Winning habits: how much could you win from entering competitions?

Earlier this year, Christine Britten won a two-night holiday to Yorkshire. She was excited, but she also had a funny feeling. ‘I can’t explain it,’ she said. ‘I had a feeling I was going to win something else a bit bigger.’ 

Within a week, Christine had won a five-night break to a five-star lodge in Scotland. It happens to her a lot: ‘I can be doing anything and I just get this feeling that I’m going to win something. And most times I do. I don’t know what that’s all about.’

Premonitions aside, these wins don’t come out of thin air. Christine is one of thousands of people across the country who spends hours a week entering competitions as a hobby. They call themselves ‘compers’, while competitions are ‘comps’. No time for four syllables when there are prizes to be won. 

You might think compers would want to keep competitions to themselves in a bid to boost their odds. Not so. Instead, there’s a whole community of them who help each other out, share tips and celebrate each other’s wins.

I wanted to find out more about this comping community. And, frankly, I fancied winning some prizes. So I spoke to comping experts and hobbyists, and began entering competitions myself to try to get answers to several questions: how much could the average person win? How much effort would it take? And, in these tough times, could you win enough to supplement your income?

Comping legends

Christine's first prize, in 1990, was a year’s supply of cheese. Every quarter she received a huge dairy-stuffed wicker basket, which she shared with friends, colleagues and charities. ‘It just gave me such a kick being able to win. But not just win – share.’ 

Decades later, Christine has won, and shared, hundreds of prizes. She keeps a ‘win list’ – an inch-thick stack of A4 sheets – which includes an all-inclusive trip to Iceland, VIP Madonna tickets, bicycles, vouchers and cash. Christine estimates that she’s won 40 holidays over 32 years. She once won a year’s free council tax. 

Christine might sound like the luckiest person in the world, but she’s just one of many compers with remarkable track records. Take Michelle Kirkup. She only started comping last year, but she estimates she’s already won more than £10,000 worth of prizes. 

‘I definitely didn’t think I’d be as successful as I’ve been so far,’ she said. ‘It’s a great distraction from the business of life and work. It’s definitely a hobby I’m going to continue.’ 

During my conversations with compers, one name kept cropping up: Di Coke, also known as ‘Super Lucky Di’. One called her ‘the UK’s foremost comping queen’. Another said she’s ‘absolute proof that if you put time and effort into it you can win so much’. Di’s online comping empire spans a popular blog packed with tips, a YouTube channel where she shows viewers her prizes, an Instagram account with 7,000 followers and a 13,000-strong Facebook group ‘Lucky Learners’ – a community hub for fellow compers.

Listen: Ian shares his comping journey and compers break down their wins and techniques on the Which? Money Podcast.

The competitions worth entering

When I contacted Di, she was about to fly home from a family holiday in Tenerife. She didn’t win the trip itself, but she had paid for it with money she’d won. 

Di started her blog when she was working as a graphic designer in 2005. She won a G5 Apple Mac computer worth £2,000 in a magazine competition, which let her quit her job and work freelance from home, giving her the flexibility to start the blog and, of course, enter more competitions. 

‘It was a sort of dream prize. There’s always a dream prize at a certain time of your life that will change your path.’ Di’s dream at the moment is to win a trip to Japan to visit her best friend who lives there. I’m struck by this, as that’s also my dream prize for the same reason. 

‘It’s all about learning as you go,’ Di said. ‘A lot of people start by Googling and entering all the competitions everyone’s entering.’ Di tends to assess competitions and work out her chances of winning. Usually this narrows it down to those that involve completing tasks, such as arriving at a certain place at a certain time, or taking a selfie. ‘Anything that requires effort, I automatically think – the only people who are going to enter are compers – because nobody else can be bothered!’ 

Di says comps that involve buying something in the supermarket can also have better odds. Generally, you can buy a product once and enter its associated competition multiple times. Christine won a £500 easyJet voucher by entering a competition five times with the same multipack of Walkers crisps.

• Find out more: 47 ways to make money

Online opportunities

Comping opportunities are widespread on social media – particularly on Instagram, where brand pages often hold giveaways. You usually have to ‘like’ a post, follow the brand’s page and tag a friend in the comments to have a chance of winning. 

‘If someone is hardcore comping every single day on social media, they will generally win a couple of times a month,’ said Emily Parker, founder of the Instagram page and website Competition Finder. ‘It’s a numbers game at the end of the day.’ 

Perhaps unusually for a millennial, I didn’t have Instagram before researching this story and I found it difficult to find decent competitions after I set up my account. That all changed when I followed Competition Finder. The page curates competitions from big and trustworthy brands. There I found and entered comps to win French Connection vouchers and Harry Styles tickets (I didn’t win). 

