My special project

Some of you might know, i have devoted some time to a special project. And that is; I have become a "pro-comper" as they like to call themselves.

This is entering as many competitions as possible, for this I have set up a premium number. When I enter comp's I use the premium number where ever they ask for a phone number, I also untick the contact me with further boxes and marketing information. I started this around the 20th of April and it took me 12 days to win my 1st prize!!.

Granted its not a massive one, however it is a prize. I'm recording all my efforts on a new little web-blog I have created that can be found here.

congratz shag...

Congratulations on the win! Decent advice and links too.

Look, I know that this might seem a little niggly, but here's a little bit of advice:

"their" = "belonging to someone" - "this is their house".

"there" = "the location of an object" - "Where is their house? It's over there."

"they're" = "they are" - "Where is their house? It's over there but they're not home."

Might be useful.

Does this mean you make money when people call you? If so, then I want one of those. I have many uses for that and many ways of making people dial it.

EDIT:
Never mind - I'll read this bit:

Yet again, seems shady.

There's nothing 'shady' about it. TV companies do it for their competitions. Do you think they give away those prizes out of the goodness of their hearts? The competition entrants pay for the prizes via the premium rate number they dial to enter.

The great thing is you can spam the number all over the internet and people will not be able to resist dialling it - if you give them the right temptations.

The number cost me £10 to set up, no more payment needed. I use it solely for entering comp's. When I enter the comps, I ask not to be contacted in any form (marketing and 3rd party's). So thus anyone phoning me are going to be the cold call company's / scammer comps. Yes there are comps set up out there just to harvest peoples details for cold calling company's.

For example, today I had a caller from a double glazing company saying I entered a comp for £10k double glazing prize. Said they wanted to verify what I was going to do with the prize - and would I like a quote for some windows just in case I didn't win. I got a chance to ask about the competition - like how many people have entered it. They said at the moment only 100 people have however the last one they did had close to a million entry's. If I have ever smelled a scammy comp for the purpose of collecting people to cold call, then this was one. Gave me a warm feeling inside talking to the caller tho :)

It costs them 10p a min, I get 4p a min. So far from my close to 1000 entry's in comps I have received 2 unsolicited calls on the number so far in about 15 days of using it.

On another note, when I wish to pack this in. I can just get rid of the number at no further expense.

Now think about how many 'help line' and 'support' numbers charge you more then 10p a min.

Unethical yes, shady maybe but a warm feeling inside = true!.

I need you to investigate further numbers/services. I want more than 4p pm. I want £1.00 pm.

This one looks exciting:
http://www.premiumrateincome.co.uk/

Bringing this thread back from the dead to say, I have won a 2nd prize!.

This time its a wallet as a runner up prize!. Picture of my 2nd booty on my web blog here ... http://the-neat-stuff.blogspot.com/

On a side note feel free to click a few of those google ad's, In the short term I have had them on my website, I have almost made $20 from them doing nothing! Well worth considering if you have a web page up.

puki: thinking of setting up your own chat line then?

shagwana: well done mate, I won a crystal radio and a chemistry kit once from the Eagle comic when I was younger.

when GMTV were doing their compo's (iir it were the drawing the winner before the lines were closed that got em in trouble) they used to say "calls cost 10p per min and may last x" or "£1.50" i forget (dont have a tv thank f) and all those £1.50's mounted up to pay for the prize 10+ times over
with stupid questions like

they might as well call it the "it must be C competition" and say "answers on the back of a fiver to ..." as they were never hard that even your altzhimers grannie would know or atlesat have a 1 in 3 chance of getting it right (if only she could remember the phone number and where she left the phone)

edit:
when i was last oop norf visiting my brother i was late night channel hopping and on what used to be the music channels TMF and the hits (and nigh on every freeview channel) was the same 'live' call in quiz show with mini wheel of fortune or blank crossword puzzles on screen with p**s easy questions and callers calling in and still not getting it right ... nor were they allowed to just say the answer they had to tell the presenter a bit about themselves (at 10p per minute calls from mobiles may cost more please contact the bill payer before dialing)
i thought it was bad enough when most freeview channels didnt start till 7pm but for them all to turn over the airwaves enmass to that drivvel ???

Add up the time you spend on all these competitions in therms of hours.
Look at the value of what you've won / grifted from your phone line.
There's no free lunches...

Darkheart

The cost of the time far out weigh's the cost of the items at the moment, but this don't mean squat to me in my little project.

Other 'pro-compers' as they like to call themselves say that on average they can make £2000 worth of prizes a month. From my little experiments with only online comps I can see this is indeed possible. The only thing this has cost me is time.

There are other types of comp's that can be entered that would increase my chance of winnings, namely ones that require slogans and well thought out answers. There is also a whole load of sms/phone text comps out there that can cost a fortune to enter.

Just because this time I have only won small prizes, don't mean I wont win something bigger in a future comp.

When it comes to the cost to time ratio, making a 'casual' computer game would more then likely make less money then pro-comp running!. Consider how many comps can be entered in, in the 6 to 8 months it would take to make a game.

At the end of the day its something I wanted to try in the past and now I have I am rather glad :)

you JUST MIGHT win big on something
thats the whole point of competitions
no one hands over contact details to a 3rd party for the fun of it
so even though you might get hit with more junkmail and cold calling than you normally do (maybe its just a small increase depending on if you get swamped with junk anyhows)
but a prize is a prize and someone somewhere won the grand prize of a holiday to sunny bla de bla and someday that someone just might be you.

ok so WINNNING a suduko a day and davinchi code game arnt high on my prizes to be won or getting a wallet worth just over a fiver
but im guessing you arnt aiming low all the time ;)

I'm thinking about adding a premium letterbox to my front door.

Very interesting, go for it. Love the idea of the premium phone line.

What I hate are those free scratch cards where you always win and the prizes sound really good, then there's one prize that they say they have 1000s of and you know that's what you'll get after dialling their line for 6 minutes and spending a tenner.

I know I'm probably going to sound like an arrogant ass saying this but if you worked hard at something good for a while you could probably make more than £2000 a month and have the satisifaction of doing something really great for other people too.

I'm not knocking what your doing, just maybe there's other more worthwhile things that you could do. Most limits on people's lives are the ones they put there.

Good luck,

Darkheart

I think there's a fairly huge gulf between 2000 a month cash money and '2000 worth' of random crap in prizes.

Agreed haha.

Shagwana: how many hours per day does pro-comping take you?

Another thing some people do is fill out tons of online marketing surveys for free crap too.

I hate the scratchcard comps that you win a holiday, every time. Then you find out you have to spend £50 to gain access to the holiday vouchers. *Then* you find that the holidays are for one person on a set date and without travel arrangements (no flights, transfers, insurance etc).

Thankfully I didn't get caught into this but my mom did.

I would much rather have the 2k in cash any day. Its all fun at the end of the day.

I can see that one day this summer I am going to have most awesome car-boot sale ever!

Hopefully in the boot of a car you've won!

I like checking the post in the mornings now, not only is it filled with bills I now get the odd prize. Just won a dvd from someplace, I don't know where or what compo I entered to win it tho :)

Picture on my blog -> http://the-neat-stuff.blogspot.com/