Advent 2018 Volunteer needed!!!

sleepyjones wrote: »

Same questions come up every year in the run up to Christmas and the advents, so here goes :

What is an Advent?
Basically, think of the Advent Calendars you got a kid (or the Gin one you get now!), you open a box each day and got a "treat". Advents are basically that, you open todays box and enter that days competition.

So a site may do a standard advent which opens on the 1st December and closes on the 25th December, each day of the advent there will be a new competition with (generally) a new / different prize. So you would return to the site every day (open that days window) and enter the competition. Some advents will for example not open until the 15th December, some may close on the 15th December, some may run straight through to the New Year etc etc

Why all the fuss / stress?
It can be tricky to keep on top of the advents because there might be 200 sites running advents, on various platforms (ie Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / fill out a form etc), with varying prizes ... while all this is going on you will still have the standard competitions being posted (generally there are probably more competitions that will get posted in the run up to Christmas that aren't necessarily "advents"), so it can get a bit "busy".

How are Advents typically posted?
Planning to change the way the advents are posted this year, so read on! ... Advents are usually posted on the main Competitions forum starting with an A: instead of the usual E:, Someone, generally (whoever posted the advent) will then add a link onto the Advent thread (more on that later). However, this year we're going to trial that all advent posts are posted with an A: instead of the usual E: ... this is so that when a user sorts the forum by name, the advent threads will all appear together. It would also be nice to keep thread titles to a bare minimum, so instead of posting something like :

E: 24/12 Thorntons ADVENT - Win Chocolates daily

We'd like the title to simply become :

A: 24/12 Thorntons

You can then also add the usual (TW) / (FB) / (Weekly) type monickers at the end.

If you see an advent post who's title goes overly into detail or uses an E:, please post a reply asking them to change the title so that the admins don't have to spend time editing titles.

So, the A: advent threads will just be the same as normal competition posts, you click the link and it takes you to the Advent post for that competition where the "chat" for the advent should take place.

On the main board, it's usually a sticky at the top of the first page, you'll find the "2017 Advents Thread", this will list all of the Advent posts ordered into categories. This thread should only be used for informing the "Master of Advent ceremonies" that a new Advent has been posted and it needs to get added to the list, please keep all chat related to a specific advent in the advents competition thread (not the 2017 Advents thread).

Here are some previous advent threads to give you an idea of what I'm oan aboot :

2016

2015


Is it worth it, do you win?
Yes and yes, a lot of MSE'rs win on the advents, some don't win anything, it's no different from any other type of competition really. The thing with Advents is that a "competition" will only run for 1 day then the next day there will be another one. This will generally mean that it won't have as many entries as some of your standard competitions ... but then a lot more people will pick up "comping" in the run up to christmas ... so who knows.

Do you have to enter every day?
Nope, not unless it specifically says to, generally you would just enter for the prizes you want (ie, sometimes a "Prize" is Free Postage, or 10% off your order, which you just wouldn't bother entering at all).
Some "advents" may have a "Grand Prize" where they might stipulate that you have to enter, for example, on 10 days over the course of the advent, these won't stop you from winning an individual days prize though.

How do you keep track?
In the standard way on the forums, clicking a link in the Advent thread will take you to the Advent post, if someone has posted a "Here's today's comp" reply, thank them, you'll then know you've entered this because you have the "thanks" registered against the reply, you can't specifically Green tick the reply so use the "Thanks" as an alternative.

A lot of users will setup Spreadsheets, word documents or setup folders in their browser and save their preferred advents into it (ie the one that has the best or more relevant prizes to them), some people just go Hog-wild and enter everything. It's up to you.

Advents over £100
Trialled this last year and it seemed to be a roaring success, so we'll be bringing this back this year. There'll be a post in the Compers Chat Forum called "Advents over £100" ... if you're going through the advents and notice a prize that is worth £100 or more you can post a link to it in that thread, this allows users who are out Christmas Shopping all day the ability to catch up on all of the days "good" prizes without having to trawl through 300-odd competition threads. All you need to do is post the Day number (if there is one), the title and a link to the competition thread ... here's last years post in action :
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5567411


The 2017 Advents thread can be found here

---

If you've never done the advents before and you're a bit of a slow/end date comper, take the time now (before the advents start) to tick off as many competitions ending in December as you can, this'll give you more time for advents without having to worry about the standard competitions.

Anything else, ask / comment away.
The actual Advent thread will probably appear on around the 1st November.

To sort the main forum to list the advents, try this