How have things changed since 2010?

beckifitzg

Hey!

I used to do a lot of comping on here back around 2010 and now it seems I am hooked again!

Those of you who have been comping for a long time, how would you say things have changed?
Am I missing out on a lot by skipping the Gleam and IG/FB comps do you think?

I'm pretty much caught up with the comps and am getting to grips with the dailies (which I don't think I used to do)

It feels like there's less being posted than years ago? Or maybe it's just because I'm being more selective on what I enter compared to years ago when I used to enter absolutely EVERYTHING.
I really did win the most random things. Not the Solid Gold **** **** though. Was anyone around for that? 🤣

(had to sensor it because I don't know the rules on that kind of thing!!)

pate-ci0

It is definitely more difficult to win decent prizes. Many more folk are comping after being stuck at home during Covid and lots of comps are on FB/Insta/Twitter etc instead of Web. You need to be selective with Social Media (SM) comps since Instagram etc have a bad habit of blocking or cancelling you if you enter too many comps in too short a time, a real nuisance around the Advents. However, I do about 1500-2000 per month and usually get some sort of a prize each month (though that's at least half of what I had in the 2010's and the prizes are more trivial). Still, decent prizes do arrive (year of jam, 4 day Festival camping etc so far this year)

beckifitzg

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82084312#Comment_82084312

Thanks for your reply :)

So if you're doing 50-60 comps a day, does that include dailies? Or are you doing them on other sites as well?
I haven't noticed this many comps being added to the board.

pate-ci0

I only count a daily as one competition, regardless of how many times I enter that comp, so yes, about 50/60 unique competitions per day. Most are from MSE but some from other sources, notably when folk mention me in SM comps and I follow a casual comp trail whilst on that social medium (ooh, that looks like a nice prize, aaah, there's another one…). I do tend not to search SM for comps, far too many and I have been blocked by Instagram a number of times on suspicion of spamming. (Once the algorithms identify you as spam they tend to come back and choose you again more aggressively.) I used to be on the Duck site regularly many years ago before coming to MSE and pick up a few there sometimes.

I agree that there are fewer comps on MSE compared to 10/15 years ago, some folk have left comping, others moved to other forums for various reasons (a number did not like the changing interfaces which happened a couple of times).

beckifitzg

Ah ok, that all makes sense.
I don't really dare use SM for comps because I need it for work and although I would create seperate accounts, I would worry they would somehow be linked.

Thank you so much for the info, I really apreciate it :)

mjm3346

This was the go to site back in the day until they messed up the forum (several times) and some prolific posters moved elsewhere (they are still out there). Apart from the downward slide of this site it seems many companies switched their promotional budgets to other things, the "free" entry route was effectively nullified in some cases by allowing 100's of paid entries in one go, social media has largely moved from twitter and FB to more Inst etc, there has been massive growth of pay to enter sites (often with free postal entry rather than free web entry), possibly encouraged by the example set by ITV when they dropped free web entry, several proper dailies have gone including Dorset Cereals, Wychwood etc where there was the potential for a prize every day (not daily entry for a prize at the end) - Yeo valley has remained but with fewer prizes. Quidco and TCB are now rarely seen, several magazines have closed and the prizes on the others keep shrinking (like their sales). It's not just competitions that have lost out - sites like Swagbucks can pay pence per hour and many actual survey sites have cut back their (often already low) rewards.

beckifitzg

I forgot about Dorset Cereals!

It's funny because this forum still feels really similar to me but it sounds like a lot has happened over the last 10-15 years.

Scorpioangel

How things have changed since 2010!

The number of comps I can find to enter have reduced by about 70% because so many have gone over to social media and widgets like gleam. I avoid the SM ones as I don't use the sites though I have accounts on some SM platforms which I only use when entering occasional gleam comps for tech stuff. Most widgets I will avoid though.

I can barely find 20 comps to enter most days let alone 50. I aim for 1000 per month in total but have only been able to achieve that on 3 months this year. I also don't waste my time with comps that have little value and no use to me.

There is also the rise of gambling/raffle sites which I don't engage with apart from bauer & global big money prizes which I can phone in at standard rates (3 pence/minute on my tariff meaning 3p per bauer entry and 6p per global entry)

There are also loads of the mag dailies though I have no idea if those were around in 2010 as I only started looking at those in 2019

Scorpioangel

If I did manage to win big on one of the comps or lottery, 7 figure sum, I would drop the comping almost entirely

Fliss_M

I was just reading the chat page for exactly this. I too comp'd regularly back in 2013? Won some great prizes. But I tried coming back to it just over a year ago and it was poor. Back then I would enter 20-100 per day and win usually 1-2 prizes a month, which was still small change compared to others on here. But when I tried returning, kept it up for 3 months and won nothing and wondered if this was the COVID effect.

I was thinking of coming back now in the hope that thinks may have settled but sounds like its still poor :-(

tghe-retford

Since 2010, I have noticed that more companies have figured out that they can get just as much attention, if not more, from offering small value prizes on social media compared to running a competition on their website.

I have noticed that there are less competitions, particularly for advents, if you don't or can't use social media. I also seem to be winning less as a result.

And I've also noticed that more competitions are going down the postal route for "free" entries. Despite the fact that the cost of a stamp is making that route unviable. While there are a few ways around it (ie. using unlimited minutes for 03 phone entry routes), it does seem there is a push toward paywalling competitions in the future. As I also suspect ID/age verification will also be introduced in the future.