SuperLucky Strategies: Di’s Comping Masterclass
Thank you so much to the hundreds of you who joined me live for the Comping Masterclass this week! The chat was buzzing, the feedback and questions were great, and it was so wonderful to welcome so many new faces into the Lucky Legends community!
If you couldn’t make it to the live stream, grab a cuppa and don’t worry, because I recorded the whole thing for you. In this masterclass, I shared lots of advice for improving your win rate, including:
- Why comping isn’t a numbers game: choose quality over quantity
- My 15-minute routine: consistency is key
- How to find low entry competitions: ideas to improve your win rate
You can watch the full replay right here:
Because the chat was moving so fast, I ran out of time to get through everyone’s questions at the end of the stream, so I have rounded them all up and answered them for you below. I hope it’s useful!
If you would like to find out more about joining Lucky Legends, please head to superlucky.me/joinlegends.
Q&A: Lucky Legends
Log into the forum, and click Subscribe at the top of each category you are interested in. Then go to User Settings > Notifications and scroll down to turn on Email notifications to choose the frequency of the emails. You can find full instructions on the forum by clicking here.
The discount code box is for a gift subscription code. Gift subs cost £60 for a year’s membership and you can find out more at www.superlucky.me/giftsub. It’s also a good option if you don’t like recurring card payments – you can buy yourself a one off gift subscription that expires after 12 months
‘Star Comps’ are the promotions that I believe give you the absolute best chance of winning! You can find them by clicking ‘Star Comps’ on the main navigation menu of the Lucky Legends forum – or on mobile, tap the three lines for the drop down menu.
Not at all! The Lucky Legends community lives on its own private, secure forum platform, so you don’t need a social media account to take part in the chat or access the shopping list.
You get points for when other members react to your content, and more points gets you more stars. Ratings go from one star to five stars, then from one black star to the maximum of 5 black stars. Earn points by posting new comps, and sharing helpful information. Once you earn your third star, you can request to join the exclusive Legends Radio WhatsApp group.
Q&A: Social Media
It’s not essential to have a public profile in order to win prizes on Instagram, but it’s recommended. If your account is private, promoters cannot see hashtagged photos or story shares. If you want to keep your personal photos private, I recommend setting up a second, dedicated public Insta account to use for comping. See more in my guide to Instagram comping.
The best way is to use the Instagram search bar to look for specific hashtags like #UKgiveaway, #UKcompetition, or event day tags like #WorldGinDay. Or search for keywords and phrases, such as Win Reading Festival tickets. Unfortunately you can’t filter the results by date so you’ll have to sift through closed giveaways in the results. See more in How to find, enter and win Instagram competitions
Q&A: Problems
As it’s a blogger who is the official promoter in this case, you should let them know that you’ll be submitting an ASA complaint unless they help you to get the prize – ask them for contact details for both the restaurant and the brand, and I would suggest actually phoning up to speak to someone in the Marketing team for both. There’s more tips in my post How to complain about a competition.
I have a detailed post with advice on this: How to complain about a competition. If you’re a member, you might also find the Legends Live broadcast about communicating effectively with brands helpful.
The problem of fake profiles claiming prizes (in particular Amazon vouchers) is incredibly frustrating. I would suggest if you enter a competition on social media for an Amazon voucher (or similar prize that can be instantly emailed) that you set notifications for new posts from that page, and set a reminder to check the competition post after it closes incase they have announced you as a winner there. We need to remind promoters that winners should NEVER be announced before they have been contacted privately. If a winner is publicly announced, a scammer is able to clone their Facebook account and quickly DM the promoter to claim the prize before the real winner sees the announcement. If you fall victim to this scam, you should remind the promoter that they breached the CAP Code – because of GDPR, they should have contacted you privately by DM first to confirm you were happy for your name to be publicly announced as the winner. And hopefully they will still send you the prize.
