they run the comps on their wall!

Hopefully the IPM will be able to work with Facebook on producing a new set of rules that will be clear, easy to understand and not too restrictive. If Facebook could be encouraged to develop a free App to run prize draws and competitions then I think a lot of promoters would change their ways. If this isn't done, my fear is that promoters will stop their Facebook competitions altogether and that would be a shame because many of the wall promotions are quirky and fun. Sadly, for all those that are fun there are plenty of 'Share to win' and 'Tag us in your status' comps which require Public sharing, where essentially the promoter is recruiting fans to spam on their behalf!

I'll be interested to hear what suggestions the IPM make to Facebook - my employer Accolade is an IPM member, and when I hear more on the revised Facebook rules I'll be sure to let you know!

Eek... it's time for Advent Comps!

2011-12-01T08:10:00.000Z

Ho! Ho! Ho! It's December people, and you know what that means... it's Advent comp time! Now some cheeky blighters like Quidco and Cotswold Outdoor launched their daily comps ages ago, but most promoters like to stick with tradition and give away either 12 or 24 prizes, one each day starting on 1st December.

Last year I hosted a list here at Super Lucky but as I now work for ThePrizeFinder, I'm organising the list of comps over there instead. To find a list of the comps - currently over 200! - pop over to www.theprizefinder.com/advent-competitions

As well as the simple daily prize draws, there are also some nice creative and fun twists on Advent comps on Facebook.

Low Cost Holidays are running Smiley's 12 Days of Christmas competition from 12th-24th December, and each day at noon a festive photo challenge will be announced. You have 24 hours to submit your photo (it MUST be real-time, no cheating!) and if yours is judged the best you could win prizes like a £100 English Cheesecake Company voucher, a “Spa in a Box”, a camera, travel accessories from Stanfords and possibly even a holiday! To make sure you get the latest info, join their Event on Facebook.

I'm also in charge of this year's Compers News Advent competition, and each day from today until 12th December you can win a Christmas Millionaire National Lottery scratch card - so we could make you a millionaire by Christmas! To enter, you need to pop over to Facebook and take a look at the daily clue on the Compers News profile photo - identify the product and complete your answer and details on the Competition Tab!

Finally, a warning - there are an absolute TON of Advent comps around. Don't try to do them all, just pick a few favourites with the prizes that you'd really love to win...otherwise you'll be too busy to do all your creative comps!

WANTED: Your Superlucky stories!

2011-11-29T21:37:00.001Z

Ack, I'm so unbelievably busy this week! The deadline for the January issue of Compers News has been brought forward to next Thursday, and the launch of the new look PrizeFinder website - featuring my new blog - is scheduled for tomorrow. I'm also collating the list of Advent comps for The PrizeFinder, running daily giveaways on the Compers News Facebook page, designing Vegan Cafe menus for Touch, Ayurveda Powerpoint presentations for Tri-Dosha and dealing with a toddler who's sleeping for approximately 3 hours each night. I didn't have time to enter a single comp yesterday, never mind open the 174 virtual M&S parcels I've been passed on Facebook!

So that's where you, my lovely blog readers come in... I've recently received lots of great messages, emails and Facebook posts about fabulous prizes that you've been winning as a result of reading my blog, or spotting a comp at the SuperLucky Facebook page or on Twitter... and I want to know more. Yes, I'm nosey - but what's wrong with that? After all, I tell you all about my favourite competitions and prizes and the daft things that Ry and I get up to - so it's about time I heard a bit about your wins too!

Over the next few months I'd love to feature some 'guest posts' from readers - I don't want SuperLucky to be neglected when I start blogging at The PrizeFinder, so I need help to write some fun posts. Your story could be about your first attempt at a photo competition, an unusual prize you've won or a video that you're proud of - if my blog has helped or inspired you in any way then I'd love to hear more.

As a thankyou, anyone who sends me a story (whether I use it on my blog or not) will be entered into a random draw to win a yummy Biscuiteers London box ...simply because I LOVE the postbox biscuit that you get in it!

You don't need to write me an essay - just a few paragraphs and photos (or you can send me links to photos or videos if that's easier) will do - email me at superlucky@mac.com before 31st December 2011.

Looking forward to hearing from you - and thanks again for all your good feedback; I'm excited to know my ramblings have resulted in so many brilliant prizes for you all!

Using Bitly

2011-11-22T13:30:00.000Z

Along with Tineye and Evernote, Bitly is one of my favourite websites for making a comper's life that little bit easier. In a nutshell, Bitly shortens long web links. If you register at www.bitly.com (you can do this easily by logging in via Facebook or Twitter) you can customise link names and track the clicks on your links too.

I find Bitly really useful for:

Creating customised short links to popular blog posts, eg. http://bit.ly/NovBlogComps - on Twitter, it gives your followers an idea of your post content even at a quick glance
Creating links to Facebook pages, photos, comments and Apps - Facebook links are long and full of numbers so shortening them makes them much more user friendly
Creating a personalised link to an entry in a voting competition, eg. http://bit.ly/VoteBiscuit - this makes it easy to share and remember
Creating a memorable link to a YouTube video, eg. http://bit.ly/RedHotIceCream
Tracking how many clicks your links get

When customising, you might find that your preferred keywords have already been used, but you can always adapt your links by adding your initials to the end!

To explain in more detail how Bitly can be useful for both compers and bloggers, here's my short video tutorial....

Photo & Video comps: November 2011

2011-11-15T21:59:00.001Z

'It's been too long!' I can hear you grumbling. Yes, I know it has - and I'm sorry! I've been so busy putting together the fantastically festive December issue of Compers News that I've neglected my talented creative blog readers... but never fear, here's a bumper selection of photo and video comps to get you excited all over again!

Over the past few weeks I've heard about Ian winning the £3000 Autoglass video competition, Anthony bagging a Wii with his Zhu Zhu pets video, Jen getting a new PS3 for her Arthur Christmas gingerbread men, LOADS of you winning the £200 Cafe Rouge vouchers in the wine tasting video comp, and of course Kate winning a fab trip to New York in the bagel carving competition. Lots of you won fab prizes with your pumpkins, Halloween costumes and cooking - I won a Boo! box, a month's Total yogurt, a buggy blanket, £25 vouchers, chocolates, bath toys and puzzles for Ryland with our Halloween projects. And last week I won £250 cash in a Jackpot Party video competition that only had 5 entries! It really is worth taking the time to enter these creative comps - with more practice your videos, photos and recipes will get more adventurous, more fun and more successful! And of course it's hugely entertaining to see all your entries too...

First off, Monarch are giving away a pair of return flights to Egypt - to enter, upload a photo of you walking like an Egyptian to their Facebook page. I can't get the App to load so can't tell you the closing date I'm afraid!

Who's growing a moustache for Movember then? There are several comps you can enter your photo in:

Spitfire are giving away an iPod for Movember photos uploaded by 20 November, and an iPad for photos uploaded between 21 and 30 November. Enter here.

Win a £100 bonus for your Movember chairty fund by uploading a photo at Movember Madness and getting the 'most encouragements' before 30 November 2011.

Paycare Corporate are also offering £100 towards your Movember fund - plus £100 cash - for uploading your photo to their Facebook page and getting the most Likes (boo!) by 1 December 2011.

The PhotoBox 24Live photo challenge is back on 24 November - hourly prizes and an overall £3000 cash prize to the best photo! Join the event on Facebook.

If you spot the new Merchant Gourmet lorry and snap a photo of it you could win a Merchant Gourmet hamper of goodies - get your photo over to competitions@merchant-gourmet.com before 25 November 2011.

Over at the Railcard Facebook page, turn your quirky photos into a postcard and a random entrant will win a £500 TopShop spree. There are also twenty £26 Railcard gift cards for their 20 favourite postcards. Enter by 28 November 2011.

Interflora are giving away two places at their new Flower School in London - to enter, email a video of you 'performing a skill you have learnt from an expert' to blog@interflora.co.uk by 28 November 2011.

The Fiestagram competition is still running, with the fifth of the challenges from Ford to be to upload an Instagram photo on the theme of 'music'. The prize for the best challenge photo is a year's Spotify subscription and a pair of Beats headphones - and of course, the entries from all 5 challenges will be judged for the top prize of a Ford Fiesta! Enter by 28 November 2011 - you'll need to download the Instagram App for your Smartphone to enter.

Do you have an unstylish room in your house? Upload a photo of it to www.thishomeisme.com and you could win a design consultation and £1000 to spend at Isme.com - four runners up will also win £1000 to spend on homewares at Isme.com. Enter before 30 November 2011 - entries will be judged!

Netmums want to see your photos of 'the woman behind the mum' - top prize is £150 shopping voucher with five £25 vouchers for runners up. Read more here and enter by 30 November 2011.

Kleenex are giving £500 John Lewis vouchers to their favourite tip to soothe away colds and flu - you can enter a photo or video here by 30 November 2011.

You're pretty much guaranteed a prize if you enter a photo for the Campbells Soup competition on Facebook - upload a snap of you and your Campbells Cup Soup and ten daily winners get a Campbells mug - this ends on 30 November 2011.

The Innocent 'Big Knit' promotion is raising money for Age UK. Although it's a voting competition, every photo uploaded guarantees a 10p donation to charity, and each daily vote is worth another 5p. To enter, upload a photo of your Innocent Smoothie 'Big Knit' hat held in position by a hand over a pet, a landmark, etc. (see example below!). Each week the three most popular photos win smoothies and the three with the most votes over the whole competition period (when it ends on 2 December 2011) will win £500 Amazon vouchers each.

A fun App for music lovers is HTC '25 Steps to Being A Music Legend' - you need to complete music challenges and upload photos to Facebook. Reach different levels by entering more challenges, and you'll be entered to win prizes like HTC Sensations, Jawbone Jamboxes (!) and £1000 Memorabilia vouchers. Closes 8 December 2012

Here's one to keep the Dads busy! Email a photo of your best Lego creation to competitions@puffinbookclub.co.uk and the most impressive will win a big box of Lego bricks. Read more and see the postal entry details here - enter by 9 December 2011.

Win a trip to Lapland at facebook.com/santainlapland. Upload a photo showing how much you love Christmas along with 20 words on why you deserve to win a trip to Lapland. This competition closes on 11 December and the winner will get an overnight trip to Lapland, flying from Gatwick on 22 December.

J2O are giving away £50 every day to the person who can grin for the longest on their webcam! The longest grin will win a New Years Eve party for ten in London - final closing date is 14 December 2011 - enter on Facebook.

At the E2Save Facebook page you can win a TV, Laptop and Galaxy Tab by writing a creative letter to Santa – you can also have a second entry by emailing a photo demonstrating your love of Christmas. Entries for this close on 16 December and a panel of judges will select a winner based on the creativity and originality, but also taking into consideration the quantity of Facebook ‘Likes’ for the entry.

iExplore Travel are giving away the trip of a lifetime - upload a photo of a 'thrillaxing' experience with a description to their Facebook App before 16 December 2011. The ten most popular entries will be judged for the to prize, a £5,100 voucher to spend on an activity holiday at www.iexplore.com/uk

Upload a photo of your 'wish face' to the PayPal Facebook page and four winners will be chosen at random on 20 December 2011 to win £5000 of prizes each.

Win a VIP trip to the premiere of The Woman in Black next year. To enter, film yourself reading an original ghost story and upload to YouTube before 20 December 2011. Ten finalists will go to a public vote and the winner gets a trip to the London premiere in January with accommodation - Daniel Radcliffe will also read the story and this will feature on the film's DVD release! Find out more here.

I you spot the new Lidl bus, grab a photo of yourself with it and you could win a TV and DVD Player every week at the Lidl Facebook page! It's in the South West of England this weekend. Closes every Thursday until 23 December 2011.

