Hello everyone! How was your weekend, any nice wins to report? A couple of wins for me for November so far of a Bear Nibbles cereal and snacks hamper from their recent Facebook instant win game and also a height chart from the Kinder daily entry comp. I was very pleased to win this prize as I had won one for my eldest daughter some weeks ago and had been trying every day to win for my youngest too – thank goodness they both now have one to open at Christmas! How is your Christmas comping coming along, do you have specific things you are trying to win? It sometimes helps I find to have a written Wish List of prizes you are working on, and somehow this helps focus your mind on trying to win them and often has great success with actually bagging them!
Well, here we are a third of the way through November and it is no use, we can’t ignore it any longer – the Advents are coming! This is my favourite time of year, getting ready for the biggest comping season of them all – much excitement is about to ensue! For those of you who are new to the Advents or who just want a reminder, here is a run-down of what you can expect
- What are the Advents: From 1st December until usually 25th or 31st December hundreds of promoters will be running daily entry competitions via their websites, blogs and social media channels for fabulous prizes. Lots of these comps will be instant win and are only open for a short amount of time, meaning there are literally thousands of fantastic Advent competitions for you to be entering through the season.
- Don’t Panic: The Advent season tends to fill some people with dread as they feel overwhelmed by the sheer scope of comping potential and the amount of competitions that appear every single day. But for me it is more excitement than fear, don’t panic and just try to enjoy the season for what it is.
- Be Realistic: From the outset you have to be realistic and remember that you probably won’t be able to enter every single Advent competition on every single day. Some competitions don’t appear from 1st December, some close before midnight every day and there will be days when you just want to be doing other fun things and not comping so much, so something has to give. Accept that you won’t get to enter them all, just like you won’t get to enter every single non-advent competition, but that’s okay.
- Be Prepared: Just because the Advents don’t start until 1st December doesn’t mean you can’t do some prep work now. The PrizeFinder already has the Advent competition page up and ready for you, so that you can bookmark it in your internet browser ready for the big day. Get a special bookmark folder set up and populate it with individual sections for Instant Wins, Daily Web, Daily Facebook, Daily Twitter, Daily Blog and any other type of comps you think you will be entering during the Advents so you are ready to bookmark individual comps you want to make sure to enter every single day once you have the Advent list.
- Use The PrizeFinder: On 1st December 2015 the PrizeFinder Advents page will change and the individual comp category sections will go live, populated with hundreds of fabulous Advent comps. Once the competitions are live you can start to go through them and work out which ones you want to spend time entering every day, and which ones you can ignore.
- Use The PrizeFinder Customisation: When you come across competitions on The PrizeFinder that you have no interest in (say a pet advent and you have no pets) you can click the “ignore” button and that advent won’t appear on your feed again. Likewise if you click “entered” then that comp will be marked as entered for that day and will show again after midnight that day as ready to be entered again.
- Warn Your Friends: If you use Facebook to do a lot of your comping you may have lots of comping friends on your friends list. However, not all our friends are interested in our competitions and if our regular comping efforts bother them then they will really be cheesed off with our Advent comping! It is a good idea at this time of year to remind them that the Advents are coming and that if they like then they can “unfollow” you on Facebook, whereby they won’t see your posts but will remain friends for messages and tags etc. I have a good “comping in progress” picture that I received from a fellow comper you can steal on Facebook if you like, just drop me a message and I will ping it across.
- Be Vigilant for Wins: Make sure to check your email spam folder dally as well as spam and other folders in Facebook and Twitter notifications to make sure you don’t miss any wins. Think about using Google to search your name daily too as well as Social Searcher, although bear in mind that wins won’t show straight away on these searches as there is a few days’ time lag.
- Don’t Forget Other Comps: Despite the fact that Advents seem to dominate our comping in December they aren’t the be all and end all. There are plenty of other great prizes being given away in non-advent competitions and they often get forgotten by people who just focus on the Advents. Take time away from the routine of Advents every now and again in December and enter a few non-advent comps to ring the changes and spread your comping around a bit.
- Comping Off-peak: Realistically on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day themselves we may all be rather busy with fun, family stuff but if you happen to have a spare five minutes during these off-peak coping times why not enter a few comps as there won’t be as many compers entering at these times and therefore increase your chances of winning. Do a few social media comps while you wait for the kettle to boil for cocoa, enter some instant wins while the kiddos watch a festive movie – comping doesn’t have to stop completely during the festive fun times, unless you want to take these days as time off of course.
So there you have it, you should now feel prepared for the best comping season of the year, so bookmark the Advents page now and keep your eyes peeled from 1st December for some fabulous prizes just waiting to be won. Remember to have fun, relax and enjoy the season for what it is and don’t get stressed about it – we are all in this crazy comping boat together so leave me a comment below or pop over to Facebook and let me know how you are getting on!
Happy festive comping everyone, and lots of Lucky dust to you all!
Kirsty x
