6 MONTH WIN AUDIT

I started comping on Jan 31st 2017, so my half-year is actually a month later than the more seasoned comper. To mark it, I thought I'd give you a run-down of the stats so far. If you can, please read this in the voice of Peter Snow.

***STATS***

*Comps Entered: approx 21,000 (including Twitter RT's)

This sounds like a lot...and thats because it is! Averaging at 3500 competitions per month, or around 120 per day. Most of these were found on on the Money Saving Expert competition forum and Loquax, plus tip-offs on low-entry, effort and purchase necessary comps from Di Coke's Lucky Learners Facebook page and the lovely people from Mission Competition.

*Comps Won: 147

I've counted everything from a £1 scratch card, to the foreign holidays in this total. I haven't included comps that I have won, but haven't been able to accept. I'm a big fan of this stat as it really shows that effort put in can achieve some rather spanking results. I'm no comping wizard and the sorting hat certainly didn't put me into a winning house. However, I did play the odds and like the Slytherin that I am, I used my perseverance and resourcefulness whenever I could.

*Ratio: 1:143

I think this is an important stat that is useful to judge whether you are using your time and effort appropriately when comping. Di Coke's ratio is much better than this (I think she said once about 1 in 60!!), but that is because she spends her time wisely entering effort-based competitions. To anyone who is tracking their entries and has particularly poor ratios, it may be time to take a look at the types of comps you enter and perhaps switch things up a bit?

Note: this ratio also includes those really small wins, so you must remember that even though I may enter 800 competitions in a week, I may still only get £15 worth of wins! Such is the way of comping.

*Approx Prize Value: £6369

Although it is lovely to have a monetary total of the value of prizes, just remember that "cost and worth are two very different things" (not sure where that originally came from, but I remember it from the film Confessions of a Shopaholic!). By this I mean that although it is wonderful to win something that would cost £XXX, what a win is worth to you may be vastly different. For example, it was obviously great to win £500 cash from Gumtree, but I feel that the theatre trip to London I won in February (priced around the same amount) was worth so much more! Oscar Wilde describes one of his characters as "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing". Keep that in mind compers and I think you will find the hobby much more rewarding.

*Value Per Entry: (value divided by number of comps entered) £0.30 per comp

...however, staying on a monetary theme, it might be nice to put a metaphorical cash figure 'earned' for each competition entered. Sometimes its a nice way of thinking that you are 'saving up' for wins: if you are having a dry spell, it may be because those entries are being 'banked' ready to 'spend' on a big win. There was a lot of " 's " in that sentence.

*Wins Per Entry Platform:

Everyone has a favourite entry platform, whether it be through social media, texting, postcard or web-entry etc. I personally hate Twitter, as for one, I just cant seem to prove that I am a real human being on there! Some people love it though, so Im glad it works for them. My favourite, if I am super-boringly honest is just a simple web-entry prize draw. There is something of the communist in me that likes that everyone is considered equal in them, plus, with autofill, it means I don't spend too much brain-energy on them! These following pie charts reflect my own personal tastes in comping, as I enter very little (in comparison) through Facebook and Instagram etc, your results would probably be very different.

*Wins Per Competition Type: (pie chart)

This pie chart breaks down platform even further into entry type. This may be an interesting one to try yourself as even though you may spend more time (like I do) entering web-based prize draws, you may actually find that you have more success via other types of comps, like RT's or judged comps.

*My 5 Favourite Promotions:

1) Walkers Snap 'n' Share: this promo began at the beginning of my comping experiment and I was super happy to win a PS4 for myself AND one for my nephew! It was also a great fun promotion that was shared with friends and some of them won too!

2) Android Pay: I didn't win any major prizes with this, but I did win a lot of smaller ones (lots of Costa vouchers!!). Loved this promo as it seemed as though it was quite low entry, with tonnes of daily prizes! I know lots of Di Cokes Lucky Learners did quite well on this too.