LloydsTSB are giving a huge £10,000 prize to their favourite room design - upload up to 3 photos of a room in your home (you can enter more than one room) at www.lloydstsbmyfavouriteroom.co.uk by 9 January 2012 to enter. There's also a £100 prize every week for the photo with the most votes - this week's leader has over 5000 votes, so I recommend you don't bother with that one!

Trident Insurance are giving away a holiday to Miami in their interior design competition in conjunction with Attitude magazine. To enter, upload a photo of your room PLUS a photo of you actually in that room (to prove it's your handiwork!). Monthly winners will be decided on votes and then the monthly winners will go head to head and the winner will be the entry with the most votes - argh! You also need to be prepared to do an interview with Attitude magazine if you win - keep that in mind! Entries close 26 January 2012.

The Pirates! Facebook page is giving away Sony goodies every fortnight. To enter, upload a video of you singing along to their pirate shanty. The video with the most votes (voting closes on a Monday) bags a Sony Bloggie each fortnight, then the 12 fortnightly winners are judged to win a TV, Cybershot or PS3. The final closing date is 29 February 2012.

That's all for now folks - don't forget to tell me on Facebook if you win any of these comps!

Double Trouble - ditch your comping Facebook account!

2011-11-15T14:16:00.000Z

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a flurry of requests from Facebook friends to add their ‘new comping account’ as a friend. As a comper, it’s easy to annoy your 'normal' friends with constant status updates, links and activities which will clutter up their Newsfeed. So surely the simple solution is just to set up a new Facebook account specifically for comping - perhaps with a nickname?

In a word, No. This is against Facebook rules:

Maintaining multiple accounts is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Violations of this rule could result in all of these accounts being disabled. (see http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1126)

Profiles (timelines) must list your real first name and last name. (see http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1132)

Of course, many people use two or more Facebook accounts without being found out. But having two accounts can offend fellow compers (you have two chances to win competitions, two chances to vote, etc...) and it’s easy for someone to report your second account as a fake profile and get it deleted, so is it really worth the risk?

There are several ways you can restrict the amount of 'comping' that your friends see on Facebook - using Lists, adjusting your activity visibility, and asking your friends to change their subscription settings.

Using Lists

Facebook lists are an excellent way to organise your account, and can help solve the dilemma of keeping your comping activities separate from your work or family ones. You can assign a friend to one or more lists - Family and Close Friends are two of the default lists, and I suggest adding a new list called ‘Compers’. I've made this video tutorial to help you do this - please excuse my Movember profile photo!

To set up a 'Compers' list, choose LISTS from the menu on the left of your Facebook homepage. Click 'Create a List' and name it 'Compers'. You can add to your list on the right of the page by typing in the box - but it's actually much easier to go to your main Friends list from your profile page, then scroll down adding each friend to the 'Compers' list - or any of the other lists - as you go. Friends can be added to more than one list - so if your sister's a comper, pop her into the 'Family', 'Close Friends' and 'Compers' lists by ticking beside all 3.

As you add new friends, make sure you add them to the appropriate list. When you've sent a friend request you can assign that person to a list from the drop down menu, even though they haven't accepted yet. If you receive Friend requests, you can Confirm, and again assign them to lists in the drop down menu.

When you post on your wall, you can choose which list to post to. You do this by selecting from the drop-down menu in the top right of the box. If I’m posting details of a competition, I select ‘Compers’ to ensure I don’t annoy my non-comping friends. If you want to share family photos you could choose to share with 'Close Friends' and 'Family'. For 'Like and Share' type competitions, unfortunately this system won't work - although the promoter will see the total number of Shares, when they click to choose their winner from the list they will ONLY see the names of people who have set their Share to 'Public'. So, if you limit your Sharing to Friends, Friends of Friends or to your Compers list - then you won't be in the draw. This is a real shame and one of the reasons I rarely enter Sharing comps - there are probably many of us wondering why we don't win them, and not realising this is why. Any comps that require you to Like, Comment or Share a post are actually breaking Facebook promotion rules too!

After posting on your wall, you can change your mind about the visibility by clicking to the right of the post and changing the setting - for example from 'Public' to 'Close Friends'. You can also assign these restrictions to your photos and photo albums - if you're combining your comping with a personal account, it's probably worth changing the privacy of your photos from 'Public' or 'Friends' to 'Close Friends' and 'Family'.

You can view your News Feed from a specific list too - so you can view your ‘Compers’ list to see all the competitions that people are entering in one place, without all the updates from Fan pages and your non-comping friends.

Keeping your wall tidy
Because I only have one Facebook account and my wall privacy is set so that anyone can see it, I like to keep it tidy. I regularly delete Automatic wall posts from friends via Facebook Apps - to do this, just click to the right and choose 'Delete post'. If someone has tagged you in a competition photo or status which has appeared on your wall, you can also click to the right and choose 'Remove from Profile' - don't worry, this won't remove the tag from the original photo or post! If you're worried about what certain people can see on your wall, you can click the 'View As' button on your profile and view your page as 'Public' or as any of your friends to check what's visible.

Hiding wall activity

You can hide Comment, Like, Wall posts and Friending activity from your profile page by clicking on the 'X' next to the activity on your wall, then choosing 'Hide all recent likes/wall posts/commenting/friending activity from profile'. This video will help you do this:

To change this setting back, scroll down to the bottom of your own wall and choose 'Edit Options'. Changing these settings will hide activity from your wall but unfortunately it's not guaranteed to hide all activity from your friends' newsfeed or ticker! To guarantee they don't see any of your comping posts, your friends will need to take action themselves...

Restricting what updates you see

As well as being useful for you, this is something that you should make your friends aware of if you intend to do a lot of comping on Facebook. In your News Feed or Friends list, click to the right of your friend's name and you can choose which updates you see from them – ‘all updates’, ‘most updates’ (this is the default) or ‘important updates’. I recommend you tell your non-comping friends and family to change their settings so they only see your 'Important' updates, then they won’t have your comping posts filling up their News Feed. Facebook is currently rolling out the new 'Timeline' profile, which will allow you to label your status updates as 'Important' - eg. new job, new baby, relationship event, etc - these are the 'Important' updates that you would probably want all your friends to see.

If your friends don’t want to see your comments and likes in their Newsfeed, they can click to the right of them and choose ‘Unsubscribe from comments and likes’. They can also choose 'Unsubscribe' so they won't see any posts at all from you - if you have friends who complain about your comping then this is what you should advise them to do! They can always pop over to your Facebook page to catch up on anything they’ve missed, and there's no need for them to 'Unfriend' you. If you're thinking of merging two Facebook accounts, it might be worth sending messages to your close friends and family to explain their options for hiding your comping posts and activity!

Merging two accounts
Facebook doesn't have any way of merging accounts - you will have to delete one account and add the extra friends to the other account. As your comping account probably has a lot more friends, photos, Apps and Pages then it might be best to keep that one. Send a message to Friends and Family from your original account to explain what you are doing - include a polite recommendation that they might want to change their subscription settings to avoid seeing all your comping activity!

Whilst logged in on your comping account, visit your main account's Friends list and click to Add Friends from that account - remembering to put them in your 'Close Friends', 'Acquaintances' or 'Family lists. Before deleting your original Facebook account, you should download all the information - you can read how to do this on the Facebook Help pages.

Reporting a fake Facebook profile

If you believe that someone has multiple profiles and is using them all to enter or vote in competitions, then you should report them. To do this, scroll down on their profile page and choose 'Report/Block'. From the pop-up menu choose 'This profile is pretending to be someone or is fake', and from the drop down menu 'Does not represent a real person'. You can then add more information, such as a link to that person's other profile, explaining that it's a second account set up just for the purpose of entering competitions.

When Facebook Security alerts picked up my account as being fake and disabled it without warning (see this blog post), I got in touch to ask them about reporting fake and comping profiles and they responded by telling me 'If you ever come across a profile that violates our policies, feel free to report it by using the “Report/block This Person” link located on that profile' - so don't feel any guilt about snitching!

These methods should help you to keep your comping separate from your personal Facebook - of course, it's not the perfect solution as many posts will slip through the net. But if you're serious about comping then any real friends shouldn't mind the odd post about your hobby - and if they complain about it, then perhaps they're a friend that's not worth having!

Appy Days: winning with your smartphone

2011-11-09T08:27:00.001Z

Have you got an Android or iPhone? Companies are now using Apps as a way to run their promotions - and not a lot of people know about it yet! For most people it's probably taking comping a step too far, but of course I like to give you a heads up on these things as there's a great chance of winning.

I told you all about the BlippAR Heinz competition last week - this is running daily until 19th January and you need to have an iPhone to use the App. Since I won my Secret Ingredient cookery set last week I've heard that four of you have also won, so it's definitely worth a go - read more here.

Then I heard about a new Android App called Shopitize - to use this, you take photos of your grocery receipts and upload them to the App. In return you'll get offers and discounts tailored to your shopping habits. They're running a great promotion where you can win £500, and also a weekly prize of £25. To enter, you can either upload your recipes via the App - or if you don't have an Android phone, you can email photos, or a list of your purchases, to snapprize@shopitize.com. The weekly draws close at 12 noon every Friday and the £500 draw is on 16th December - every receipt you send over gets you an entry into the grand prize draw, and you can upload or send a maximum of 10 a week. You can read the T&Cs here and Like the Shopitize Facebook page for more details - it sounds awfully complicated, but by now you know that these are the type of comps with the least entries so why not give it a go?

I was excited to read on MummyTips at the weekend about Simply Tap (there are also 10 boxes of Thorntons chocs to be won on Sian's blog post). It's an instant mobile checkout App for your iPhone or Android - you register your card details and when you see something you want to buy in store or in a magazine you just enter the 'Tap Code'. But don't register yet! Because for the next five days (until 14th November) they're giving away £100 Selfridges vouchers on Facebook for the people who register fastest with the App each day. I was lucky enough to win yesterday's prize! To enter, first download the App here - and then keep an eye on facebook.com/simplytap and twitter.com/simplytap for their competition announcement. Then register your details (be warned - this takes a while as it's your name, address and card details!) and see if you were the fastest...

In Compers News this month I read about the Richer Sounds iPhone App - you receive a virtual scratch card every fortnight and can win a prize. The main prize differs each time - the current one (valid until 21st November) is a Logitech Universal Remote. I scratched last week's card and won a Sonos pen, and this week I won a pair of Maxell headphones - to claim, you need to show your phone/winning scratchcard in store!

I've been using Appysnap for a few weeks and it's great fun - you download the App for your Android or iPhone, and they send you photo missions to complete in a certain amount of time (could be an hour, could be a week). Missions get you points - and uploading a photo for certain challenges could win win you spot prizes like Amazon vouchers. Last month a random user won a MacBook Air! Read their blog at appysnap.posterous.com or Like them at www.facebook.com/AppySnap

Finally, I stumbled across this video on YouTube promoting a Bad Teacher competition on an iPhone App called GoldRun.

The prize is a Sony Cybershot Camera - to enter, download the App, click on Bad Teacher, take a photo featuring the Bad Teacher text and logo, and then upload to Twitter with the hashtag #BTGold. I can't find any details of the closing date or geographical restrictions - and perhaps not surprisingly, I'm the only entrant so far! I couldn't get the App to Tweet for me (it said my Tweet was too long but I was unable to see it to edit it!) - so I emailed my photo to myself and then uploaded to Twitter.

Let me know if you get lucky with any of these!

Fill a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child!

2011-11-06T17:19:00.000Z

How many of you have got unwanted competition and raffle prizes lying around the house, perhaps gifts that a disadvantaged child would appreciate this Christmas? This week I've been busy popping mine into a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child.

I read about the project over at Mummy..Mummy..Mum! - who is also running a fab competition to reward those who take part in the project. Samaritan's Purse distributed over a million shoeboxes full of gifts to children in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa last year.

If you want to take part, this is what you have to do:

Take your shoebox and wrap the top and bottom separately in gift wrap.

Decide who your box is for: boy or girl, age 2-4, 5-9 or 10-14 years. Print off a label and stick to the lid.

