There’s nothing quite like the feeling of winning a competition. Reading the email, seeing the notification or getting the phone call. The buzz. The pure excitement.

Entering competitions without much luck can be disheartening. Most of us would love more success with winning. That’s the hard part. I want to help you.

Background

For those wondering about why I’m writing on this topic, I’d like to give a little background into my experience entering and winning competitions.

I am by no means an expert. I have not been the most successful, nor won the most expensive competitions. However, I have won over $40,000 worth of cash and prizes.

None of these cost money to enter, except for the occasional product that I was going to buy anyway.

I was hooked from a young age.

I’ve always loved entering competitions. Ever since I was a little girl, I couldn’t resist the thrill of winning. I still remember entering a library competition when I was eight. It was a sports quiz.

I tried my best to answer as many questions as I could. The kind library assistant helped me with a few tricky ones. I submitted my entry and waited a few weeks to hear back.

When they called to let me know I’d won, I was over the moon. The prize was a large sports bag with all sorts of goodies inside. I cherished that bag.

When I was nine, I wanted to enter a writing competition. I couldn’t come up with an idea. One afternoon in the car, I asked my mum for advice. She was probably tired and had more pressing things on her mind.

“I don’t know, just write about about a big, fat purple elephant flying through the sky.” Thinking she was serious, I gratefully wrote her idea down and proceeded to write a story about this elephant.

Somehow I managed to win the third prize, cash and a trophy. I don’t really know how. Maybe not many others entered. We still laugh about it now.

When I was fifteen, I bought a packet of Staedtler pens from Kmart. They were running a promotion giving away gold. Not an instant winner, I sent off the barcode in a stamped envelope for the second chance draw.

A few weeks later, I received a letter saying that I had won two gold coins, worth around $500. I kept them for a few years, eventually selling them to fund a hair straightener and airfares to Melbourne.

At sixteen, I saved up to buy a video camera. It wasn’t cheap but I was so excited to film all the things. I drove everyone nuts by insisting on recording every moment. One weekend, we went to an adventure park. The first activity was mini golf. As my mum swung her club back, she hit my brother straight in the face. Luckily I had captured it on film.

After checking to see if he was okay, my next immediate thought was about how I could make some money off this special moment. I recorded the clip onto a blank VHS tape and sent it into Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

It was selected to go on air and as a finalist, I received $500. (I did share the prize with my mum and brother. Only fair really.)

I Kept On Entering

As an adult, I kept on entering. I just couldn’t help it. I had the bug. I entered and kept winning prizes.

• Movie tickets (online entries, runner-up in radio contests)
• Books (online entries, Instagram, radio station contests)
• $50 Flight simulator voucher (comment on Facebook)
• $50 Local butcher voucher (wrote a poem)
• $100 Wine, massage vouchers, dinners and gift hampers (simple form entries and wrote poems)
• $200 Trunki Ride on suitcase filled with baby bath products (online entry form)
• $300 12 months supply of Freedom Foods cereal (wrote a poem)
• $500 Cash Rewards voucher for a friend (wrote a poem)
• $500 FlyBuys cash (wrote a poem)
• $600 Romantic Getaway (wrote a poem)
• $600 Car Fridge Pauls Territories Own Iced Coffee (SMS entry)
• $800 West Elm chair (wrote a 7 verse poem about coffee)
• $1000 Pottery Barn voucher (simple entry form)
• $1200 Women in business Mentoring sessions (simple Instagram entry)
• $1500 Oz Pig campfire and accessories (simple entry form)
• $3000 Springfree jumbo trampoline (simple entry form)
• $5000 Custom-Made Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee pool table (to prove I was their biggest fan, I wrote a poem about needing a FUIC before I birthed each of my children, true story, and then had to recreate this moment on live radio)
• $8,000 Five Day All Inclusive Trip to New Orleans thanks to Vacations & Travel Magazine (simple entry form)
• $15,000 Return Business Class Flights to NYC thanks to the Adelaide Crows Football Club and China Southern Airlines (wrote a poem, then raced the plane at Adelaide Oval)

So, What’s The Secret?

Although there is no a secret formula to winning competitions, there are some simple things you can do. These will increase your chances of success. Here are my top seven tips for winning competitions.

1. Enter Often

My number one tip is to enter often. If you want to win lots of competitions, you have to enter lots of them. It’s really as simple as that.

It might come as a surprise to realise that I probably win one prize for every fifty that I enter. (Maybe for every hundred.) I have been unsuccessful far more times than most people realise.

I often hear comments like, “you’re so lucky. I never win anything.” When I ask them if they enter competitions, they reply, “no, because I’ll never win!”

I will never win the lotto because I don’t buy a ticket. If you never enter competitions, you have no chance of winning.

Rather than scrolling aimlessly on your phone, be intentional. Start by entering one competition a day and you can always increase from there. Keep a few favourite websites open on your phone or laptop. Join competition groups on Facebook. Try websites like The Competitions.

Search for paid websites for competitions that catch your eye and then find the same ones on Google to enter for free.

Use autofill for saving time on completing forms. I was slow to learn this and used to waste so much time.

2. Find The Small Competitions

Find the small companies and the not well-known competitions to enter where you can. If you only enter the social media post that already has thousands of comments on there, the chance of winning is low. Utilise the local shopping centres, real estate agents, sports clubs, TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and magazines.

Find those that run regular competitions and giveaways. Look further abroad in your city to other suburbs that run competitions too. 

Follow these sites and companies on social media and sign up to their emails. Download their apps and bookmark their websites. If they let you enter everyday, put a reminder in your phone to do so.