3) Cirio: I HAVE to say this one, because I had a bizarre feeling when I first planned to enter it that I would win...and I think KNOWING that consciously made me comply to all the T&C's (just in case) and enter daily. I ant wait to go to Tuscany!!

4) Gumtree: this was the first creative entry competition that I had won- by sharing a story of how I bought my DSLR on Gumtree, which I used to make a short film, which went on to win awards. They liked the story and photos and gave me £500!! What was super great tho, is that I showed my sister the competition and she entered and won the week after!

5) Plenty: I liked this one as I played a good old game of tactics on this. Everyone who entered could choose the prize they wanted to play for, such as TV's, iPads, vouchers etc. I figured that they would receive a tonne of entries, so I chose to play for one for the more 'boring' prizes, the Karcher Power Washer. It worked as after 3 weeks of trying I won! Super happy about this as I gave it to my mom for Mothers Day and she was super chuffed!

*Top 10 Wins. (not including cash- because thats always lovely!!)

10. Trainspotting Blu Ray: a low value prize, but I LOVED this film, so proper squealed when I got the WEM.

9. Escape Room game: a favourite for 2 reasons- it was darned good fun, but also the way to win it was to call them and say "the seagull has landed"- hilarious!

8. PS4 (x2): fab promotion by Walkers and the first time I could give an actual physical present to someone, just from comping.

7. £75 IWOOT voucher: won on my first (and so far ONLY) Twitter party. Was a great way of winning, though most Twitter parties that I see are centred around kids and toys, so not really for me. I spent the voucher on a Lomo' Instant camera, which was on my wish list.

6. £50 Ticketmaster Voucher x2: I was lucky enough to win twice on the Burtons Fish n Chips instant win promo. I love prizes like this because it FORCES you to get tickets for fun things! I managed to get tickets for Busted and some cheap tickets to see Miss Saigon. Marvellous!

5. Tassimo coffee machine: this was a promotion that I felt sure I would win- they were giving away 150 a week and I just had a feeling...week 3 of the promo and I won! This was great timing too as I had just broken my other one. Oops!

4. Karcher Power Washer: Mom's mothers day present sorted, winner winner chicken dinner!

3. Trip to London: the prize that probably got me hooked to comping as I won this in my 2nd week. Prize included a night in a 4* hotel and tickets to a show plus a bit of spending money. Lovely stuff!

2. Holiday to Tuscany: as mentioned before. Also great as the other winners are also compers and most are part of the Lucky Learners group! Will be nice to meet them!

1. Holiday to Marrakech: I think this is my favourite as the odds of winning were just soooooooo smaaaalllllllllllll!! It was a 'mag daily' (where you could enter every day and share for extra entries). I entered this only the once, so was up against probably around 10,000+ other entries (at least!!). In a bizarre comparison, there was a few competitions across these magazines to win a 'Rustoleum' kit (some paint for furniture- worth about £20). They were giving away LOADS of these...I entered all of the prize draws for them, every day, and shared....but still didn't win!! I think doing that really showed me just how unlikely it was to win the Marrakech holiday, which definitely makes me appreciate it more! Looks alright doesn't it?

***IN CONCLUSION***

My 6 month comping experiment has been a most wonderful adventure and has turned into a great hobby! At times, it can be very time consuming, a bit draining and a bit disheartening. It certainly takes perseverance and a positive attitude to be a comper, which is probably the reason why the people on the forums and Facebook groups are so lovely and if you are reading this- thank you all!

Comping is also extremely addictive, and so what was going to be just a few months of experimentation will actually turn into a long-time hobby, and Im sure a lot of compers out there feel the same way. My own comping adventure will be taking a back seat at the moment, while I sort out some life stuff (opening a new business, starting a new course, writing etc), but once Im in a routine again, Ill be back in and aching to to my 1 year review!

I hope you have all had a happy and successful year of winning so far- in whatever way you wish to quantify "winning". If you are up for sharing your own stats, please do...I LOVE A PIE CHART!!

Love your hair, hope you win!!