Fill your box with goodies. The items should be new, and try and include a variety of things from the suggested categories.

There are lots of suggestions for gifts on the website, here's what I popped in ours: toothbrush, hairband, plasticine, notebooks, pencils, erasers, jellybeans and sweeties, a Japanese doll, origami paper, puzzles, soap and a snow globe. These were raffle prizes that I'd won over the past couple of years, topped them up with some Wilko bargains!

Once you've filled your shoebox, if you take a photo of it and upload to Mummy Mum Mum's Facebook page before 15 November, as well as leaving a comment on her blog post here, you'll be entered into her prize draw and could win one of these super prizes:

A set of Bath Toys from Brother Max
A set of Freya Lingerie
A £25 voucher for Big Blue Cuddle
A LEGO DUPLO Play With Numbers set,
A HOP goody bag

You then need to make a donation of at least £2.50 online at https://occ.samaritans-purse.org.uk/donate - after donating, you can print off a barcode to pop in the box which means you will find out where your shoebox went! Drop off your shoebox locally (check here for details of your nearest location) before 18 November.

This has been a lovely project to get involved with - it's great to think of how happy our shoebox will make a little girl this Christmas - and I hope some of you will get involved too!

Join the Avocado Brotherhood - and you could win £250 vouchers!!

2011-11-02T19:42:00.000Z

The avocado is my most favourite food. The colour, the texture, the taste - I just love it! Luckily Ryland's a big fan too, so we're forever picking up the reduced price ripe avocados in our local Tesco and wondering what to do with them. Most times I just eat them straight out of the skin - yum!

The Avocado Brotherhood have just launched their Blog-an-Avo competition to win £250 of supermarket vouchers. To enter, simply blog about avocados! Then tweet the link to @AvocadoBrother with the hashtag #avotweet. If you don't blog, email it through to avocadobrotherhood@gmail.com - the first twenty entrants will get a £20 shopping voucher!

As I had two ripe Hass avocados conveniently lying around the house today, I decided to do something I've wanted to do ever since spotting it in my mother-in-law's 1981 cookbook - create an avocado cheesecake! Lacking in eggs, water biscuits and gelatine I decided to fashion a somewhat makeshift version from what I could find in the fridge... and it shows!

To make this wobbly, crumbly delight, you need to bash 125g biscuits (I used Salt & Black Pepper Savours!) and then stir through 75g melted butter. Press into a loose bottom cake tin and chill for an hour. For the topping, whizz up 150ml soured cream with 300g herby Philadelphia, 2 medium avocados, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and the grated rind of half a lemon. Season, then plop it on top of the base and leave to chill for at least 5 hours.

I topped my cheesecake with toasted pine nuts and though it tasted rather lovely, it was far too sloppy and the base fell to bits! That didn't seem to bother Ryland, who wolfed it down.

The closing date for the competition is 10th December 2011 and you can read all about it here - good luck!

Did I mention that mother-in-law's cookbook also contains a recipe for sardine cheesecake? That's the weekend sorted then!

Blog Comp Linky: December 2011

2011-11-01T09:30:00.004Z

Welcome to my blog comp linky for competitions that are closing in DECEMBER 2011. If you're hosting a giveaway please add it to the list, including the prize and the closing date - and your blog name if you can fit it in! You can access this post and the NOVEMBER linky via the links on the right hand side bar.

Please note, competitions MUST be hosted on a blog and they should be open to UK entries. For advice on running blog comps and more info about Rafflecopter check out this blog post.
If you want to enter these competitions but aren't sure how, check out my post on How to Enter a Blog Competition for advice!

Don't forget to add your blog giveaway to www.theprizefinder.com too!

And the handbag winner is...

2011-11-01T09:03:00.000Z

Thanks to everyone who entered my Dune handbag competition - the lucky winner picked at random by Rafflecopter was FionaLynne Edwards, who commented to tell me she would keep "chewing gum, lipgloss, wipes and travel sickness tabs for my daughter" in the handbag. Fiona, there's an email on its way to you now - congratulations!

I hope you all enjoyed using Rafflecopter! It's an easy way to run a giveaway and as it requires your email address there's no danger of you missing out on a prize because you missed the announcement or the tweet. If you're a blogger who runs giveaways, I still have a couple of Rafflecopter invites left if you want to email me...
Keep an eye out for another competition very soon!

Win with BlippAR!

2011-10-31T10:03:00.000Z

Have you downloaded BlippAR yet? It's a free App for your iPhone (currently in Beta testing for Android) which brings brands to life by using clever image-recognition techniques. Last week Heinz launched a competition to win Heinz 'Secret Ingredient' cookery packs including a wooden spoon, apron, oven glove, a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup and a squeezy, tomato-shaped ketchup dispenser - they're giving away two every day until 19th January and all you need to do is use your phone to 'Blipp' a bottle of ketchup!

You probably think I've gone insane, so watch this video to see what I'm on about!

Tesco are in on the act too - they ran lots of Halloween ads in The Sun and the Metro last week which could be viewed using BlippAR for special content and offers.

You can also use BlippAR with Marmite and lots of Cadbury products. As with most quirky new trends (Twitter for example!), most old school compers will be completely petrified of it so I think it's well worth getting involved - it's only a matter of time before all these companies start running BlippAR competitions and if you're in there early there'll be a good chance of you winning! Download the App and enjoy at http://blippar.com/

UPDATE!
I Blipped my ketchup bottle this morning (November 1st) and got a Congratulations message - I've won a cookery pack! You can Blipp every day so why not give it a go?

Why I'm not changing my Facebook profile picture to a Seabrook logo

2011-10-25T08:55:00.000+01:00

I used to love Seabrook Crisps. They bring back happy memories of my student days in Bradford, and the hilarious time JoJoEbi and I made a short film for her final year project about 'How crisps are made' in the Seabrook factory.

But this week they've let me down. They launched a competition on Facebook to win a year's supply of crisps, and to enter all you need to do is change your profile picture to the Seabrook Crisps logo.

As well as being unimaginative and lazy, this promotion violates Facebook Promotions Guidelines in a big way. It's not using an App and it requires people to change their profile photo. SAS ran a similar promotion on Facebook asking fans to change their profile picture, and their page was shut down without warning. Not great when you have 161,000 fans like SAS did!

Think about it, the prize of a year's supply of crisps is probably costing Seabrook less than £50. And what are they getting for that? Hundreds of Facebook fans advertising them across Facebook for a whole week! It sounds clever, but it's preying on the gullibility of Facebook users. Seabrook, why couldn't you ask us to do something a bit more interesting - like the Walkers flavour competition, or the Tyrrells eccentric photo, or Burts and Corkers both asking for photos of their crisps on holiday?

From a comper's point of view, think about the impression your profile picture gives when you're entering all your other Facebook competitions. Do you really think a promoter will choose you as a winner when you have a brand name as your profile picture? Even if your name comes out of the hat, if they get suspicious and see that your profile page is a wall full of comps I don't think you'll win. And I doubt you'll have much luck in any other snack brands' Facebook promotions this week either!

Finally, is it really worth changing your picture for seven whole days just for a 1 in 500 or so chance of winning a few boxes of crisps? Compers, you disappoint me!

The Mummy Returns

2011-10-23T14:35:00.000+01:00

We've spent this weekend celebrating Halloween! Yes, I know it's a week too early but we're away next weekend and loads of the Halloween comps from my latest round up close before the 31st, so I thought I'd take the opportunity of a weekend at home to get busy with the pumpkins!

Over the last few weeks my blog has had hundreds of hits from people googling 'baby mummy costume'. You might recall my attempt last year at a Halloween costume which involved wrapping 10 month old Ryland in a few bandages... this won him £400 of Plum Baby goodies! I always felt a pang of guilt that his mummy costume wasn't really as amazing as it should have been, so this year I vowed to put a bit more effort in. I soaked 15 Tesco bandages (just 28p each!) in cold tea, carefully sewed them onto white toddler pyjamas and left bits trailing for that proper mummy effect!

It took a while to convince him to actually put the outfit on, but after promising him a shop visit we managed to tempt him to the local churchyard for a photo shoot... I was really pleased with the lighting on these shots: I recommend if you do take any photos of kids for competitions, try and take them outside, as natural light makes such a difference. Don't feel the child needs to be smiling at the camera either; on the contrary, if you catch them in their own world it can be much more effective. I'm now keeping an eye on Facebook for all the Halloween costume comps!

Returning home in a spooky mood, I decided it was time to get the pumpkins out. After hours of browsing Pinterest for pumpkin carving masterpieces last week, I decided that due to my limited skills I would attempt something simple and cute instead. In Japan there's a company called San-X who are constantly creating new cartoon characters: essentially, by putting simple smiley faces onto all sorts of inanimate objects like cheese and sofas.... So, with a Sharpie marker I drew my 'kawaii' (Japanese for 'cute'!) face onto my big pumpkin and got Rob to take a shot for the Anorak 'Pimp your Pumpkin' comp...

Next, on to the carving... As well as our giant pumpkin we had a little one in our veg box so I carved the smiley face onto the pair of them. I'm hoping the smiles might make them stand out in the new pumpkin carving comps on the Abel and Cole Facebook page and the Monkey Stars blog!

As for the insides, we added the roasted pumpkin with a little home grown sage and some crispy pancetta to Jamie's classic risotto recipe...

And this afternoon I made a pumpkin soup with lots of sweet smoked paprika and turmeric - topped with a crème fraîche and black olive skull with radish eyeballs! I reckon a few comps will be popping up on Facebook and Twitter this week that this would be a suitable entry for!

If you love Halloween comps then do check out last week's comp round up, and keep an eye on the SuperLucky Facebook page for all the new comps that are bound to pop up this week. I've also added a linky to the Halloween round up so I can add new comps as they appear - feel free to add any that you find too!

I've added this post to Thinly Spread's Halloween activity linky!

Halloween Competition Round-up

2011-10-15T08:44:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again folks - get your face paints and spooky buffets ready for HALLOWEEN. Here's a selection of creative comps and easy prize draws to get you in the mood! I'm hoping to find time to make Ryland a 'The Mummy Returns' costume this weekend so watch out for that on Facebook!

Free Student Fees have promised a Halloween Photo competition next week to win £1000 cash so keep an eye on their Facebook page!

Win £50 to spend on fancy dress at halloweenerrific.co.uk - no closing date stated for this one.

Magic Radio are giving away a VIP Family experience with WICKED at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre - upload your Halloween photos and videos at magic.co.uk to enter. No closing date stated.

DigiMums are giving away ten pairs of family National Trust passes to Halloween events in Northern ireland - enter at digimumsni.com by 20 October 2011.

Win $250 of Special Effects Make up - enter at the PPI Premiere Products Facebook page before 20 October 2011.

Win a Fairy Costume for Halloween - enter at CassieFairy Tutus before 21 October 2011.

One for Nottingham students - pick up an entry form at Clarendon College and design a monster for Halloween and you could win some 'ghoulish prizes' - details are on Facebook, enter by 21 October 2011.

Win a child's Halloween costume at Mummy's Space - enter before 21 October 2011.

Live near Bristol? Win a family ticket to Old Down Country Park by getting the kids to design a Halloween front cover for 'Just my Area' magazine - read more at www.justmyarea.co.uk and enter by 21 October 2011.

Win Halloween cake toppers at Mummy Central - enter by 21 October 2011.

Top Fruit want you to guess how many nuts are in the bowl for their Halloween comp, the prize is a Wii - enter before 22 October 2011 at their Facebook page.

Upload a creative photo of your child dressed up for Halloween at the Maclaren Baby Facebook page and the one judged the best will win a Dylan's Candy Bar Volo stroller. This is open worldwide and there are some seriously good entries from the Americans! Closes 23 October 2011.

If you're crafty then check out the Burda worldwide Halloween Costume Competition to win $1000 cash or a new sewing machine - enter before 23 October 2011. Check out last year's winner - wow!

