*Living off competition wins!!!!*

baffledsalmon

Firstly, sorry if this is in the wrong topic, didn't know where to put it!

I heard a few years ago about a woman who simply lives off the money/stuff she wins from competitions. She does nothing all day but apply to competitions and wins numerous cars, holidays etc, most of which she sells to pay her rent etc!! Has anyone heard of this or does anyone else do it?! I'd be interested to see if it works!!!!!!!!

geordie_joe

I doubt you could do this, although I bet many people will say they do a lot of comps and win regularly.

It was probably a con to get people to buy a competition magazine. There used to be a magazine, you had to subscribe to it, not available in the shops. It claimed to list every competition in the country, and how to enter them.

They rang me, and even send a free copy to tempt me to subscribe. It was very poorly done on a home computer. I declined as I didn't believe the sales patter.

"We have over 20,000 subscribers and they enter the comps in our magazine and win all the time"

Two minutes later

"But it doesn't matter if you are not lucky, most of the competitions listed in the magazine have no entrants, so all you have to do is enter and you are guaranteed to win"

She was obviously reading from a script, one she had not bothered to actually understand. She couldn't understand the connection between the two statements, and why I thought both of them couldn't be true.

To her it was just a case of read paragraph one, if that doesn't convince them then read paragraph two. I don't think she had ever read both paragraphs one after the other without a conversation with someone in between.

k8eh

it could be true to an extent. she could be lucky, she could spend most of her day entering competitions... but i bet she has a husband/partner supporting her with his income or shes on benefits. nobody could live solely on competitions

baffledsalmon

Well that's what I thought... but if you really think about it, you'd only need to win say... two cars a year... If they're two average cars, you're looking at £20-30k profit once you take off obvious depreciation. Then you could win a couple of cash prizes... if you add it all up, you could be coming away with up to £40k! Not to mention the holidays, hampers, MP3 players etc! If you're entering competitions all day every day, you're bound to win quite a lot!!

geordie_joe

baffledsalmon wrote: »

Well that's what I thought... but if you really think about it, you'd only need to win say... two cars a year... If they're two average cars, you're looking at £20-30k profit once you take off obvious depreciation. Then you could win a couple of cash prizes... if you add it all up, you could be coming away with up to £40k! Not to mention the holidays, hampers, MP3 players etc! If you're entering competitions all day every day, you're bound to win quite a lot!!

You fall to take account of two things.

All the other people who are entering the competition and the chances of winning.

Take the lottery, every time you winner a tenner it means a lot more than 10 won nothing. 9 people didn't win because you got their £1, plus your own back, an number of people didn't win and their money went to camelot for operating expenses and profit, a number of other people didn't win and their money went to good causes.

Take the jackpot, if it is £3,000,000 it means 2,999,999 people won nothing, their money went into the jackpot pot. Plus all those people who's money went to camelot and good causes.

If it wasn't for the other 150,000 people entering the competition, you probably could win cars and cash prizes. Just don't bank on it.

Callum

I remember seeing a Japanese chap a few years ago who tried this trick and ended up having to live off dog food. eugh.

If you are constantly entering competitions then i'm sure you'll get lucky sooner or later.

Anglea

geordie_joe wrote: »

I doubt you could do this, although I bet many people will say they do a lot of comps and win regularly.

It was probably a con to get people to buy a competition magazine. There used to be a magazine, you had to subscribe to it, not available in the shops. It claimed to list every competition in the country, and how to enter them.

They rang me, and even send a free copy to tempt me to subscribe. It was very poorly done on a home computer. I declined as I didn't believe the sales patter.

"We have over 20,000 subscribers and they enter the comps in our magazine and win all the time"

Two minutes later

"But it doesn't matter if you are not lucky, most of the competitions listed in the magazine have no entrants, so all you have to do is enter and you are guaranteed to win"

She was obviously reading from a script, one she had not bothered to actually understand. She couldn't understand the connection between the two statements, and why I thought both of them couldn't be true.

To her it was just a case of read paragraph one, if that doesn't convince them then read paragraph two. I don't think she had ever read both paragraphs one after the other without a conversation with someone in between.

It wasn't a con. I used to be a member of member of a comping mag and there were many people that belonged that used to make a living out of comping. I got lots of free books when I joined and some of them were written by a woman that might have been the one the first poster was talking about, can't remember off hand her name but she used to have a lot of magazine columns in a variety of newsapers about contests.

It used to be really good and i won several times in house contests they ran for the subscribers. I was a member for years but eventually stopped because it was very time consuming (putting it mildly )

I think most of you would have loved it IMO as apart from the lists of contests there were articles and a readers chat page and extra contests for limericks etc. And it was the feel of one big family as you got to know the people. This one was published by Agora.

There was also another magazine around at the time but I only ever had a sample and didn't like it as much.

blackmidnight

If you look on the competitions board you will see that some people do make quite a bit of money but I would image that there are very few who make anywhere near enough to live on! I entered every competition posted on here for the last year and won about £800 worth of stuff but I probably got less than half that amount after I sold the bits I didn't really want. I guess if you were very lucky and you won all the cash prizes available and some more expensive items like games consoles, cars and other electronics you could make quite a bit of money but really it's all down to luck - you could spend all year doing competitions and not win a thing.

handmaiden_2

Callum wrote: »

I remember seeing a Japanese chap a few years ago who tried this trick and ended up having to live off dog food. eugh.

If you are constantly entering competitions then i'm sure you'll get lucky sooner or later.

yeah but did he win the dog food :rotfl:

on a serious note my nans work mate won a cruise, and a car from take a break mag within months of each other!!!! It is luck though. I have always entered comps never won a bean yet though xx

dannybwoii

I think even the most avvid compers couldn't do this as a only means of income.
I've gone through phrases of enterting hundreds of comps per day and won very little.
The odds of winning a car or some other grand prize are slim.

Darth_Marty

I dont know about supporting a family but I do know, quite well in fact, a woman and her mentally disabled son who live nearby and they win absolute shedloads of stuff, cars, holidays, computers and no doubt all the small things we dont get to see.
The son is an absolute mine of information and retains all facts that i google on a regular basis. They enter competitions all day every day as they find it fun and im pretty sure what they have won over the past 5 years would be more than my salary for the past 5 years!

I reckon it could be done but its all based on chance and luck.