I Entered 2000+ Competitions… But Did I Actually Win Anything?

Towards the end of 2022, it felt like everyone and their dog was winning thousands of amazing prizes through comping. From actual thousands in cold hard cash to holidays in the Maldives, these wins were all over my instagram feed and I thought “that’s gonna be me next year”. To the point that I made “enter 10,000 comps” a 2023 goal and added a picture of an over-water villa in the Maldives to my vision board. I was going to win a bunch of incredible prizes and then be the one posting on instagram about the cool wins.

Well, that’s not exactly how it went.

What is comping?

Comping is exactly what it sounds like, entering a bunch of competitions in the hopes that you win some good stuff. People have actually made a decent side hustle out of this and win prizes worth thousands each and every year.

How many comps did you enter?

I started off kinda strong in January and entered 471 competitions across the month. A little bit off the 834 I should’ve entered to be on track to hit 10,000 entered throughout the year. But it felt like a good start and I was still excited by it. But then February came and went and I only entered 25 competitions. The newness of the hustle had worn off when I wasn’t winning amazing prizes left right and centre. March was a little better with 175 comps entered but I finally got my mojo back in April when I entered 748. When the wins still didn’t come rolling in, I lost almost all my motivation and ended the year on 2283 competitions entered in total. Quite a bit away from my 10k goal.

Did you win anything?

I did actually! Out of the 2283 comps I entered I won 3 prizes. Three. Either I am super super unlucky or the compers I was following were entering thousands each month. But I’m not complaining as my little comping experiment did leave me with a couple prizes. Specifically I won a £100 Amazon voucher, a £25 Tesco voucher and a skincare bundle worth £125. That’s a total value of £250.

Where did you find the comps?

The vast major of the 2283 comps I entered were on instagram. You know the sort that you see shared to people’s stories now and again. Well because I planned to enter thousands I didn’t want to annoy the hell out of my friends and family so I made a new instagram account. A whole new instagram account dedicated to entering competitions. This took the anxiety about sharing completely out of the equation. Plus I followed a bunch of other compers on there so I could tag them without annoying my loved ones. Perfect solution!

I also entered a handful on competition websites like Good Housekeeping and Cosmo. Plus not included in the 2283 total are the daily draws I check everyday which just about count as comps.

Was it worth the effort?

I timed myself one afternoon and it took me 20 minutes to enter 30 instagram comps. Not bad speed. That means it took me approximately 25 hours to enter all 2283 competitions. And given my prizes valued £250, that works out to a £10 per hour rate. So yeah I’d say maybe it was worth the effort after all.

Are you going to carry on?

It can and did get very demoralising entering tonnes of competitions daily to not get much back in return but the maths is making me rethink my decision to give up. I’d pretty much written comping off as something I gave a go but didn’t work out for me. However, I didn’t really give it a full go, seeing as I only got 23% of the way towards my goal and most months I entered less than 100 comps. So maybe I’ll give it another shot in 2024 and see what happens.

Have you ever tried comping before? Did you win anything good?