Q) Where do I get help on writing tie-breakers and slogan competitions?

Every month Winner’s Friend magazine includes tips on writing successful tie-breakers to help you start winning prizes from tie-breaker (or slogan if you prefer) comps. Martin Dove’s ‘tie-breaker clinic’ is the perfect place to send your ‘unsuccessful’ entries for a bit of surgery! He’ll give you advice on how to improve them for next time! Plus long-standing comper Valerie Dallimore shares her secrets tie-breaker success in ‘Dallimore Diaries’.

I also suggest you have a look at the archive of previous winning lines to get a feel for the kind of tie-breakers that have caught the judges’ eye. The archive includes winners form 2004 right up to the latest wining slogans.

Q) How can I keep track of my competition entries – especially when I enter comps by post and on the Internet?

If you subscribe to a comping magazine such as Simply Prizes or Winner’s Friend, it is easy to keep track by simply ticking off the competitions you have entered (there are different competitions in each magazine so you won’t have to worry about seeing the same comps twice).

Another publisher that produces comping magazines in Accolade Publishing, they produce Competitors Companion, Prize Draw News, First Prize, Prize Finder, Everyone’s a Winner and Compers News.

Prize Magazines are a well established publisher of magazines that offer in-house prizes for subscribers only, their titles often have a quiz element as well. The Prize Mags titles are Lucky Break, Prizes Galore, Puzzles Galore and Prize Quest.

There are also a number of internet sites that are set up as competition web sites, these are usually either affiliate sites (where the competitions are run by third parties, and the site owner gets paid for everyone who enters online competitions) or they are data collection sites, where your personal data and e-mail address will get passed onto other companies. If you sign up to these sites please be aware that you will receive a lot of e-mails, our recommendation is to start a ‘comping e-mail address’. Please note that the odds of winning a web competition are generally far, far lower than winning a postal competition, so if you rely on comping web sites alone, you are unlikely to regularly win prizes. If do don’t get Just Comps Express, a free e-mail that brings you short closing postal and web competitions, sign up now

The main affiliate comping web sites are Loquax and The Prize Finder. Data collection sites include My Offers, win4now and chooseaprize.

We hate spam as much as you do and don’t release your e-mail address to anyone, so if you would like a free e-mail that tells you about competitions, postal and web, that are closing soon, sign up for Just Comps Express now .

You can also keep a simple ‘comping log’ writing down the name of the promoter, the closing date, the prize and the date you entered each competition. This will be easy to maintain and you could use this for your Internet comps too. Plus, if you use a comping service such as MyComps, not only will your comps be split into prize categories (cars, cash, holidays e.t.c.) but also into brand new comps each week. So, you should be able to keep track of your comps easily.

Next: Comping social events