As annoying as their advertising is, this is how you hear about their giveaways. Use a different email address if you want to avoid spam in your regular inbox, however, you still need to check this regularly. I have been emailed about four of my major wins, and am so glad I didn’t miss those!

3. Be Creative

Adding creativity to your competition entry can make a real difference. As you may have noticed from the list above, many wins were related to poetry. I had to be creative. This means looking for the 25 words or less competitions.

Many people I talk to complain that they can’t be bothered doing this. That’s fine with me! This narrows down the number of entries that companies would receive.

Before you enter a competition, read the terms and conditions to see how they are selecting their winner. If it involves skill, spend some time coming up with a witty, creative, clever or original entry. Write something that will set you apart from the rest.

I enjoy making up rhyming poems and limericks. They are not perfect but I give it a good go. I use the free website and app Rhyme Zone as it helps me come up with the right word to use when I’m stuck. 

4. Look For Themes

Keep an eye out for themed competitions. These are the times that many companies use to advertise and attract new people to like their pages, follow them and subscribe to their emails. Capitalise on this by looking out for competitions that they run. 

Companies often pick special days and events to give away prizes like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, Royal Show, Black Friday and Christmas. I love to enter these.

You can always unfollow and unsubscribe if it gets too much. 

I have about ten themed entries for each that I can tweak from year to year. It’s nice to have a starting point which you can work from.

5. Talk Up The Promoter

If you can, mention the company’s name. They are generously giving away a prize. The company wants to increase their publicity, gain more followers and email subscribers, more customers and ultimately, make more profit.

If it is a competition that requires you to write something, include the name or names of those involved. Make them smile or blush as they read your entry. Make them feel good.

I once pretended that I love oat milk in my coffee to win a chair. I’m allergic to oats, but wasn’t going to let that stop me from entering. They didn’t need to know this. I ended up winning and won some oat milk as well, which I passed onto a grateful family member.

They often like to use the winning entry in their marketing. If it makes them smile and enlarges their ego a bit, they might just choose you. Make the entry so good that not only will they want to choose you as their winner, but they’ll want to use it in upcoming promotional material.

6. Save Your Entries

By saving your creative entries, you are saving your future self time and effort. Copy and paste your entries into the Notes app on your phone, under the category ‘competitions’. Include the theme of the entry as the title so you can easily search for it later.

When a similar competition arises, you can search for an entry you have already done, for example one for Father’s Day. I did this with a coffee entry recently and simply had to tweak it to fit the new question.

I have over 400 saved notes in my competition category. This saves me time, energy and creativity. I rarely have to start from scratch every time a competition comes up.

7. Be Persistent

My last tip for winning competitions is to be persistent. I enter a lot and have done this for years. I don’t give up easily. I like the challenge. 

Keep entering, even if you haven’t had much success yet. Eventually you will have a win. You will get there.

Along with some success, I have had some near misses too.

• I had a one in two chance of winning a trip to Thailand while working a part-time job after getting to the final stage of the contest. I didn’t win. (My average sale was a mere 2c lower than the winner. Won movie tickets instead.)
• I had a one in four chance of winning $10,000 cash in the Funniest Home Videos entry. I didn’t win. (A man who caught his pants on fire won instead).
• I had a one in ten chance of winning a $10,000 gold bullion. I didn’t win.
• I was one of 100 finalists vying for a brand-new car. I didn’t win.
• I once entered 400 times to win a car. The competition had unlimited entries. I didn’t think to use auto-fill for my details so literally filled out the form separately each time. I didn’t win. (Hubby couldn’t believe I wasn’t using autofill. It’s since been a game-changer. No surprise really.)
• Some poems that I wrote I thought were original and funny, yet I never heard back.
• I’ve often spent an hour or two mulling over the perfect entry and wasn’t the one they chose. This can be incredibly frustrating and feels like it was a waste of time.
• I won a romantic trip to the Dandenong Ranges but somehow forgot I had a toddler. It was a strictly child-free place. I also didn’t realise how far away it was so had to forfeit the prize.
• I tried to win a year’s supply of coffee but the competition had already closed.
• I spent six hours writing a twelve verse poem about mushrooms, cooking a meal and attempting to take fancy photos. I didn’t win. 
• I really wanted to win a FlyBuys competition. I made a reel about fixing all the broken things in my house and another on what each child would buy with the money.  They were giving away $5000 cash to ten people making the odds quite good. I didn’t win. 

Some of the competitions I have ended up winning have been quite simple entries that I happened to stumble upon.

I am incredibly grateful for the success that I have had. We have made some wonderful memories as a family and have had some great use from the prizes.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m any luckier than most. I simply enter often and take time to be creative. I keep a record of my wins so don’t lose track of them. 

I won a string of competitions when I had a small baby and toddler. Whilst spending many hours feeding or lying with them to sleep, I would try and make the time count. I was still on my phone but was trying to be productive. 

Maybe for you, you are recovering from surgery or an illness. Perhaps you are isolated. Maybe you have young children or have retired. Perhaps you are facing a relationship breakdown or your children have left the nest.

Whatever your reason, make it count. Be on your screen with purpose.

You’ve got to be in it to win it.  Happy entering and good luck!

I’d love to hear about your experience with competitions. What has been the best prize you have won?

Drop a comment below or connect via Instagram or Facebook.

You can find discount codes here or on Linktree.

Melanie Wegener

P.S. Where do you find all these competitions, I hear you asking? I’ve written some tips here.