Win a spooktacular hamper in the easy competition at the Co-op website - closes 23 October 2011.

Mellow Mummy is giving away a Halloween Dr Oetker Treats baking set - enter before 23 October 2011.

Design a Halloween cocktail and win a Halloween dinner at Chino Latino - enter on the Park Plaza Facebook page before 24 October 2011.

Crossfire are running a comp for the skate kids - add a photo of your sticker collection to the thread at the Sidewalk forum, and you could win tickets to the Crossfire Halloween Massacre, Toxic Waste stickers and a pair of Old Skool Vans. Enter before 24 October 2011.

Send Asda your favourite Halloween photo and their favourite will win a mammoth party pack plus a £200 Asda gift card! Two runners up will win a Murder Mystery Weekend or a Ghost Walk! Enter on Facebook before 25 October 2011.

Win a Halloween Cookie Course with Peggy Porschen on 28 October - enter at Party Times before 24 October 2011.

Kids aged 6-11 can enter the Greggs spooky stories competition to win one of five Kindles - closes 26 October 2011

Win one of ten Disney Buddies boxsets at TinyPop - submit a photo of your little one looking spoooooooky to enter, before 31 October 2011.

Win fabulous washable Fuzzibunz nappies in the Babi Pur Halloween competition - enter before 31 October 2011.

Salter are giving away a Precision Digital Measuring jug - to enter, email your Heston Blumenthal inspired weird recipe to saltersocialmedia@hotmail.co.uk. Read more at their Tumblr page, and enter before 31 October 2011.

Win a Ghost Walk in Birmingham by posting your Halloween-themed story on the Birmingham Ghost Walks Facebook wall before 31 October 2011.

Upload a picture of your artistic pumpkin to the FDC Facebook page and you could win a hamper full of treats worth £50. Enter before 31 October 2011.

Send Burncard a photo of your best ever Halloween fancy dress outfit and they'll send a t-shirt to their favourite entry. Enter at burncardclothing.com by 31 October 2011.

Mumsnet members can win a set of Innocent Drinks limited edition glow-in-the-dark magnets by emailing a photo of their fruity freak or veg monster to innocentdrinks@mumsnet.com - every entry wins! Read more at mumsnet.com and enter before 3 November 2011.

Win a personalised stable sign for your horse - submit a photo of your horse dressed up for Halloween(!) at horsemart.co.uk before 4 November 2011.

Share your photos of Fabulous Bakin' Boys tricks to win your height in cakes - you can find the tricks on their special Halloween cupcake wrappers! Enter on Facebook before 7 November 2011.

Total Greek Yogurt are giving out weekly prizes of Greek yogurt and a 'BOO Box' until 14 November 2011. Upload a scary story or wacky recipe at their Facebook page to enter.

Finally, Walton Sheds want to award the best dressed shed with £100 vouchers - your shed can be dressed up for Halloween or for Christmas as the comp doesn't close until 11 December 2011. Check out more details at waltonsheds.co.uk

I've added a LINKY below to add more Halloween comps as they pop up - feel free to add your own finds!

How to enter a blog competition

2011-10-14T21:48:00.000+01:00

Blog competitions and giveaways are a relatively new phenomenon, and can be totally bewildering if you've never seen a blog before! Perhaps first I should explain what a blog is - it's short for 'weblog', and people write them as an online public diary - most bloggers will update their blogs with 3 or 4 posts a week, so it can be a very time-consuming hobby. There are several different styles of competition on blogs - some blogs use entry forms, where you simply submit your name and email address, but most will want you to leave comments to enter the draw. In the UK, the majority of blog giveaways are hosted on 'mummy blogs' so the prizes will be family-orientated - the benefit of this is the low entry numbers.
The great thing about most blog comps is you can see at a glance how many people have entered, and what your chances are. I generally win a blog competition a week, usually small prizes like toiletries, toys or books - although I have recently won a fab £150 laundry hamper from the All Baby Advice blog!Before you get started
It's possible to enter and win blog competitions without doing so, but I recommend that you sign up for a gmail account or set up a Google profile using your existing email address. To do this, go to www.google.com and choose your username, then complete your details. Having a Google account also means you can access Google Docs - I find the online spreadsheets essential for organising my comping lists!

Entry requirements
Many blog competitions require a compulsory method of entry, and then offer optional extra entries - for many blog giveaways you do not have to have a Twitter or Facebook account! You will usually be asked to leave each entry as a separate comment, this is because usually the blogger will use random.org to choose a winning comment from the total number of comments. They will check that the winner completed all the steps they claim to have done before awarding the prize.

The most common entry requirements are:

Publicly follow *blog name* on Google Friend Connect - this is a way of following blogs that you enjoy - you can view the latest updates in your Google Reader, or using an RSS App on your Smartphone. To follow a blog on Google Friend Connect look for the widget on the blog (mine is to the right) and click 'Join this site' - you can sign in using a Google (or Gmail), Twitter, Yahoo, AIM, Netlog or OpenID account. After doing this, leave a comment on the blog along the lines of "I follow you on GFC"
Follow *blog name* on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway.There will be a link to Twitter in the instructions - click this and then click 'Follow'. To tweet about the giveaway, make sure you include the URL (web address) of the giveaway as well as the blogger's Twitter name - often, the blogger will post the exact tweet so you can copy and paste it. After doing this, leave a comment on the blog to say you're following and you tweeted, leaving your Twitter name. You may be requested to add a link to your Tweet - to do this, visit your Profile page at www.twitter.com and look for the time under your tweet ('1 minute ago' for example). Click on this, then copy the address from your browser address bar. If you're new to Twitter, read my advice here.
Like *blog name* on Facebook - There will be a link to Facebook in the instructions - click this, log in to Facebook and then click 'Like' at the top of the page. You may also be required to leave a comment on the page, or to 'tag' the page in a post on your own Wall. To 'tag' a page, you need to Like it first, then when you start typing your update, type '@' before the blog's page name. The name should appear in a drop down menu and will appear highlighted in blue - or 'tagged' in your update. This means that your post contains a direct link to that page, and will usually appear on that page's wall. After doing this, leave a comment on the blog to say you Like the page (along with your Facebook name).
Subscribe to *blog name* by email - There will be a box on the blog to add your email address (it's to the right on my blog) - you will receive an email confirming your subscription and you will need to click on the link in the email to activate your subscription. Leave a comment to say "I subscribe by email."
Follow *blog name* using Networked Blogs Access blogs on Facebook using Networked Blogs - click 'Follow this blog' and then Connect via Facebook to activate.
Visit the sponsor's website and answer a question about it - There will be a link to the sponsor's website, and you might need to choose your prize, or your favourite item - return to the blog and comment with a description or a link.

Other entry requirements can include:

Follow the sponsor on Twitter
Like the sponsor on Facebook
Share the competition link on Facebook
Blog about the competition
Add a badge to your blog linking to the competition
Comment on any of the blogger's other posts

The important thing to remember when entering blog competitions is making sure you're contactable! Most bloggers will get in touch with their winner by email or a Twitter Reply. If you've set up a Google Friend Connect profile, include an email contact on your page (see my profile as an example) - if you haven't done this, and you don't have a Twitter account, you will need to include your email in a comment on the blog - if you're concerned about spammers then write it as 'di (dot) coke (at) me (dot) com', for example.Some bloggers want their competition entrants to be regular readers of their blog, and so they will announce you as the winner in a blog post and ask you to get in touch within a certain amount of time. To make sure you don't miss an announcement, you should search for your name at www.google.com/reader every couple of days!

Using Rafflecopter

A new way of running a blog competition is Rafflecopter, which might look a bit complicated at first glance, so here's a video explaining how to use it:

How to Enter Rafflecopter Giveaways from Rafflecopter on Vimeo.

For a Rafflecopter competition, there will be one or more mandatory entry methods, with instructions. When you have completed these, click 'I Did It' to register your email address - you can then complete the optional entries. There may be an option to tweet a link daily, so if it's a prize you really want you could do this for extra entries. If you're entering a Rafflecopter giveaway, you leave your email address with every entry (it won't be published), which means that there shouldn't be any issues with the blogger being unable to contact you. With some Rafflecopter promotions, you won't need to have a Google, Twitter or Facebook account to enter - if you like, you can just specify one mandatory entry method, which is to leave a comment on your blog.

Where to find blog competitions
Your first stop should be my monthly SuperLucky Blog Comp Linkys, which you can access through the two links at the top right of my blog - I update the lists to remove expired comps every few days. You can also search for blog comps at www.theprizefinder.com or search on Twitter - but watch out with Twitter as you might pick up giveaways that aren't open to UK readers!

Once you start following blogs you will have lots of posts in your Google Reader and can search it regularly for the word 'win' to find the giveaways.

If you want to race through your comps quickly then blog giveaways probably won't suit you - try to stop and have a browse of the blog rather than just comp and go! Through entering giveaways I have found some wonderful blogs and made some very good friends. If you're lucky enough to win a prize, be patient - remember that bloggers don't get paid to blog, and that they often have busy family lives so they might not be able to get back to you immediately - often the problem can be with the PR company who are posting the prize on!

Making voting competitions fairer

2011-10-13T16:50:00.001+01:00

It's time to revisit the topic of online voting competitions. Since I blogged about them in February (see 'When Voting Competitions Go Wrong') there have definitely been improvements, with more promoters introducing judged or random prizes, and some offering prizes for voters too. We're seeing a lot less of the 'pure voting' competitions that offer one big prize to the entrant with the most votes, but there are still issues with vague terms and conditions that don't mention what is acceptable in terms of how the entrant may source their votes. Promoters are still wearing blinkers and naively won't accept the lengths that people will go to for a prize - yes, people really do create fake Facebook accounts, buy votes online, and steal photos, recipes and stories from copyrighted websites, knowing that they can get enough votes to win regardless of whether they've created the entry themselves!

Because it's so easy to cheat, I believe there's no way a 'pure' voting competition can be fair. If a promoter expects their fans to spend time and effort on a photo, video or recipe then the least they can do is apply some form of judging - in an ideal world all creative competitions would be completely judged. The problem with this is that judged competitions won't attract as much traffic to a Facebook page as a voting competition will. And with the public fancount and 'talking about this' statistics on every Facebook fan page, these figures are more relevant than ever to PR and marketing agencies as the sign of a successful promotion - whereas actually, it's much better for a company to attract a few loyal fans than a thousand Asian vote-swappers!

As good examples of alternatives to voting competitions, Tesco and Argos launched completely judged creative competitions in the Summer which had a great response - they achieved this through offering daily prizes. For the Argos competition, entrants uploaded a photo featuring the new Argos catalogue and the most creative photo was chosen everyday to receive a £50 voucher. Tesco invited entrants to choose a prize from their online catalogue, and add a reason why they should win it. Every hour from 9am-5pm for a week Tesco chose their favourite entry to win their specified prize. This created a real buzz on Facebook and the winning entries were very original and creative. These promotions were successful because of the daily element, because fans could enter every draw - and because the pages had thousands of fans so the word spread quickly!

But it's not all bad news with voting competitions, as promoters are finding ways to make them a little bit fairer...

Most voting competitions now include a judged element, either:

Before the voting (eg. a shortlist of 20 went to public vote in the Jamaica Ginger Cake recipe competition, a shortlist of 10 in the Cafe Collection video competition) - if the competition has a good response the promoter should be assured of a quality winner if all the entries are judged. Ideally, every shortlisted entry should get a prize.

After the voting (eg. a winner is chosen from the six most popular entries in the Crock-Pot recipe competition, and the top ten in the Duck and Cover model competition) - the promoter will get more traffic to the site with this method, but if judging is limited to just the top few there might not be a decent entry in there.

