Online competitions can be really appealing to a lot of people – after all, they offer a great opportunity to potentially win brilliant prizes for only minimum effort. Thousands of people enter each competition, though, so if you are going to maximise your chances of success, it pays to enter lots of different competitions. This article looks at how you can decide which ones are worth entering and how you can manage your online competition activity.Firstly, you need to decide how much effort you want to put into entering competitions. Do you just want to enter those that require you to fill in a few basic details in order to gain entry to a prize draw? Are you also going to enter competitions that require you to make something, write something or otherwise generate some content in order to be eligible? Are you going to do both? Deciding one way or the other doesn’t stop you from changing your mind later on, but it might help you decide which competitions you want to enter in the first place.
Next, you need to set about sourcing likely online competitions. The major newspapers often have prize draws, as do large retailers and other sites. It might be worth finding a central competition listings site that details current competitions you might like to enter. If you are unsure about the legitimacy of a competition website, then never give them your personal details as it is always better to be safe than sorry. You can normally tell a website is genuine because it will give detailed terms and conditions as well as contact details for the organisation running the competition – if you’re unsure, you could contact them to find out more.
It can also be a good idea to keep a record of all the competitions you have entered. Sometimes, they will have a relatively short closing date so you won’t have to wait long to find out whether you’ve won. Other competitions are open for longer and so it would pay you to keep a record of what you entered, when you entered it and when the closing date is so you can keep an eye out for any relevant emails. This is especially true of online competitions that require you to do something (such as writing or photography competitions) and if you’ve put a lot of effort into something, then it might be a good idea to follow it up with an email if you don’t hear anything.
You could also consider setting up your own competitions website. This would act as a central portal where you log details of current competitions and their requirements so other web users could take advantage of it. You could then sign up to affiliate programs or advertising schemes as a way of generating a bit of income from the site.
Overall, it’s unlikely you’ll make a huge amount of money from online competitions, but they are really fun and great to get involved with, so it’s definitely worth investigating to see what’s out there.