How To - Rafflecopter & Gleam Comps

Hello everyone!  How was your Easdter weekend, any nice wins to report?  One win so far foe me this April – I won a signed 20th anniversary edition of the children’s book “Guess How Much I Love you” from Netmums.  This book is a huge favourite in our home, and I may put this copy away as an heirloom to hand down to one of my daughters in years to come.  Any wins on the board yet for you for April?  Do you plough through the huge number of End of Month (EOM) competitions, or do you take it slow and steady throughout the whole month?  I actually got right to the end of EOMs in March – not sure how that happened but fingers crossed it starts to bear more fruit soon.

One type of comp I don’t tend to bother with towards the end of the month is the huge number of blog competition using Rafflecopter & Gleam widgets as entry methods – a lot of them are daily entry and I always feel like entering just on the last day doesn’t give me much of a chance of winning, if people have been entering every day for weeks.  On this subject I thought now would be a good time to do a How To Guide on entering these comps, if you are new to comping or haven’t ventured into the blog comp world as yet.

What are Blog Comps:

Bloggers are regular people, like you and me, who have a passion, interest or area of expertise that they write about on their website in a magazine format called a blog.  Bloggers are often approached by promoters to test their products, blog about it about then give an item away in a competition.  There are tons of these types of blog competition around these days, and if you browse through the Blog section or Daily Entry section on The PrizeFinder you will see lots of them.

Type of Blog Comp

There are generally three standard entry methods for a blog competition

• Blog comment - This is by far the easiest way for a blogger to ruin a competition, as they simply ask us to leave a comment on the competition blog post, either answering a question or just commenting something nice.  In this way the blogger can count up all the entries ad use a randomiser to pick a random winner. 
• Rafflecopte - Rafflecopter is a small app that is inserted into the blog post, and is sometimes called a widget.  It is set up by the blogger with various tasks that people need to undertake in order to complete an entry into the comp.  There might be just one task to complete, or there can be lots, some of which might be mandatory to enter.
• Gleam - Gleam is the other kind of app or widget that bloggers use to run their competitions.  Like Rafflecopter the blogger can control what tasks people need to undertake in order to enter the comp, and there may be one or more tasks to complete, some of which might be mandatory.  Gleam is visually easier for compers to use than Rafflecopter, in my opinion, as most of the tasks simply require one click to complete, and there is no copying and pasting or pop-up windows involved.

Entering Rafflecopter Comps

• When you first land on a blog page with a Rafflecopter competition within it, you will be faced with the Rafflecopter login screen. 
• The common misconception is that you can only enter Rafflecopter comps if you are on Facebook or Twitter – not so!  You can always log into Rafflecopter using your email address, and most competitions have at least one entry method which is not based on social media platforms, so those who don’t have accounts can still enter.
• Login using your Facebook account or email address and you will be shown which tasks you need to complete for this comp. 
• Usually the first and only mandatory task is to comment on the blog.  You may need to answer a question or simply comment something nice, but you will either need to be logged in via Facebook or enter your contact details when you leave the comment.
• Once you have completed the first task, the widget may expand to show you what other optional, tasks are available to you, for which you will gain extra entries into the comp.
• You may be asked to do any number of tasks from following an account on Twitter, visiting a page on Facebook, following on Instagram or Pinterest, referring your friends or visiting a website.
• If there is a tweet task available, once you have completed the tweet you will need to click the “view this post on twitter” link that pops up, so that you can copy the address of your tweet and paste it into the space provided on the Rafflecopter widget, so that the blogger can see you have actually tweeted, not just said you have!
• Most Rafflecopter comps will allow you to enter every day until the closing date, by tweeting a set message – this is usually the only daily entry method offered, although sometimes here are some “free daily entry” tasks, which simply require you to click the button.
• When the competition closes the blogger will use the moderation and winner picking facilities within Rafflecopter to choose a random winner and will contact them via email.

Entering Gleam Comps

• When you first land on a blog page with a Gleam competition within it, you will be faced with the Gleam login screen. 
• As with Rafflecopter, you do not need a social media account to enter Gleam comps.  You may choose to enter using your email address, or can log in using various other social media methods.
• As with Rafflecopter, usually the first and only mandatory task is to comment on the blog.  You may need to answer a question or simply comment something nice.
• Once you have completed the first task, the widget may expand to show you what other optional tasks are available to you, for which you will gain extra entries into the comp.
• To allow Gleam to follow on Twitter, Instagram etc you will need to give the app permission to access your accounts.  Once you have done this the first time, when you click the task to follow on Twitter for example, you won’t need to wait for the pop-up window to open and check whether you follow or not manually – Gleam will do it all for you, and leave a tick next to the task once it is complete.
• You may be asked to do any number of tasks from following an account on Twitter, visiting a page on Facebook, following on Instagram or Pinterest, referring your friends or visiting a website.
• You may also be offered daily entry tasks, as in Rafflecopter, which you can complete every day either by tweeting or by click a “free daily entry” task button.
• When the competition closes the blogger will use the moderation and winner picking facilities within Gleam to choose a random winner and will contact them via email.

So there you have it, a quick how to guide on entering Rafflecopter and Gleam comps.  There are always hundreds of these competitions around at any one time, so why not pop over to the relevant sections on The PrizeFinder now, and practise your blog comping skills!

Happy comping everyone, and lots of Lucky dust to you all!

Kirsty x