COMPING: THE BEGINNING

***IN THE BEGINNING...***

Jan 30th 2017. That was the day I started 'comping'. Im not sure what exactly spurred me on- the down-time in between work, the boredom, being skint....but something inspired me to give it a go. I Googled 'competition win' and being the media type that I am, I found a video on YouTube about a guy that entered 1000 competitions as an experiment to find out how many he would win (I then looked at the name of the filmmaker and saw that it was made my my mates brother-in-law...small world eh?). It turns out that the guy won 4 out of the 1000- nothing major, but I was quite impressed at the odds. Surely I could do the same...its just statistics surely? I decided then to think of comping like an experiment: do the research, learn the tactics, play the odds.

After a bizarre session of YouTube spiralling I then also chanced upon the Queen of Compers herself- Di Coke! In the first video of hers I watched she was wearing a Dinosaur Jr t-shirt and had a haircut like Amelie: an instant hero. So, I watched her videos, plus others from the likes of Emma Gough (made for TV!), Lorna Beattie (a sweetheart) and Kim Plant (amazing comedy timing). I took on board all their advice (liked, subscribed, followed etc) and set about my first week of proper comping.

***WARNING: ROOKIE MISTAKES***

I found the MSE forum for compers: a veritable goldmine of (mainly) free-to-enter comps, just requiring your details. I entered a months worth in that first week and it was pretty exhausting! I didn't know how to put them in any order and so Im sure I entered a few comps twice by mistake. But after I had managed to catch up, I got in to a routine, entering the comps posted on that day (spending about 2 hours a night doing so). For the first 2 weeks I had also been entering under my nick-name, not realising that some of the T&C's state that you should use your legal name (especially for holiday comps...makes sense now really!), so I made sure that I changed the details on my 'autofill'. I also started on Twitter comps, but didn't find many at first, plus I didn't like using my personal account. On the compers advice sites (superlucky.me etc) they all say to set up a separate email for comping, and where possible, a different Twitter, Instagram etc. I foolishly didn't do this, and now further down the line I am suffering for this, with a tonne of emails and the occasional strange phone call...

***FIRST WINS***

My first win came 10 days in: a Dr Who book won from a prize draw in a sci-fi magazine, posted on MSE. I love Dr Who (the new series), so I was super pleased to have this as a first win. I doubted that I would ever get round to reading it, as Im not a big reader, but a lovely start anyway, plus I have a load of nerdy mates **COUGH** I mean sci-fi enthusiast friends who Im sure I could gift it to.

My second win came on Monday 13th Feb. "Congratulations you have won our Munch Bunch competition..."- a prize to take the family to see a concert and an overnight stay, worth £500. Awesome! Now, I don't have kids, unless you include my 2 fur babies, so I asked them whether I could take my mom and my sister instead. Thankfully they were totally cool with this and arranged for us to go watch 'The Mousetrap' in London's West End, with a stay in a 4* hotel and money towards travel. To date this is probably my favourite win (subject to change, obviously!), as it came around the time of my mom's 70th birthday and she was so super happy! I think from that moment I realised that this new hobby was not just great for getting me free stuff, but more so I now had the power to win lovely things for my friends and family. And I think right there, that was the one that got me hooked.

Love your hair, I hope you win!

Lexx,