Looking back on 2010!

Sadly, tiebreaker and skill competitions seem to have died a death over the last few years so I’m having to adjust my comping style to suit – my resolution for 2010 is to enter more twitter and facebook competitions! 

Well, I can safely say that’s one resolution I kept. I’m a geeky fan of statistics (how I love Google Analytics!) so having found a spare hour last week I decided to rummage through my old comping notebooks to compare my figures from the last ten years. In the past I would handwrite my prize list in my Moleskine notebook, but in 2010 I’ve set up a new spreadsheet using Google Docs. With this I can access my list via the internet and record my prizes, along with how and where I won them, the dates and value. If you don’t do this yet I can recommend it – looking back over your wins at the end of the year, you’ll realise how many you’ve forgotten about and it’s great motivation to look back on your previous wins when the prizes are few and far between!

In 2000 I had only just discovered the joys of comping, and every one of my 15 prizes was from a newspaper or magazine prize draw – including a £2,500 laptop and £1,000 Comet vouchers.

By 2003 I’d discovered online forums were the best place to find out about new comps, and won 71 prizes with a value of £33,000 – a third of these (including my beautiful VW Beetle) were from slogan competitions and another third from prize draws in newspapers and magazines.

In 2007 I only managed 24 prizes, but I had ventured into the big money world of TV and radio competitions. That year I won £7,700 on TV gameshows and £3,000 on the radio – great timing for my wedding and honeymoon!

In 2010 I won 114 prizes with a total value of around £10,000; almost half of these were prizes from Facebook, Twitter and blog prize draws. I devoted lots of time to finding unusual promotions and this paid off – 23 of my prizes (about £7,000 worth) were won in photo, video and other skill competitions.

I’m not sure what 2011 will hold, although I’m concerned at the growing popularity of (grossly unfair) online voting competitions and I hope that our favourite brands won’t all start to go down this route. This year there have been loads of original and exciting promotions online involving games, video, photos, treasure hunts, recipes and other challenges, and I hope that this is a sign of things to come as it makes for a thrilling hobby! I’d love to get back onto TV gameshows and be more organised with my radio competitions (my Christmas gift from hubby was an analogue radio with preset buttons – I’ve wanted one of these for ages and didn’t think you could still get them!) and I hope that by the end of the year Ryland will be artistic enough to enter colouring competitions too!

When I started my blog in 2009 it was just to keep a record of my wins – since having Ryland a year ago, I find blogging a necessary escape from mumsville and am much more enthusiastic about it. I’ve been really flattered and inspired by some of the feedback and comments I’ve received, and I like to think SuperLucky offers something a bit different in the world of mummy bloggers! So I’d like to begin 2011 by saying a big “Thankyou” to everyone who’s read my blog, voted for me, retweeted me and entered my competitions – I hope that some of my luck rubs off on you all in 2011!