I quite like Mondays (a post about comping)

“I don’t like Mondays”, sang Bob Geldof in the 1979 The Boomtown Rats song of the same title. Most people would agree with him!

So why do I quite like Mondays?

Well, I’m on maternity leave at the moment, otherwise I’d like Mondays decidedly less. Every other Monday I can get Autumn weighed at clinic, which hasn’t lost its excitement yet – I love seeing how much my little milk monster has grown.

However, one of the main reasons is that a lot of winning emails and winner’s posts of online competitions are made on Mondays, which makes it quite an exciting day. Let me explain, I have a hobby which is known as ‘comping’. This means that I spend time entering lots of competitions for fun and in the hope that if I enter lots of them then I may win some of them. That explains to my friends on Facebook why I share so many posts of competitions from so many companies (sorry!) The most popular day of the week for competitions to be posted online is a Friday (Freebie Fridays as they’re known) and the winners of these are often announced on a Monday. Every Monday as I watch notifications pop up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I wonder excitedly if I’ll have won anything.

I’ve been comping for just over 4 years on and off now and have been quite successful. My best wins to date probably include the following:

  • A £500 gift voucher for River Island, which allowed me to go on several mini shopping sprees
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  • Tickets for the 2013 FA Community Shield match at Wembley Stadium between Manchester United and Wigan Athletic
    1150641_10151866964132474_688205211_o
  • A 1950s and 1960s crystal headpiece for my wedding, worth £220 (credit for this image goes to Robert Marriott Photography, who is fantastic by the way – check him out!)
    11227047_10153659832832474_5356936954510728512_o

I’ve also won things for other people, which is always good too. I’ve won a Mother’s Day pamper pack for my Mum, a £60 Levi’s voucher for my Dad, a comfort blanket for Autumn and a cake topper for a friend’s step-daughter’s birthday. I basically just enter competitions for things I would like or think someone I know would like!

“You’re so lucky! You seem to keep winning things!” people have said to me. Well, the truth is that I enter so many that the rules of probability say that I am going to win some of them. I mean, I’ve entered over 1,000 competitions just this month! So, “Where do you find all these competitions?” people have asked me.

Well, the main two websites I’ve been using over the last few years are the forums at Money Saving Expert:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

And Competition Database:

http://www.competitiondatabase.co.uk/

They both have their pros and cons:

Money Saving Expert –

Pros:

  • You can thank the person for adding the competition
  • There are more categories, including for post, so it’s easier in a way to find what you’re looking for
  • You can mark competitions with a cross if you don’t want to enter it
  • You can mark competitions with a tick if you’ve entered them
  • There is a competition chat
  • There’s a dedicated place to celebrate wins with others

Cons:

  • It’s harder to use than Competition Database
  • You can’t see a monetary value of the competitions you’ve entered (I find this is a big help to push me on, as it can get monotonous entering so many competitions and there are times I lose my ‘mojo’)
  • There’s no live chat, everything is a forum

Competition Database:

Pros:

  • You can see how many competitions you’ve entered that day, the previous day, that week and that month
  • You can see a monetary value of the competitions you’ve entered
  • You can mark competitions as ignore completely, ignore for 3 hours or ignore until the next day
  • The filters are great and really easy to use – you can filter by things such as category (e.g. parenting, cash and vouchers or home) and price (so if you don’t have much time, you may just want to enter higher value competitions, although it’s worth noting there may be less chance of winning as these may have higher entry rates as others will be doing the same thing)
  • You can mark that you’ve entered competitions
  • There’s a winners list (although people don’t always update who has won what competition – sometimes this isn’t always possible, as companies don’t always announce a name)
  • There is a live chat at the site where you can talk to the owners of the site and other compers

Cons:

  • You can’t mark multiple competitions as ignored
  • It’s easy to forget about the ‘Enter Early’ competitions as they’re in a completely separate category

So, what are you waiting for? Give it a go if you fancy it and be sure to let me know if you have any wins! Other websites do exist as well, these are just the ones I personally use, so let me know if you find any other good ones.

