JULY WINS
***STATS***
Comps Entered: approx 2200, plus approx. 200 Twitter RT's
Comps Won: 30
Ratio: 1:80 (vastly helped by the Android Pay/HSBC instant win competition)
Approx Prize Value: £1069
Longest Winning Streak: 4 Days Straight
Non-Comping Days: 6
Welcome to July: the month that saw the preparation, build-up and celebration of #InternationalLexxDay! You may have seen the hashtag trending on Twitter, the countless street parties and the limited edition 50p's that have been released to commemorate....Ah wait, no, that was just a dream..... It is my birthday tho (July 31st), and the Peter Pan part of me that refuses to grow up still demands some major fun and/or present action. Good job Ive got some excellent friends and family and the happy world of comping to supply this!
This month I have also re-started my vintage clothing 'business'- Badbiscuit- and am moving in to the upstairs of a junk shop in Bridgend (South Wales). Im going to try and focus on winning things that would be useful for this: a sewing machine, furniture paint, wallpaper, crafting stuff etc. However, as you will see from the results of my 6 months in comping (which I will put in a different post, with tonnes of stats and pie charts-coming soon) for some reason I have found it harder to win crafting stuff than to win a holiday!! A shout out here for Lady Luck and her weirdness.
Anyhoot, lets give you the stats for July...starts out pretty slow, but then suddenly takes a turn for the epic! Enjoy.
***PRIZES***
1. Trainspotting 2 Blu ray from a prize draw on the Critical Popcorn site. I know its not a big win, but I was genuinely excited by this and gave a wee squeal of delight when I read the WEM in the middle of Tesco (people did look at me weird, but thats an every day occurrence for me anyway, so no bother). Its receiving this that made me remember the days when I used to write my own music fanzine and would get sent CD's by bands I really loved so that I could review them. Getting this makes me want to do that again, not particularly for anyone to read, but just so I can express my sheer love and passion for the art form that is filmmaking. Danny Boyle (he directed the London Olympics y'know. All of it. FACT) the genius that he is managed to capture the apathy, cynicism and disappointment felt by those who chose life, but are still left bewildered by it. As you may guess I bloody love this and even though its in no way high value, it has to be in my top 10 wins for the year so far.
2&3. £3 Costa voucher from the instant win promotion run by HSBC/Android Pay App. If you do have an HSBC card and an Android phone, I strongly suggest that you sign up for this. Details here:
4. £10 Pizza Express voucher from the same promotion. I won another 2 of these in June, so had a grand old £30 to spend. Myself and my (un)trusted sidekick Lowri happily spent it on pizza and wine in the Cardiff Bay branch. A little tip: if you have the Vouchercloud app, there are normally discount codes for Pizza Express, meaning that the gift card prize can go even further. Happy days.
5&6. Pringles bluetooth speakers from a purchase necessary instant win promotion. A lovely Lucky Learner posted this in the group, so I thought I'd give it a go because I fancied some new speakers. I bought 2 small cans of Pringles and entered the first code at 13:20...and won! I then waited an hour and tried again...and won!! The speakers came pretty quickly and although they aren't amazing quality, they will definitely come in handy for taking to the beach, or for when I am challenging people to breakdance battles in the middle of town.
7. TRTL travel pillow from a Facebook LIVE event on the TRTL page. Again, another lovely Lucky Learner posted this to the group, and within an hour or so a whole bunch of LL's had won! Some serious karma is due back to the OP on that one!
8-13. More £3 Costa vouchers. Bangin'.
14. Limited edition purple GHD's from a prize draw on the Good Salon Guide website. Mick Jagger sings "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need". Well, I did try, but I don't really need these...I have 3 other sets of straighteners, so Lady Luck is again being a bit odd. Still, they will be a nice Christmas gift for someone...or an eBay listing!
15. 2 Aspire Airport Lounge Passes from a Gleam on the Raising the Rainbows blog. As much as I loathe Gleams and Rafflecopters, this one wasn't so bad, and didn't require loads and loads of likes, visits, comments etc. There was a daily Tweet option available, so I figured I would give this a go, as I really fancied this prize. I entered most days and ended up with 46 out of the 1733 entries, so still only a 1 in 37 chance of winning, but much better odds than if I only had the original few entries. Pie chart anyone?
16. One last £3 Costa voucher from the Android Pay instant win. You were allowed 30 days of this promotion and considering I had missed the first 5, I still did pretty well with a total of 15 x £3 Costa and 3 x £10 Pizza Express vouchers.
17. A pack of Moshi Monster cards which was a runner up prize in a competition on the Fun Kids Live website. I gave these (with a whole bunch of Minions stuff, a Roald Dahl game, Spiderman sticker books, Sing piano mats and a Walkers football) to my best mates kids...I couldn't wait till Christmas!
