Competitions

Thought I would do a bit of research into the world of competitions and was quite surprised at how many companies are anti 'compers'.

There are so many sites now that give you all the details of competitions that it is easy to enter hundreds a week.  I use one of these sites (Loquax), and find it very useful.  It tells me what the prize is, when the closing date is and what type of competition i.e. tie breaker, photo/video, draw or question to answer.  It also allows me to record what competitions I have entered so I don't duplicate my entries.

The trouble is that people are trying to make extra money where ever they can - look at the growth of e-bay.  So these people enter every competition they can and if they win a prize they don't want then they can sell it on e-bay. 

Unfortunately companies that run competitions are slow to catch on to this type of comper and make it easy for them.  It is no good them complaining that the answers to their competitions are published on site like MSE and compers can enter their competition without looking at the rest of the site.  Well why don't they change the rules?  Why not make the compers look for things, surely it is possible to tell if people have been to web pages other than the competiton.

There are also sites that enter competitions for you.  These really annoy me as they give compers a bad name, but again those running the competition just need to write it in the rules - no third party entries, or all entries from unique IP addresses (though that is a pain for those using internet cafes).

I can't understand why companies don't want compers coming to their sites.  I have found lots of interesting sites via competitions.  There are so many websites for so many different products and services that it is easy for one to get lost, so they should be using every tool available to get noticed.  Compers talk on these comping sites about the different companies who run competitions and are quick to praise or condemn so not only do competitions attract more visitors they also get people talking about the companies/products.

Competitons that rely on votes is a subject for another day.