Q&A: Purchase Necessary Comps
You have to check the Terms and Conditions carefully. Brands will never state outright in the terms that you can buy once then enter every day (because obviously that would reduce their sales figures!), but in most cases where you only need a barcode to enter, it’s acceptable. If the T&Cs don’t say “One entry per receipt” or “You must have a new receipt for every entry, and winners will be requested to provide all receipts” then you’re fine to buy once, then enter multiple times. I do add a note to the forum topic chat for promotions where I believe it’s ok to do this – but please remember, it’s only my advice and you should make your own decision. See my post Purchase Neceaary promotions – just one receipt or one receipt per entry
This is a very common issue with ASDA and some local convenience stores. If your receipt just says “BISCUITS” or something vague, I suggest you take a clear photograph of the receipt alongside the promotional product you bought. Keep both the photo and the receipt just in case the promoter questions it. If a receipt is rejected, contact the promoter with a product photo and ask for a manual review.
It’s rare that you need the physical receipt or packaging – usually a promoter is happy with a photo, but it’s still risky to completely throw them away! My tip is to cut the promotional flashes, barcodes, and batch codes and only keep those (and only where terms state you should keep packaging). Keep them in an envelope or an expanding folder, sorted by month. See my tips for organising packaging and receipts.
Yes, this is fine to do – but I would suggest you enter any unique competition codes online before doing this, and use a black permanent market to cross the code out before popping into the food bank collection. Otherwise, if the recipient then also attempts to enters the code it could flag you as a cheat – because that person can prove they physically have the packaging.
Q&A: General
It depends on the type of competition. If you’re sending them off for the big cash comps on ITV, these are likely to have hundreds of thousands of entries. But if you’re sending off a postal entry for a Crowdfunder prize draw, a local newspaper comp or even a ‘free’ entry for a raffle site, you’ll have a better chance of winning. Read more about how to send a postcard enty.
Running SuperLucky, Lucky Legends & Lucky Learners is my full-time job, and comping is still a hobby. I probably only spend about 30 minutes a day actually entering competitions!
I do think the secret to winning isn’t luck; it’s consistency, organisation, creativity and a positive mindset. The most successful compers are the ones who make comping a part of their daily routine and are super focused on the prizes they want.
It can sometimes feel unfair when influencers get a shortcut to entry, especially if they received the products for free, but do check terms and conditions, as sometimes the influencers aren’t actually eligible to win anyway.
A “winning moment” is a randomly pre-selected fraction of a second. Usually, the first person to enter a code or click a button after that moment passes wins a prize (for some comps it might be during a moment). Time of entry is crucial – if you enter at 3am, you’ll be competing against far fewer people than at 12 noon, meaning you should be more likely to catch a winning moment. You’ll also have a better chance of winning at the start and the end of some winning moment promotions, because there should be less people entering. Find out more in my post What is a winning moment competition?.
To avoid missing wins, get into the habit of searching your email inbox (and your spam folder!) once a week for keywords like “winner,” “congratulations,” and “won.” On social media, remember to regularly check your ‘Message Requests’ and ‘Hidden Requests’ folders, as messages from brands often get filtered out of your main inbox. And do a regular Google search for your name. – see my post How to search Google for missed competition wins.
Using the site: command in your Google search is a clever way to find comps! If you type site:instagram.com "UK only" "giveaway" into Google, it forces the search engine to only show you results from Instagram that include those exact phrases. See more about Google searching for comps in my post How to find competitions using Google search.
You can find the link to my Comping Calendar at superlucky.me/compingcalendar. Tap the plus sign or ‘Add to Google Calendar’ at the bottom, and it will automatically sync all the event days (like National Pizza Day or World Book Day) to your own Google calendar. See more at SuperLucky Comping Calendar: never miss an event day.
Yes! If you go to superlucky.me/compingcalendarics it will download an ICS file to your device, which you can import into your Apple or Outlook calendar.
On an iPhone, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. On Android, go to Settings > System > Languages & input > Personal dictionary. You can set it up so that when you type a shortcut like “@em”, it automatically expands into your full email address, or use it to create shortcuts for tagging your friends in Instagram giveaway comments. You can also see my video guide here (start from about 30 minutes into the video)
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Hello Sorry just noticed an error. In the general questions above asking whether entering a postcard comp worth it, it says ‘Read more in my guide to postcard comps’ – but the link leads to a 404 page. I enter a lot of postcard comps so was quite interested in this. Many thanks Loretta.
That’s fixed now – it’s https://superlucky.me/how-to-send-a-postcard-entry/
It’s an old post so I haven’t got round to adding info about raffle site postcard routes yet.