22 thoughts on “I quite like Mondays (a post about comping)”

  1. Wow hun what an interesting post! I’d never even considered entering these competitions but maybe I should be giving it a go. xx #marvmondays PS. I adore your daughters name xx

  2. Thanks for commenting – it’s definitely worth giving it a go! It is quite time consuming and often quite repetitive, but as with a lot of things it is what you make of it to some extent. The more you enter, the more likely you are to win!
    Thank you 🙂 I love her name and it’s lovely when other people tell me they like it too 🙂 xx

  3. A great post. I started comping in 2014 and did pretty well, but then started blogging last year and have found I just don’t have the time to do both – but I did love it whilst I was doing it! #eatsleepblogrt

  4. Wow I can’t believe you have entered so many competitions and you manage blogging too. I’m in awe. Great prizes too! Thank you for linking up to #EatSleepBlogRT ?

  5. Hi and thank you! I haven’t been entering anywhere near as many competitions since I’ve started blogging either – there just isn’t enough time in the day! I tend to both in bursts, mainly while the baby is asleep or my husband is looking after her 🙂

  6. Thanks for your comment 🙂 My days currently consist of me running around doing as much washing, cleaning, competition entering and blogging while the baby is asleep! I haven’t been comping quite as much since I’ve been blogging – I wish I had a time machine sometimes so I could get everything done I want to do in a day 🙂

  7. Ooo when I finally pull my finger out and sort out my linky you can join my comping bloggers network! I also reccommend checking out super lucky di’s website too!

  8. Wow I can definitely see the appeal and the benefits of doing this. Those prizes sound incredible! I think I’m a bit worried that I would become obsessed though, especially with all the trackers to motivate you. I fear my poor blog widow hubby would divorce me if I added comps to the mix haha. Thanks for sharing with #DreamTeam and good luck! xx

  9. I do get a bit obsessive with it sometimes, I feel sorry for my poor hubby! Sometimes the comping does get too much with everything else and I step away from it for a while 🙂 Thank you and thanks for visiting 🙂 xx

  10. Pingback: January 2017 wins! – Glam & Geeky Mum
  11. Blogging definitely eats into comping time – I wanted to start posting twice a week but that leaves me so little time for comps. How can I run a blog about comping if I can’t find enough time to do any actual comping?! I feel like a proper part-timer at the moment!

    I also like Loquax – I generally find it easier to navigate that MSE, though when I have tried to post myself I tied myself in knots. Maybe I hadn’t slept enough (though what parent of small kids does?)

  12. Hi Neill, thanks for commenting. I find myself doing a lot more blogging than comping now – it’s difficult to try and get the balance right!
    I haven’t tried Loquax, I’ll have to take a look at it 🙂 Unfortunately small children and sleep don’t really go together – the amount of daft things I find myself doing in a day is ridiculous. I almost put Cheerios in the powder bit of the washing machine yesterday morning!

  13. I love that you totally have a system for comping! I got quite into it too when i was on my first mat leave but never won anything. Im on mat leave again now and I havent really properly got back into it, although I did randomly enter a couple of comps in the autumn and won a family set of microscooters! Totally blown away and after reading your post I think I might try to get back into it again 🙂 Thanks for sharing another great post on #MarvMondays. Emily

  14. Ooh, that sounds fantastic! 🙂 Yeah, it’s very time consuming but can definitely be worth it 🙂 It’s weird…I always seem to find winnings all come at once as well!
    Thanks for visiting!

  15. I love competitions and have got more and more into them. I tend to have and evening a week where I just blast through as many as I can. What I have learned though is to actually want or need the prize on offer as I recently won a game that I had no way of downloading and wouldn’t of played if I could.

    Mainy

  16. That’s great 🙂 I don’t find much time to do competitions at the moment, but I enjoy them when I do! When I first started out, I also just entered for anything and everything. You quickly learn that there’s so many you have to just go for the ones you actually want or need!
    Thanks for commenting 🙂

  17. Great read! As a fellow comper, I love seeing what other people have won. It inspires me to enter more! 🙂

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