Alongside the voting (eg. Mecca Bingo gave the three most popular videos in their Bingo Lingo comp big cash prizes, whilst awarding their 5 favourite videos each week £100 vouchers, and in the Ecover photo comp, they are awarding iPad2s to both their favourite and the most voted entries) - with this method, I recommend giving the bigger prize to your chosen winner and a smaller prize to the most popular entry.

Other promoters have introduced a random element:

Campbells recipe competition gave a prize daily to a random entrant, whilst the recipe with the most votes won a knife block.

Or given prizes to the voters:

Fab gave digital cameras to random voters in their 'Fab Den' competition

Whilst some offered prizes to early entries, to create an early buzz:

No Fear gave £50 cash to the first 20 videos uploaded to their Fearless Fred competition

Cafe Collection gave a case of wine to the first ten video entries

Now for the bad news - let's look at some recent case studies that haven't run very smoothly:

Westfield Stratford City disqualified their 'Create Your Take' winner after it materialised that some of their votes were from fake Facebook profiles. Facebook fans responded by posting up 'evidence' that the replacement winner had cheated too. The situation meant that the announcement of the winners became a slanging match, which put a dampener on the occasion for the eight 'blogger's choice' judged winners.

Fab Ice Lollies ran their 'Design a Den' competition again this year and shortlisted 15 entries. These then went to a public vote with prizes for voters, but during the early stages of the competition the promoter decided to hide the vote counts. It also became clear that by refreshing the browser, people could vote multiple times. Fab refused to confirm whether these multiple votes counted towards the total scores and when the winners were announced many people weren't convinced by the fairness of the results.

Grand Marnier invited Facebook fans to upload a photo of a sunset for their competition. Generously, the most popular 200 photos won a Grand Marnier goody bag, whilst the photo with the most votes would bag a trip to Paris plus spending money. Despite many people warning the promoter about the perils of voting on their Facebook page, the top two photos managed to suspiciously gain over a thousand votes, way more than the other entries. Just a few days before the closing date, Grand Marnier decided to change the rules and recruited an independent judge to pick the winner.

Crock-pot are running a recipe competition where the six most popular entries will win £250 Abel and Cole vouchers, and one overall recipe will be chosen to win £1500 vouchers and a cookery course. Of the current top ten entries, five of them are taken directly from recipe sites including Jamie Oliver and BBC Good Food, despite the rules stating the recipe must be their own. Crock-pot have stated all shortlisted entries must comply with their T&Cs, but if this competition was judged on merit this wouldn't be an issue. Some people really have no qualms about public cheating on Facebook - they know they are able to get votes so it doesn't matter what they enter into the competition!

SeaSalt Clothing invited fans to send in photos to represent Summer and created a gallery for voting on their Facebook page. The gallery contained professional photos, stolen photos, Winter photos... and the fans weren't happy! (scroll down to see the comments under the gallery!) - needless to say, the photo of people in Winter coats at Lulworth Cove won the prize hamper!

Mercedes recently ran a competition to win a Vito van; ten shortlisted entrants went head to head to try and get the most votes. It soon materialised that the two frontrunners had been buying votes on websites www.fivesquids.co.uk and www.microworkers.com. The third placed contestant Sarah blogged about the issue, and eventually Mercedes changed the rules and disqualified the vote buyers - but also disqualified Sarah for asking for votes on the www.getonlinevotes.com forum. Not great PR for Mercedes.

Some of these situations may have been avoided if the promoters had spent a little more effort on writing the terms and conditions. If promoters do insist on running a voting competition, here are some terms and conditions that might help to avoid these problems - ensure these rules are easily accessible to all entrants.

The promoter reserves the right to disqualify any entrants who have used the following methods to gain votes:

- creation of fake or multiple Facebook profiles

- offering any type of compensation (monetary or otherwise) in exchange for votes

- using 'Vote Exchange' forums

- using robotic or automatic devices

Promoters should monitor the voting and investigate any suspicious activity such as a rapid increase in votes, or a lot of votes from Facebook members in a certain area of the world. They should regularly search for links to the competition on Google and Facebook in case they have been posted in Exchange forums.

Promoters could also introduce a clause along the lines of:

Finalists will be chosen based on a combination of public votes received and the preference of an independent judging panel.

So, if the most popular story simply isn't suitable or of a high enough standard to make the shortlist, they have the option to exclude it. In this case though, the most popular entrants may become rather annoyed - it would be best to specify the exact percentages of public and judge voting that make up the final scores.

To discourage plagiarism, add a clause similar to:

We reserve the right to reject photos/recipes/stories that are not the entrant's original work or not in the spirit of the competition

If a promoter doesn't want to go down the 'creative' or voting route, they could launch an imaginative and original viral campaign like these recent competitions:

Innocent Drinks Fruit Field Trips - invite three Facebook friends to join your holiday postcard. If all 3 accept you're entered into the draw to win a holiday. You can invite as many friends as you like, with each completed postcard getting you another entry into the prize draw. The viral effect is achieved by automatic wall posts.
Kleenex Lost Box - a clever weekly Facebook game. Inviting friends to join your team, you plot pins on a map to try and locate the 'Lost Box'. With a full squad of 4 members, you have a possible 28 pins a week to help you get a 100% score. Every team with 100% is entered into the weekly prize draw to win a £250 prize for each member of the team! This encouraged people to invite friends, as well as logging into the Kleenex App daily to ensure a good score.

Most people on Facebook will have 3 friends that they can ask to join a competition without feeling they're harassing them. When it comes to asking for votes from 100+ friends, now that's spamming!

I hope this information has been useful - please read in conjunction with my older post on How to Run a Voting Competition and do email me with any queries.

A foodie weekend in Paris

2011-10-07T22:15:00.000+01:00

Ah, Paris. Surely the most famous of romantic destinations? And of course the ideal choice for me and Mr Coke to spend our first weekend away from the boy... We crept out of Nana's house at 6.30am, drove the 15 minutes to Ebbsfleet and hopped on the Eurostar for our 2 hour journey to Gare du Nord. Now THAT'S what I call civilised!

Whereas for some people, a climb up the Eiffel Tower and cultured browsing in the Louvre would have been on the 'must do' list, my own notes consisted of a list of restaurants, and the word CHEESE at the top in capital letters. On the Friday we had booked to dine at l'Arpège, which I was super excited about. Luckily Rob checked the prices online beforehand and swiftly changed our booking to lunch when he saw that dinner would cost us the price of a small car. We had a splendid tasting menu which consisted of mainly vegetable dishes from their garden - a wonderful gazpacho soup, fresh tomato salad, herb ravioli - plus a monkfish or chicken main course, apple millefeuille and a fascinating cheese selection which included something that tasted like manure. Yes, really.

There was also a selection of rudely shaped marrow and squash table decorations which became much more amusing as my wine intake increased...

The following day we decided we really should make the effort to see some famous sights, so we paid our €26 each for an Open Top bus tour. Two hours later, I knew everything there was to know about Paris (did you know that 'on the Champs Elysees you can buy everything from cars to video tapes' - wow, video tapes!) and I'd also acquired a suntan. Marvellous! We disembarked and fought our way through the shopping tourists at Galleries Lafayette to find a cosy little arcade called Passage de Panoramas where we dined on some fabulous Lyonnaise sausages and goats cheese.

In the evening we climbed up to Sacré Coeur with what seemed like a thousand other people, and sat drinking Carlsberg as the sun went down and teenagers played guitars - it brought back happy memories of sitting in the Sacred Space at Glastonbury Festival!

We had a big night planned for Saturday, a dinner at the 'world's 9th best restaurant' - according to Restaurant magazine - Le Chateaubriand. It's notoriously difficult to get a table there but Mr Coke somehow managed to cajole Sat Bains ('celebrity' chef and fellow Lenton resident) into organising it for us via Twitter. How very modern! When we arrived there at 9pm after a stroll through an area called 'Belleville' - a particularly inappropriate name! - it was heaving and we started to have a small panic. But then Sebastian greeted us with 'Oh you must be Sat's friends!' - well, THAT made us feel very special indeed. The restaurant was small and lively, with an open kitchen and the skinny staff running around like their pants were on fire whilst the queue outside the entrance grew longer. We had a tasting menu which included such delights as duck heart, squid in black ink, tuna, consommé (with coffee beans!) and mushrooms in chocolate - it was certainly unusual. The waiters were charming and the wine was lush... unbelievably though, there was only one loo and people were queuing for it almost into the kitchen...which I found hilarious - again, probably as a result of a bit too much alcohol.

So, our final meal in Paris was Sunday lunch - Sebastian at Chateaubriand had recommended a place called Le Verre Volé in Marais, near the canal. It was teeny, and we enjoyed yet another splendid feast - carpaccio of grey mullet and raspberries, squid, beef, stingray, fine wine and yet more young skinny waiters (honestly, Paris is full of them!).

In terms of tips for Paris, all I can say is - take a lot of Euros with you. Luckily our trip was a prize from Lending Stream, so all we paid for were our expensive meals - but of course, they were worth every penny!

This post is an entry for the Travelizer competition, and below is a blog hop that you can add your entry to, and then copy the code to add to your own blog - I look forward to reading your travel tales...

Travelizer Bloggers comp: win an £800 European break!

2011-10-07T08:45:00.000+01:00

Ah, how I love to travel. But there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I'm paying full price for anything. In fact, on the rare occasion I actually have to pay for a holiday I spend ages scouring the web for the best bargains and ensuring I never have to suffer the awful feeling of being ripped off.

Travelizer is a new travel comparison website "dedicated to hunting down fabulous deals from the far-flung corners of the web" - and to celebrate their imminent launch, they've set us a blogging challenge with a chance of winning a European break!

Entering the competition is easy peasy:

Write a minimum of 150 words on your favourite holiday destination and include a photo

Publish it on your blog before 4 November 2011

Email oliver@travelizer.co.uk with a link to your blog post

The prize is £800 to spend on a European break, and the winner will be chosen at random from everyone who takes part. To be eligible your blog must have been created before 1 September 2011 - read more terms and conditions at www.travelizer.co.uk. If starting a blog is something you're not sure about, do read my post about the benefits of blogging for compers - there are regular comps just for bloggers, including the current Love The Garden one!

If you take part I would LOVE to read your travel tales, so at the end of my entry - which you can read here - I've added a Blog Hop Linky so we can share our posts. Bon voyage!

My page 3 fella!

2011-10-06T16:17:00.001+01:00

You know how the local paper loves a happy story? Well after being bumped from the Friday, Saturday and Monday editions due to murder verdicts and Forest losing Steve McLaren, my boy made an appearance on page 3 of Tuesday's Nottingham Post with a story all about how the little chef won us a trip to Italy!

I blogged about the Garofalo pasta competition in July after seeing it on Madhouse Family Reviews, and we loved making our Purple Swamp Pasta with beetroot:

Purple Swamp Pasta (serves 2 adults and 2 toddlers)2 beetroots
300g Garofalo Pazielle Pasta
200g mascarpone cheese
1 tbsp tomato puree
3-4 sage leaves, chopped

Boil the beetroot for 35 minutes, then peel and chop. Pop the beetroot, mascarpone, chopped sage and tomato puree into a blender and whizz until smooth. Boil the pasta for 13 minutes, drain and stir through the beetroot sauce. Serve with steamed broccoli 'trees'!

I honestly didn't think our simple recipe was good enough to win the prize as there were so many fabulous entries (including my favourite from Madam Luxe!) - but representatives from both Good Housekeeping and delicious. judged it as the top entry so we're proudly going to Sorrento on our holidays next year. Garofalo have also generously let us take mum-in-law as our 4th family member, so it will be a real family holiday, yay!

You can also check out the Nottingham Post article and photo online here.

Even if you're no Masterchef, it's definitely worth giving recipe competitions a go - it's fun to experiment in the kitchen, and if there's a chance of winning a prize then that's a real bonus! The main problem for me is that the meal gets cold whilst I'm faffing around trying to take the photos...