18. Headshot DVD unknown prize draw. I enter pretty much every DVD competition I can find and on average am getting maybe 2 a month. This one isn't particularly exciting...may or may not watch it.
19. Minion toy. Another little win from the Frubes giveaway: being given to my mates kids.
20. Pineapple lamp and a Hi Kawaii makeup bag. This was won on a Rafflecopter on the Katie Kirk Loves blog. Actually....I didn't really win this, someone else did, but they didn't reply to the email, so I was chosen instead. Super cute little set and I have named the pineapple Simon:
21. Holland Pies goodie bag from an entry form on their website (they also run the same comp on Twitter and Facebook at the same time). The prize came quickly: a tea towel, a mug, a dongle and a Guinness branded stress reliever ball. A little disappointed about the lack of pies TBH, but I photographed the prize and Tweeted my thanks as recommended by Guru Di Coke.
22. Crate of 24 bottles of Kingfisher beer from the Mr Hyde website. They were giving away 50 prizes, so a decent chance of winning on this. I still have barely touched the pale ale bottles I won a while ago, so I might stockpile these for Christmas.
23. Just a trip to Tuscany. Thats all. Nothing to see here...JUST KIDDING!! How awesome is this?! My second foreign holiday win this year and Im super excited to go, especially as the other 4 winners all seem to be Lucky Learners too! This was a sort of purchase/photo/daily/instant mash-up of a competition... buy a Cirio product and upload a picture of you enjoying or cooking a tomato-based meal. You could enter your photo daily for the goodie-bag instant win, and then all VALID (I'll come back to that point) entries would be put into the prize draw to win one of 5 trips to Tuscany, to stay in a 4* hotel, with a half day cookery lesson. Such fun! This was my entry...
There was no mention in the T&C's that you had to have a Cirio product in the photo, but I figured seeing as I was cooking with it anyway, I may as well! OK, going back to the VALID entries...I looked through the gallery and happily saw lots of faces from Di Coke's Lucky Learners group. I also saw lots of images that were either just taken from Google, or, did not show someone enjoying their tomato-based food. I presume that these entries would be disqualified, leaving only those that have entered correctly- from what I could see, about half and that is great for cutting down the odds! And even though the T&C's said that it would be picked at random, I just wonder whether sometimes there may be some human element involved and perhaps a slight bias towards ones that advertise their product or reinforce their brand? Who knows for sure, but its certainly worth keeping in mind when entering these types of comps.
24. ***DRUMROLL PLEASE*** I have won, quite possibly one of the most sought-after prizes amongst the compers on the forums....the FISH SLICE!! This is a simple follow and RT comp that Fish is the Dish run every week on their Twitter feed. People enter it every week (some for months...years....) but I think this is maybe the 10th time I have entered? A fish slice is obviously useful, but more than that this is a comping badge of honour that goes alongside my Crosse & Blackwell soup mug. What other ones are there to get?
25-27. Emoji Movie goodies from a prize draw run on the Cheestrings website. You can enter this 3 times a day, so I did, for a week, just to see what happened. Glad to say that I won 3 small prizes, which will again be going to my mates kids...Im totally buying their love with prizes!
28. A floral scarf from Hotter, run on the St Davids 2 shopping centre Twitter page. Simple retweet and 25 prizes up for grabs!! 175 people entered...you know what this calls for!
29. A Helloskin cosmetics duo from a(another!) Rafflecopter on the Madhouse Family Reviews blog. They were giving away 10 small prizes, which is always an extra incentive to enter a giveaway. This comp had a total of 2482 entries, so with 10 prizes, 1 entry would have a 1/248 chance of winning...but because its a Rafflecopter with a few ways of entering, I actually managed 9 entries giving me a 1 in 27 chance of winning. If I had the maximum amount of entries (25) I would have had a 1/10 chance...maybe its time to stop disliking the 'copters?
30. Another little prize from the Cheestrings/Emoji Movie weekly prize draw. If you want some goodies from this, enter a few times a week and Im sure you will get a little something.
***ALSO RAN***
I did win a competition to spend a night in the magical, mystical Basingstoke with overnight stay in a 4* hotel, afternoon tea and Pizza Express meal. Unfortunately it was a fixed date and it fell the day after the funeral of a family friend. Although it would have been a lovely prize, we didn't think it was right to zoom off that weekend, so I let the organisers know that they should pick another winner- I hope they enjoyed!
Also won a couple of NowTV passes which are usually useful, but this month I only won the sports ones, which I also passed on to other people.
I have a feeling that August will be a slow month as working on opening my vintage clothing den will be a lot of hard work. If you are ever in Bridgend...well, you are probably lost...but also pop in and spend the day trying on bright orange ball gowns! ITS THE DREAM!!
Have a fantabulous August and keep an eye out for my 6-month-prize- winning-audit-blog-post coming soon!
Love your hair, I hope you win!
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