Emily oversees Competition Finder part-time outside of her day job in marketing, and employs staff to create posts and handle the website. ‘There are more giveaways than we share, but we have a reputation to protect. We don’t want to share something from a bakery that’s just opened up and then doesn’t give that prize away. We can’t guarantee it’s legit, so we do have certain eligibility criteria.’ 

Guaranteeing whether something is ‘legit’ is a big part of comping. Which? has previously warned about several fake competitions on Facebook, and in June scam messages promoting non-existent Father’s Day competitions supposedly from Screwfix and Heineken circulated on WhatsApp. But fraudsters’ most popular tactic for tricking compers is ‘cloning’.

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Easy pickings for scammers

Entering a competition on Instagram usually involves liking and commenting on a post. Unfortunately, this creates a handy list of targets for scammers, who can then contact entrants to pretend they’ve won. Action Fraud couldn’t provide data on how many scams such as this are reported, but it had happened to every comper I interviewed. It happened to me, too. 

I entered a competition on Instagram to win a holiday with fitness app Beyond. Within days I received a new follower – notable since I have so few. It looked familiar. It had the same profile picture as Beyond’s official account. It even looked like it had the same name. On closer inspection, I saw it was slightly misspelled: ‘beyonndap’ instead of ‘beyondapp’. 

The page’s description said it was set up to select a winner. While Beyond had nearly 94,000 followers, this page had 697. The page never contacted me and I never tried to contact it. When I looked for the page in my follower list after the Beyond comp had closed (I didn’t win), it had changed its name and profile image to target entrants to a different competition by Popeyes restaurants. 

So what do these pages want from people? Usually it’s a phishing scam. They will ask victims to click a link, share details or send money for the delivery of a non-existent prize. 

‘It’s tough really because new compers will get targeted and they won’t know it’s not the real account,’ said Di. ‘Generally, if you win a competition, no one will be asking you to click a link. They will send you a message and usually they will give you an email address and ask you to get in touch.’ She advised looking for the Instagram ‘blue tick’, which indicates a page is verified. 

Even genuine competitions can have problems. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has pointed to several examples of high-profile competitions breaching its giveaways code. Breaches will typically involve a failure to signpost terms and conditions, or an inability to prove the winner was chosen at random.

• Find out more: how to spot a scam

A chance to get creative

While the majority of compers now spend their time liking and commenting on Instagram, it wasn’t always this way. Andrea Goodheart started comping 34 years ago. 

‘When I was expecting my first son I wasn’t able to work so much, but I still wanted to buy nice things,’ she said. ‘I really wanted a microwave.’ 

She entered a competition to win one in her local paper and succeeded. She had to send a postcard with a tiebreaker completing the following sentence: ‘I would like to win a Thorn Halogen Multiwave Oven because…’ and Andrea wrote: ‘My lifestyle is fast and my cooking should be too.’ 

At the time, many comps required these tiebreakers. Andrea kept entering them – and took classes to get better at writing them. I asked her if comps like this still exist. ‘Not really. It’s quite disappointing because we all love doing it, particularly older compers.’ 

But in 2019, a rare creative comping opportunity arose thanks to Jet2, which was giving away a private flight to Majorca for one lucky winner and 99 others to mark the acquisition of its 100th aircraft. To enter, you had to say why your group deserved to win. Some 50 members of the Lucky Learners group – including Di Coke and Andrea – pooled their talents and resources to create a highly elaborate entry. 

The crown jewel was a homemade music video set to the tune of Jess Glynne’s ‘Hold My Hand’ with rewritten lyrics about good luck charms. It’s a joyful video featuring compers dressed as dice, magpies and four-leaf clovers. Naturally, they won. 

Soon enough, the 50 compers and their plus ones (also mostly compers) were on a flight with the holiday’s host, TV presenter Rylan Clark. ‘We had redcarpet treatment, balloons, party bags. It was amazing,’ said Andrea. On the flight, the cabin crew announced there would be a competition and asked for volunteers to help with the safety demonstration. ‘I don’t think they reckoned for the fact that we were all compers. I think 100 people put their hands up!’

Feeling lucky?

It pains me to say that after all I’ve learned and the dozens of competitions I’ve entered, I still haven’t won anything. Maybe I’m just not lucky. Or maybe it was a lack of persistence – I certainly didn’t dedicate as much time as these committed compers do. 

But I haven’t given up hope. I’m still following Competition Finder and I’ll keep an eye on Di’s website. When the chance to win flights to Japan comes up, I’ll definitely be entering. And I know who to call if I need help making a video.

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