Keep an eye on my Super Lucky Facebook page for the latest recipe comps - and get your Milkshake, Chocolate, Nut, Mushroom and Ketchup recipes ready! (...click the ingredients for the comp links!)

Running a Blog competition

2011-10-04T13:53:00.000+01:00

With the growing popularity of Rafflecopter.com, I thought this an ideal time to outline how you can host a successful giveaway on your blog.

Running a contest, prize draw or competition on your blog is a great way to attract new visitors, whilst giving something back to your readers, and it will improve your blog's rank in Google search results. Often a company or PR agency will approach you with a prize, but you can also keep an eye on Twitter for requests, and if there are specific companies or products that you like, contact them directly. And of course, if you're crafty or have a shop, you can give away your own handmade goodies! I like to offer the winner a prize of their choice, such as something from Amazon or the Book Depository.

Prize photos
Incorporate a photo of the prize that will appear when your link is shared on Facebook. If it's a handmade prize then take a couple of good photos of it, in daylight if possible. If it's something else then do a Google Search on large photos of that product - you could even design a graphic that adds 'WIN!' to a photo of the prize.

Entry requirements
Many blog competitions require one or two compulsory methods of entry, and then optional extra entries.

The most common entry methods are:

Leave a comment below (almost always compulsory)
Follow on Google Friend Connect (usually compulsory)
Follow on Networked Blogs
Subscribe to your blog via email
Follow you on Twitter
Follow (prize/product) on Twitter
Tweet a link to the competition
Like your Facebook page
Like (prize/product) page on Facebook
Share the competition link on Facebook
Tag the blog page in a Facebook status

Note: Although Facebook Promotion Guidelines aren't clear on this, I also think it's fine to ask fans to LIKE a page, tag your Facebook page in a post, or comment on your wall as an extra entry, as long as entry into the draw is not conditional on doing so.

For more complicated giveaways you might ask the entrant to:

Blog about your competition

Add a badge to their blog linking to your competition

Comment on any of your other blog posts

My favourite giveaways require the entrants to answer a question, for example:

What will you buy if you win?

What's your best cleaning horror story?

What's your favourite bedtime story and why?

Asking a question should ensure that the entrant would really like the prize, rather than someone who is passing by and quickly wants to pop their name in a comment and then scoot off. Asking them to choose their own prize from a website is a good idea - this will increase traffic to the company's website (the company or PR agency will be pleased about this!) and also encourages a bit more interaction with your readers.

There are three ways you can add your giveaway to a blog post.

1. Ask people to leave each entry as a separate comment
This is the traditional method of running a blog giveaway. To use this method, manually list the entry requirements as bullet points to make it easier for people to follow, separating the compulsory actions from the optional ones. Don't ask people to do too many; if you run regular competitions then perhaps you could rotate the requirements and pop a couple of different ones on each giveaway - Twitter for one, Facebook for another for example. If you use Blogger, try not to ask people to leave their email address in their comment - spambots can pick this up. If you set up Disqus commenting on your blog this will make it easier to monitor and reply to posts - Disqus involves much social interaction with Facebook and Twitter which will result in more exposure for your blog. IntenseDebate is another commenting option. After the closing date, you can use random.org to choose a winning comment - when you've selected your winner, do check that that person has completed all the steps they claim to have done before announcing the results!

2. Using Rafflecopter

The free Rafflecopter web application makes it easy for you to add giveaways to your blog - once you've done one, you can base future competitions on the same template. Advantages of Rafflecopter are that every entry includes contact details (without email addresses being published), and that it chooses and publishes your winner for you. Many bloggers have trouble contacting their winning entrant - they don't use Twitter, or have no email on their Google profile - and as Rafflecopter requests an email address for every entry, this solves that problem. Rafflecopter is still invite only at the moment, but you can put your name on a waiting list, or contact me for an invite code to use. You can see an example of a Rafflecopter giveaway on my blog here, and here's a handy video on how to set up your promotion:

Rafflecopter Demo from Rafflecopter on Vimeo.

3. Setting up Entry forms using Google Docs

Google docs are really useful for promotions - you can set up simple competition entry forms which can be used on blogs or on Facebook (see my post about running a Facebook competition), and Google will update a spreadsheet of entries for you. You can check out some great step-by-step instructions for using Google Docs to set up a form for your giveaway at Family Friendly Frugality - this is a useful method if you want to run a simple email prize draw rather than restricting your competition to entrants with Twitter, Google or Facebook accounts.

Rules
It's essential to have rules. You should explain:

Entry restrictions, eg. This giveaway is open to UK residents only. I would also recommend adding 'Automated/bulk entries and entries from third parties are not permitted'.

Closing date and time, eg. 31 October 2011 at 11.59pm GMT

How you will choose the winner. Explain whether you are choosing the winner at random. If you want to judge the competition then you can't ask people to make 'extra' entries, as these won't have any influence on the outcome. You should ask an independent judge to choose a winner to a tiebreaker question, rather than choose it yourself, to make it fair.

How you will contact the winner. Will you post it on your blog and ask them to contact you, or will you contact them via Twitter or email? If it's the former, state in the rules how long you will give them to contact you before you draw another winner. If it's the latter, you will need to ensure every entrant knows to leave a method of contact - if they don't use GFC (or haven't added an email to their profile) or Twitter then they will need to leave an email address in the comment.

Promoting your giveaway

If your competition is open to UK or worldwide entries then you can add it to my SuperLucky Linkys, the current ones can always be accessed from the top right of my blog - remember to add the closing date!

Submit competitions to a competition listings site - in the UK, you can use The Prizefinder

Post up links to your blog giveaway on Facebook - tag the promoter/prize if possible

Tweet links to your competitions

Network with other bloggers and ask if they will retweet you, or if you can share it on their Facebook walls.

After the competition has ended
When the competition has closed, add 'CLOSED' to the end of your blog post title, as people may still find it in search results. Announce the winner in a blog post or a Tweet.Check with the company when the prize has been posted, and ask the winner to confirm receipt.

Thankyou for reading, and good luck with your giveaways!
This is an expanded version of my guest post at A Bit of this and a Bit of that.

Win a Dune Lindy Handbag - CLOSED

2011-10-04T12:43:00.002+01:00

Recently I was lucky enough to win an amazing prize from Woman magazine - nine handbags! Much as I love a good handbag, I dont really need nine new ones, so as well as putting several aside for Christmas gifts, I'm giving one away here on my blog! It's a Dune Lindy Shopper bag, in tan and measuring 24x21x12cm. You can check it out here - it retails for £55.

I'm using a new system called Rafflecopter to run my giveaway. This means that even if you don't have a Twitter, Facebook or Google account you can still take part - the only mandatory entry is to leave a comment on my blog to tell me what unusual item you would put in your new handbag. If you choose an 'anonymous' profile to make your comment, please ensure you include your name in your comment.

When you've left a comment click 'I did this' and you will be asked to leave your name and a contact email address (which won't be made public). There are plenty of optional entries - you can do as many as you like, just click 'I Did This' after each one. Each one you complete gives you an extra entry into the draw.

You can watch a video on how to enter Rafflecopter giveaways on their blog - and do read my post on How to enter a blog competition if you need a bit more help!

This giveaway will end on 31st October - good luck!

A gazpacho recipe for the Lovethegarden tomato competition

2011-10-03T12:57:00.000+01:00

Last month I was lucky enough to visit Paris and dined at the magnificent L'Arpège restaurant - their tasting menu is almost completely vegetarian and we enjoyed this incredible salad of mixed tomatoes as part of our meal (photo courtesy of Food Snob):

It really inspired me to use more tomatoes in my cooking, so when I returned to the UK and saw the weather forecast I decided to make the ultimate Summer soup - gazpacho! And conveniently, fab gardening blog LovetheGarden.com are currently running a tomato recipe competition - check it out at www.lovethegarden.com/blog/a-taste-for-tomatoes-a-recipe-blog-competition - and get your tomato recipes blogged before 19 October 2011 to be in with a chance of winning £200 to spend at a restaurant of your choice, or copies of James Ramsden's cookbook.

I didn't stray too far from the classic gazpacho recipe, but I omitted the onions (I find them too strong) and replaced fresh bell peppers with flavour-packed roasted piquillo peppers, which you can find in a jar in your local big supermarket!

Ingredients (serves 4):
1kg very ripe tomatoes
3 roasted piquillo peppers
1 medium cucumber
3 cloves of garlic
100g crusty white bread
2tbsp sherry vingar
150ml extra virgin olive oil
salt

Method:
1. Soak the bread in cold water for 15 minutes, and dice the tomatoes.

2. Dice the cucumber and pepper, and crush the garlic

3. Mix the tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, garlic, olive oil and sherry vinegar in a blender

4. Squeeze out the bread, tear into small pieces and add to the mixture.

5. Blend until smooth, then add salt to taste and stir well.

6. Sieve the mixture (make sure you wear an apron!) and refrigerate until super chilled.

7. Serve with a garnish of chopped flat leaf parsley and almond-stuffed olives

...the perfect soup for our October heatwave!

Blog Comp Linky: November 2011

2011-10-02T22:48:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my blog comp linky for competitions that are closing in NOVEMBER 2011. If you're hosting a giveaway please add it to the list, including the prize and the closing date - and your blog name if you can fit it in! You can access this post and the OCTOBER linky via the links on the right hand side bar.

Please note, competitions MUST be hosted on a blog and they should be open to UK entries. For advice on running blog comps and more info about Rafflecopter check out this blog post.
If you want to enter these competitions but aren't sure how, check out my post on How to Enter a Blog Competition for advice!

Don't forget to add your blog giveaway to www.theprizefinder.com too!

Facebook Account Disabled - a warning!

2011-09-28T20:00:00.000+01:00

I returned home from a lovely afternoon stroll with Ryland to find my Mac asking me to log in to Facebook. Funny I thought, as I never usually log out... I tried to log in only to be greeted by 'Account Disabled'.

I clicked through to see why:

Fake accounts are a violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. All accounts must abide by the following policies:
You must provide your real first name and last name.Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited.
You are not allowed to create multiple accounts that exist solely for the usage of Facebook Platform applications.
It is a violation of Facebook policy to maintain more than one account on the site.
Profiles (timelines) created to represent celebrities, pets, ideas, or inanimate objects are strictly prohibited.
Profiles (timelines) created for the purpose of spamming or harassing others are strictly prohibited.
People on Facebook want to interact with their real friends and the people they know in the real world. Since fake accounts can damage the integrity of this environment, they are not allowed to remain on the site.

It seems that finally Facebook are actially starting to enforce their policy about multiple accounts and fake profile names. The problem is - my name Di Coke is real, and I only have one Facebook account! And it's not the abbreviation that's the issue, as their policy states:Nicknames can be used as a first or middle name if they're a variation of your real first or last name (like Bob instead of Robert)

So what happened? Well, I think it's one of two things - either someone has reported my account as being fake, or Facebook are having a clampdown on the use of brand names. Either way, I deserved a warning first, before they disabled my account and took down my SuperLucky fan page. In addition to that, I can't access the four pages I'm an Administrator on - and nobody is able to contact me via Facebook. As a Blogger and Social Media Manager, this is a major blow. It's been three hours since they disabled my account and I hope this is sorted ASAP. Until then, if you need to, you can contact me via Twitter or email.

And to those of you reading this who have two Facebook accounts or use comping nicknames - take this as a warning! If your account gets disabled you'll need to upload ID showing your real name to reactivate it, and I don't think many of you have passports with the name 'Lucky MSE Turnips' on do you?!

Guest post for JoJoEbi's New Skills Festival!

2011-09-27T09:03:00.000+01:00

Today I'm delighted to point you in the direction of the wonderful A Bit of This and a Bit of That to read my guest post on how to run a giveaway on your blog as part of JoJoEbi's New Skills Festival. There's a guest post every day featuring loads of brilliant crafty things for you to check out too... enjoy!

