These days, you see a large number of websites featuring online prize competitions. It’s hard to ignore the vast number of ads encouraging you to enter online competitions on most sites you visit. Just like magazines and newspapers, websites are increasingly featuring prize competitions to attract new visitors. Competitions can be free to enter, or require a user to register their information. You also find prize competitions that require users to pay a small fee to enter – these tend to involve a higher degree of skill in the UK.  Why are so many webmasters turning to online prize competitions as a way of driving traffic to their website? Here are some of the key things to consider when thinking about online prize competitions from the perspective of a webmaster.

Anyone who has spent a bit of time surfing the net to find online prize competitions, free draws or lotteries will be spoilt for choice. Eventually, it can become a bit frustrating because these days, there are so many types of competitions available online, you just don’t have enough hours in the day to participate in all of them. And yet, so many of them are really easy and just require your registration, so how can you increase you online presence in prize competitions and maximise your chances of winning prizes that way? You want to make sure you don’t waste time filling in forms wrongly or making entries that won’t qualify for a prize, so it plans to think ahead and plan things a bit rather than having a scatter-gun approach to entering prize competitions.  

It can pay to spend a bit of time thinking about the best way to enter competitions. Traditionally, postcards and letters used to be the most common, but these days internet and online competitions dominate.There are a few tips and tricks to bear in mind depending on the way you choose to enter a competition – these will help you stand out more in the eyes of the promoter and hopefully increase you chances of winning!Given that a lot of companies use online competitions as a mode of marketing, their products, many competitions on the internet are free to enter, and are very quick and easy. As you can expect, many people enter these competitions. You probably need to enter at least thirty of these types of free competitions per week on the internet as well as your postcard/plain paper entries to start winning prizes. Alternatively, we recommend carefully picking some of the fee-paying competitions, where you can get much better odds – although obviously you have to spend you money wisely! Overall though, it can prove a better use of your time as well as “comping” as people like to call it, can end up being a very time-consuming exercise otherwise. Remember, competitions are the website promoter’s tool to gather ...

We often get asked how to increase your chances of wining prize competitions. The short answer is: select the right competitions! Remember that most of the time, you can increase your chances of winning by picking prize competitions that give you good odds and by filling in the right information. For example, make sure you don’t pick competitions where the answer is too easy (after all, you can be sure many other people will pick that one as well!). In some cases, it can make sense to enter prize competitions where there is a small entry fee – in that case, take a good look at the odds before playing. One thing is for sure, the prize competitions sector is growing and there are definitely a lot of winners out there. Anything from small prizes, such as vouchers, DVDs and CDs, to big prizes, like holidays, cars and of course cash. Remember, the general rule is that if a competition is free to enter and the prize is great (i.e. worth a lot of money), it is likely that the company running the competition will have to sell a lot of tickets or collect many entries to make it worthwhile. So, pick your competitions wisely to get the right mix ...

A common concern we hear of in the prize competitions sector is the fear of putting your hard-earned money in a competition, or submitting your information in a form, and then not being sure whether it is genuine. Let’s face it, this is all about trust and we all know there are many companies out there that are based offshore that won’t hesitate to get your contact details (or even worse, your money) and then sell the information onto a third party… And before you know it, you’re getting phone calls to try to sell you insurance for a car you didn’t even win! Most of us are quite able to spot an obvious scam a mile off, but sometimes even the best of us get caught out. Obviously the email out of nowhere telling you that you have just won the lottery even though you didn’t participate is pretty obvious (although even that catches a few out…). But sometimes it’s not that clear, which is why it pays to look out for some obvious tell-tale signs.  

Looking for the winning tiebreaker or slogan? Where should you start? Slogans are everywhere, and it can seem that it has all been done before. However not all hope is lost and marketing departments (with help from compers like yourself) keep coming up great new slogans. Some are so memorable that they attain a place in common parlance, as for example the Budweiser "wassup" campaign.