JoJoEbi and I met at University many moons ago, while we both studied Electronic Imaging and Media Communications at Bradford. I couldn't ask for a finer best friend, although rather inconsiderately she lives in Japan - hence my constant attempts to win holidays there!

Whilst the other alumni have progressed onto amazing things like Forensic Science and working as cameramen in Alaska, Jo and I have randomly ended up as Mum Bloggers on opposite sides of the world! I like to think that my recent success in video competitions is down to our late nights in the editing suite putting the finishing touches to masterpieces like 'George Bear's Birthday Party' . And of course there was the infamous time we had to work in teams to film a sporting event - notoriously lazy, Jo and I opted to film a chess match...

If you write a blog then competitions are a great way to recruit new followers and create a buzz - I hope my guest post at Jo's blog will give you some good tips. Next on the agenda is a video tutorial on how to enter blog comps so stay tuned!

Say NO to Automated Competition Entry Services!

2011-09-21T14:20:00.000+01:00

I'm currently working together with Accolade (publishers of Compers News magazine) and Loquax to educate compers and promoters about why Automated Competition Entry Services are a bad thing. We want websites and promoters to BAN these entries from their competitions, by including a short line in their terms and conditions: “automated/bulk entries and entries from third parties are not permitted”.

Loquax have several interesting blog posts about Automated Entry Services, and Compers News featured an 'Ask the Experts' article in May about why compers shouldn't go near them. If you're not aware of these services, please read on to find out why they're spoiling our hobby...

What are Automated Entry Services?

Subscribers pay a fee to be entered automatically in hundreds of competitions each month

Examples are www.win24.co.uk, www.prizewise.co.uk, www.prizedrawcentre.co.uk and www.wewin4u.co.uk

As an example, check out the list of current competitions that Prize Draw Centre will enter you in at http://www.prizedrawcentre.co.uk/competitions-to-win-prizes.php

Your opinion may well be: 'Ah well, I won't enter any of those competitions because with thousands of automated entries I won't have a chance of winning!'. But with such great prizes on offer, why should we let these companies get away with spoiling our hobby?

Along with Loquax and Accolade, we're making a point of telling promoters why they shouldn't be allowing these automated entries - and I hope you'll support us!

Why compers shouldn't pay to use Automated Entry Services:

You can't choose the prizes you are entered for.

You're paying to be entered into some prize draws where the promoter actually specifies in the Terms and Conditions that automated entries will be disqualified

You have no proof that you’re actually being entered for any competitions at all

You may find yourself entered for competitions on dodgy websites that you normally wouldn’t touch with a bargepole - leading to spam and junk mail

You won't have any of the excitement that comes with finding and entering comps!

You could disqualify yourself by submitting your own entry to a draw that you've already been automatically entered in

How do Automated Entry Services affect compers?

As a comper, if you enter a prize draw that's on the hitlist of any of these automated entry services, that competition will get thousands of extra entries meaning the chance of you winning will be minimal.

How do Automated Entry Services affect promoters?

As a promoter, your competition entrants aren't visiting or interacting with your website
Your prizes are going to people who probably won't appreciate them - surely you should be awarding your prizes to people who actually visit your site?

How promoters can stop this happening:

Include “automated/bulk entries and entries from third parties are not permitted” in the terms and conditions
Consider using a Facebook App to host competitions - Automated Entry Services can't access Facebook accounts, so this would be a deterrent
Ask entrants to complete a tiebreaker or upload a photo/video - these types of competition will also forge a better relationship with your real fans

How compers can make a difference

If you enter an online prize draw, read the rules. If you don't see anything mentioning automated entries, email the promoter and ask them to include this text in their terms and conditions: “automated/bulk entries and entries from third parties are not permitted”

Here is an email template you can use (based on Loquax's original) - or you could edit it yourself so it's more relevant to a particular promoter.

Dear (promoter/website)

I entered a competition on your website today, but noticed in the terms and conditions that you don't mention entries from third parties, bulk entries or automated entry services.

Automated entry services allow thousands of paid subscribers to enter competitions without visiting the websites at all - often they don't know what competitions they are entered in, and will have no use for the prize. There's an example list of websites that are targeted at http://www.prizedrawcentre.co.uk/competitions-to-win-prizes.php

This is a real shame for the people who do visit your website and would genuinely love to win a prize! Many websites are now adding “automated/bulk entries and entries from third parties are not permitted” to their rules and I wonder if you might consider doing the same?

Kind regards
(name)

Just as promoters will insist on running voting competitions, I doubt that we will ever see the end of Automated Entry Services. But just as many of us have done with constant blogging, Facebook posts and advice to promoters on voting, we do have the power to make websites aware of the existence of these services - and can advise them on changing the rules to disqualify them!

Comping should be a fun hobby and we need to keep it that way - please Share this post to spread the word!

What's your memorable mobile moment?

2011-09-19T14:13:00.001+01:00

TalkMobile have just launched a great competition called 'Mobile Moments' - now I don't usually devote a blog post to a solitary competition but the Flash website is clever and cute, with bouncing balls that change size depending on the popularity of your story, so from a designer's point of view I think it deserves your attention! And of course there are fab prizes to be won, and you need to make an effort to enter so it ticks all the right boxes for me.

To enter, visit www.mobilemoments.co.uk and upload a story (text or video) of a memorable mobile phone call, text or voicemail.

10 randomly selected entries will win a year of Spotify premium
The judges will choose ten finalists based on the most apt and original memorable mobile related moment - also taking into account the number of votes
The ten finalists will go to the public vote and five winners will receive either a BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 & BlackBerry® PlayBook™ bundle OR A Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Tab bundle.
Enter before 14 October 2011.

As you know, I'm not a big fan of voting competitions but because this one involves judging, prizes for random winners and there are five prizes for the finalists, I think they've made it reasonably fair. If you want to read my memorable moment, you can do so here. Good luck, and post your entries as a comment here if you like!

Bag a bargain subscription to Compers News!

2011-09-13T22:52:00.000+01:00

In a world of Facebook, Twitter and blogs, isn't it charming that people still get excited about a magazine dropping through the letterbox onto their doormat? I know I do!

This week Compers News have launched a special subscription offer for a £9.99 three month trial or a £17.50 six month trial - to order, just CLICK HERE! Now, of course I'm biased. After ten years of subscribing, I recently joined Compers News as the designer, and I also write a monthly column on the joys of online comping - so you can understand my enthusiasm for this splendid magazine!

Here's a few reasons you should give it a go:

Compers News has a private online forum, but access is restricted to paying subscribers - meaning there are fewer of us than on free comping forums, and we can share a lot more information about elusive low-entry competitions. Steve the editor has a knack of finding on-pack SMS and instant win competitions and giving us the tip off so we can win those early prizes. Recently 100 washing machines were offered in a Sainsbury's text competition - a Chatterbox member posted up the details at the very start of the promotion, and forum members literally cleaned up by winning the majority of the prizes.

the listings are extensive, accurate and include loads of comps you won't find elsewhere - this is because Steve is the hardest working man in comping. Seriously, I don't think he sleeps. In the morning I have an email from him at 4am just before he goes to bed, and another at 7am when he gets up!

there are loads of subscriber-only prizes, ranging from puzzle and slogan comps to cash and vouchers for your comping letters and photos.

if your story is chosen for the monthly Star Comper page, you will win £100 - and I know that loads of my blog readers have got fabulous comping tales to tell (yes, I've seen the Facebook photos!)

it's researched, written and designed entirely by compers, with excellent advice from successful winners like Jane Willis (@janesgrapevine) and Pam Crampton. So you know it's good!

OK, so there you have it. Spend £9.99, get three issues, write a letter, email a photo, enter a few comps, and you've won your subscription money back - and if you haven't, then maybe you should try a new hobby!

Subscribe to Compers News here, find out more at www.compersnews.com or Like the Compers News Facebook Page for the latest news!

Creative comp round up: Sept 2011

2011-09-11T15:03:00.000+01:00

There are so many inspiring, fun and downright daft competitions about at the moment I thought I should do you a round up of them all. If you enter any of these, feel free to post a link to your entry here or over at the SuperLucky Facebook page! Don't forget if these are the type of comps you enjoy, you'll find links to all of them (and more!) by scrolling down through the Facebook page, and you can also search www.theprizefinder.com for recipe, photo or video competitions.

Photo comps
Argos are giving away a £50 voucher every day until 20 September 2011 to their favourite creative photo of an Argos Catalogue - you'll need to upload your photo using their 'Show us your Catalogue' Facebook App to enter. One of the 14 daily winners will also receive an iPad.

Win a 2 night break in a log cabin with Tyrrells Crisps - upload a photo of a bag of Tyrrells to their Facebook App by 20 September 2011. The 20 most popular photos will be judged on creativity, originality, technical quality, composition and brand relevance - there are only 13 entries so far so I don't think you'll need to worry too much about the voting element!

It's National Wear a Tea Cosy on your Head Day on 22 September, and White Stuff are giving away £200 vouchers to their favourite photo. Enter by emailing a photo of you to teacosy@whitestuff.com before 25 September 2011 - read more here.

Westfield Stratford City is opening this week and to celebrate they're running a 'Create Your Take' competition - upload a photo to their Facebook App in any of their 8 East End themed categories by 22 September 2011 and you can either go for the voting prize to win up to £10,000 cash (depending on the number of Facebook fans that Like the page), or aim for the spot prizes in each category which will be chosen by bloggers. The categories and spot prizes are unusual and I think this is a really inspired competition - to redeem most of the prizes you will need to live in the area though, so do read the rules and terms carefully. I decided to enter the Hoxton Fin category so if you like my take, please vote for me!

Hotels4U want you to take Harry on holiday with you and upload a photo to their Facebook App to win a £30 Snapfish gift certificate - print off Harry at the Facebook page! Closes 26 September 2011.

The Memorial Awareness Board have extended the deadline (no pun intended!) of their photography competition to 30 September 2011. To enter, submit photos of 'Then' and 'Now' stone memorials - the winner will get £1000. Read more here.

Win gold iPads, iPod, handbags and mugs in the Douwe Egberts Embarrassing Mugs competition on Facebook. The main prizes will go to the mugs with the most votes, but every week ten winners will be selected by the judges to receive a gold mug. Enter by uploading your photo to their Facebook App before 7 October 2011.

Knight Radio are giving away an iPod Touch to their favourite photo featuring the Knight Radio log - download it and read more details here. Enter before 14 December 2011.

Win an iPad2 by uploading a photo of Frumoo drink to their Facebook wall by 31 January 2012. Read more at their website. Thankyou to Facebook friend Amanda Letch for letting me know about this comp!

Video comps
Frank's Red Hot have launched a brilliant competition on YouTube - upload a video of you and your friends adding Frank's Original Red Hot Sauce to any kind of food, saying the tagline, 'I put that splat on everything!'. Entries will be judged on creativity, originality, use of food, technical quality, brand relevance and composition - so make sure you plan your entry carefully so when it comes to filming you can tick all the boxes! There are 5 prizes - a 42 inch Bravia TV, a 22 inch Sharp TV and 3 runners up get a £100 voucher to spend on spicy hot food! Closing date 31 October 2011 - read the detailed terms and conditions here.

ECar want you to upload your video confession at ecartruthordare.co.uk - the five most popular will win an iPad2. Enter before 1 October 2011.

Autoglass need people to star in their next TV ad, and are giving away iPad2s and possibly £3000 to successful auditionees! Upload a video - or a photo - of you with your car to their Faceook App - entries will be judged, and get them in before 2 October 2011.

The Mecca Bingo video competition is a great concept - they want new bingo calls, one for each number from 1-90, so are asking fans to upload their 'Bingo Lingo' videos to their Facebook page. The overall winner is decided on public votes and will win £1000 HIgh Street vouchers, and 2nd and 3rd most popular will win £700 and £300 vouchers. In addition to these prizes, Mecca are choosing their favourite 5 most original videos each week and rewarding them with £100 vouchers - the only downside is that you can only enter one video, so make sure you choose an unusual number so your entry stands out from the crowd. I reckon fancy dress or a silly location might bag you a prize too! Closing date for entries is 25 September 2011.

Recipe comps
Design a sandwich for the Co-operative competition and you could win £1000. Submit your entry online before 20 September 2011 - the Co-op will shortlist between 3-8 entries which will go to a public vote to decide the winner. Only enter this if you're prepared to work very hard at campaigning for votes, as there aren't any runners up prizes!

The Summer Casillero del Diablo Supper Club competition closes on 20 September 2011 - upload your recipe, pair it with one of their wines and you could win an afternoon at Cookery School with a wine tasting. Jane Willis (Comper's Grapevine) and I both won their Winter competition and you can read about what a wonderful time we had here.

Crock Pot want your slow cooker recipes, and are offering an amazing prize of a £2000 cookery course plus £1500 retailer vouchers for the best, with five runners up prizes of £250 Abel and Cole vegetable box deliveries and a new slow cooker. Upload your recipe and photo to their Crocktober Facebook App before 21 October 2011. Sadly, the competition winner and runners up will be the recipes with the most votes, and CrockPot as yet haven't explained why they are allowing plagiarised entries in the competition when the rules specifically state the entries should be your own original work. I've entered this red lentil and yogurt soup and would love to win a prize in this, so if you like my recipe you can vote for me here - thankyou!

Kids comps
Win a year's supply of Feel Good drinks and a Kickers Back to School kit by designing your own shoes - enter online here by 30 September 2011.

Design a Spooky Smoothie and you and your classmates could win a day at Innocent Towers plus £1000 for your school - read all the details at the First News website and enter before 7 October 2011.

Upload a video of your news to win Flip camcorders and other prizes in the British Council competition - enter before 15 October 2011.

Design a Travelbug and win a family holiday in Wiltshire, and your Travelbug made up! Download an entry form at www.traykittravelbug.com/ and enter before 31 October 2011. Thanks to blog reader Liz Denial for telling me about this one!

Design comps
Win 6 pairs of your own Pico shoe design with Route One - email your design for a Lakai Pica shoe to lakaimyway@routeone.co.uk before 30 September 2011 to enter - read more here.

Blog Comp Linky: October 2011

2011-09-07T23:23:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my blog comp linky for competitions that are closing in OCTOBER 2011. If you're hosting a giveaway please add it to the list, including the prize and the closing date - and your blog name if you can fit it in! You can access this post and the NOVEMBER linky via the links on the right hand side bar.

Please note, competitions MUST be hosted on a blog and they should be open to UK entries. For advice on running blog comps and more info about Rafflecopter check out this blog post.
If you want to enter these competitions but aren't sure how, check out my post on How to Enter a Blog Competition for advice!

Don't forget to add your blog giveaway to www.theprizefinder.com too!

Amazon Competition Winner!

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Thankyou to everyone who entered my competition on Facebook to win a prize of your choice from Amazon! Of the 421 that entered, I was amazed to see that almost half of the entrants didn't follow the instructions - I wanted an Amazon shortlink to a product costing less than £25, but I got lots of fabulous random answers like 'a babysitter', 'an engagement ring', 'a car' and 'not sure yet'. It might explain why a lot of you haven't been very lucky with your comping yet - it's worth taking a little time to read the rules and the terms and conditions!

This evening I collated all the entries into a spreadsheet and employed random.org to choose a winning number for me. That lucky number was 419, and you can imagine how delighted I was to see the dream prize of that particular entrant....

Congratulations Roger Stanley, you have won a Mankini! I'll contact you very soon for your address details - and I hope you won't get too chilly wearing it now that Winter is on its way...

As Roger's Mankini is on Amazon for the bargain price of £4.19 I will be using the rest of my £25 budget for another competition very soon - so keep an eye on the blog and the Facebook page for news!

Swiss Family: Rob and son!

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Back in June Toblerone promoted a great imaginative competiton for Fathers Day, where you had to upload a photo or video showing how your Dad solves problems round the house with a Toblerone bar. This kept Rob, Ryland and I busy for an entire Sunday and we were delighted when Toblerone chose our film 'How Daddy got my triangles back' as the winner of a three night stay in Switzerland. The trip was for two but we were able to pay the extra taxes to take Ryland along; it wouldn't have been the same without him!

We left Birmingham airport early last Wednesday morning. I was dreading the journey with a 20 month old: a 90 minute flight, 10 minute train journey from the airport, another 80 minute train journey and a 40 minute bus ride to Lenzerheide. The Swiss transport system was efficient and comfortable though, some trains even have a family zone for the little ones - and naturally the scenery is incredible!

We stayed at the Hotel Schweizerhof, whose tongue-in-cheek website and photography doesn't really show how fabulous it is. It's gorgeous, cosy, comfortable, modern and beautifully designed.

Our room was spacious and we were provided with robes and slippers - as was Ryland, who even had his own teddy bear!

That evening we all ate dinner together in the family restaurant, meals were part of the prize but we hadn't realised it would be a six course feast! Understandably Ry became increasingly impatient and we didn't make it past the fourth course. For the next two evenings we brought Ry down for an early tea and then utilised the hotel's free baby listening service when we returned to dine at a more leisurely pace later on! The Children's menu was fab and he was able to go into the kitchen to choose his ice-cream from the freezer. The buffet breakfasts were enormous, featuring plenty of delicious Swiss cheese!

Thursday morning was blighted with heavy rain so we took the opportunity to enjoy the hotel's wellness centre and family pool. It was fabulous, there was even a 'cave' where you could enjoy a tropical rain shower. That afternoon we walked round Lake Heidsee and used our complimentary pass on the Rothorn cable cars, where we were surrounded by clouds so didn't get much of a view, but the tasty Apfelstrudel made up for it!

Our prize voucher included a session in the hotel's amazing Turkish Bath with a Rhassoul mud pack and a 45 minute soap massage, which Rob and I took on alternate evenings. It was heaven!

On Friday the weather was beautiful so with suncream applied, we popped Ry in the rucksack and jumped on the chair lift to the mountaintop. It was a truly incredible view of the Alps in every direction, here are the boys posing with a Toblerone bar...

We spent a couple of hours walking down the mountain, Ry dozed off for part of it but livened up as soon as we stopped off at a restaurant and he spotted the Milka cows.

The hotel had swings, a slide, trampoline and loads of things to keep little ones entertained: they even offered a free kindergarten from 10am-5pm so parents could enjoy the spa; we took advantage of this on our last day before setting off on the long journey home. I'd honestly thought a 'luxury family' holiday was something of a contradiction but the Swiss Tourist board and The Hotel Schweizerhof have proved it can be done.

Thanks so much to Toblerone, Golin Harris and Christina at Switzerland Tourism for arranging this fabulous trip, we loved it!

If this amazing prize has inspired you to get comping, do check out the current promotion at mytoblerone.co.uk - the most creative Toblerone recipe uploaded will win an overnight stay at the Chocolate Boutique Hotel in Bournemouth pus a chocolate making workshop and £100 travel expenses. Entry closes on 30th September and you can read the terms and conditions here - good luck!

WOW, you messed with the wrong girl.

2011-09-05T21:11:00.000+01:00

You might have heard me screeching with delight a couple of weeks ago when WOW Toys announced me as the winner of £1000 in their video competition with a Facebook wall post and a Tweet. I then received this lovely email from their Marketing Executive:

Dear Diana,

WELL DONE!

Thank you for the great video; we all loved it here at the WOW HQ. We had a video judging session with all members of staff from international sales to Design to Marketing and PR and we all voted out of 10 on certain areas. Your video came in with the highest score with 306 points with the runner up having 285! I will contact you again to finalise the procedure of the £1,000 prize, but for now this is just to say congratulations and I hope you spend the money wisely, i.e on lots of WOW Toys ;)

Kind regards,

Matthew

Marketing Executive

As you can imagine I was enormously excited. If you enjoy my blog you'll know I love creative competitions - photos, recipes, videos, fancy dress and design - and it's such a wonderful feeling to know that as well as entertaining people, all the effort I put in can result in a prize as special as this. I decided the money would go towards a cottage holiday next Spring - and of course plenty more WOW Toys for Ryland!

A week later I received another email from Matthew:

Dear Diana

I am afraid I have some bad news. Our Financial Controller has triple checked the voting point scores for the WOW video competition and there has been a mistake in the initial addition of the scores. This has not happened before and I am really sorry to give you this news. It means that you are not the winner of the main prize. One of the other video entries is in fact the winner of the main prize with a higher point score. The competition is audited and we have to follow the strict rules and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.

Your video entry has won a runner up prize of £50 worth of WOW Toys. To choose which toys you would like please refer to the amazon.co.uk website and use the full price of each toy to make up a selection of toys up to the value of £50. Please email me your selection. Once again I am really sorry about what has happened but it is better to win something rather than nothing at all.

Best Regards,

Matthew

Can you imagine how I felt? Not only was this sent 7 days after I was officially announced as the winner, but it arrived in my inbox just before I went on holiday. Thanks a lot, WOW - great timing. I replied politely to Matthew asking for an explanation of the error, and asking why it took them a week to pick it up. I've worked as an auditor and the job involves a lot of paperwork and careful checking - so surely the scores should have been checked before any announcement was made, rather than a whole week later? Something doesn't seem right to me - call me paranoid but during the 24 hours prior to receiving this email, my blog post about the WOW competition had 10 views, compared to just 1 or 2 a day before that. Did someone tell them I was a 'comper', and perhaps after seeing my blog and competition successes they decided I didn't deserve the prize? I'd like to think that's not the case. Yes, I'm aware that mentioning my wins in public might affect my chances in competitions - but I don't get paid to write this blog, I do it because I love creative competitions and I want to inspire more people to enter them, so that promoters will run more of them!

I returned from holiday on Sunday and had received no reply from Matthew, so this morning I called him. Twice my calls were ignored and not returned, on the third occasion the phone was hung up, and finally Matthew decided to ask someone else to talk to me, who didn't seem to know much about the promotion at all. Indeed, when attempting to explain the error in the judging scores he actually described it to me as 'like a child's mistake' and informed me that nothing could be done.

This situation has arisen several times before on Facebook, where a winner has been announced incorrectly - but every time the promoter has quickly realised their mistake. In the two situations I personally have been involved in, the public votes had been miscounted. The promoters - Sweaty Betty and Wee Ride - doubled the prizes and gave one to their incorrectly announced winner and one to the real winner. They did this within an hour of realising an error had been made. With WOW Toys, I was led to believe I'd won £1000 for a whole week - and they still haven't had the guts to admit their mistake on Facebook and announce the real winner!

Over the last few days WOW have given away almost £400 of toys on their Facebook page, yet they can't acknowledge that they have made a huge mistake and offer me more than the £50 of toys I would have received as a runner up. That's BAD customer service. I spent time promoting this competition and I'm sure WOW wouldn't have had as many entries had I not blogged and tweeted about it, encouraging people to have a go.

One last thing - I'm delighted for the real winner of the £1000, I'm not sure if they've been told yet but I do hope it's one of my friends' excellent entries!

Update - 6th September 4pm
The Marketing Manager of WOW contacted me this afternoon to apologise and explain she had been on holiday and had not been contacted about the situation. She confirmed that my video had indeed scored the most points from the judges to win the competition, and that WOW would be rewarding both myself and the runner-up a £1000 prize - which she has since announced on their Facebook page. It's not a satisfactory explanation of the issues surrounding the scoring mistakes, but it does demonstrate the power of social media when it comes to righting a wrong, and I must thank everyone who took the time to read this post and get involved. Your support means a lot to me and I hope you continue to read my blog and enter the competitions I post. Comping is a fun hobby and I feel sad that recent cheating and voting scandals have spoilt it for those of us that are honest, genuine entrants. Be lucky!