Quick - win Nuby teething toys!

NubyUK tweeted earlier asking which of their products featured on Eastenders last night! It was a Natural Flex soother - you need to email this answer with your address to nuby.comp@yahoo.com and the first 20 will get a set of Nuby Icybite Teething keys (baby boy managed to drop his keys out of the buggy today so I'm hoping I can win a new set!). Good luck!

What's in your wardrobe?

This weekend I've found a few competitions that require your creative input - so get dressed up, and get snapping!


First up is The Shoe Galleries, a weekly competition at the Selfridges website. Tell them your shoe story (with an optional photo) and every Friday at 1pm they will pick their favourite to win a pair of shoes to the value of £400! The weekly giveaways end on 12 November 2010 but on 19 November they're announcing details of the Grand Final, where you can win shoes for a whole year.

Win £250 to spend at Sweaty Betty in their Facebook Style Hunt - simply upload a photo of you mixing your wardrobe essentials with your favourite Sweaty Betty pieces. Closes 27 September 2010.


Also on Facebook, GO Outdoors have a launched a monthly competition to win £50 vouchers - just upload a photo of you in the great outdoors, using or wearing GO Outdoors products.  Winners will be picked on the 30th of each month.

Win £150 to spend on formalwear by uploading a photo of your most disgraceful party outfit to the My Tuxedo Facebook fanpage. Be warned though - the photo with the most 'Likes' will be the winner! Closes Friday 17 September.


Ah, now this is just my type of comp! Email a photo of yourself wearing a tea cosy on your head to White Stuff and win a £100 voucher! Closes 29 September 2010. 


I suppose if you were feeling particularly inventive, you could just take one photo and enter all five competitions with it! (hmmm..... now that would be interesting!)

Blog comp round up!

Happy Friday compers! I hope the rain hasn't dampened your spirits this week and you've taken advantage of the bad weather to sit indoors comping! My MASSIVE prize lilo from the Starburst text competition arrived this week, I think I might take it outside and float on the giant puddle in the car park as I certainly can't see me using it at the British seaside this summer! 

Here's the latest blog comps to get your teeth into...

Closing 30 August
• Win any item from the Whimsical Wren jewellery shop
• Tell MYFDBlog where in the world you would visit for inspiration and you could win a Tulola pendant
• WIn a Netbook worth £129.99 at The Family Panel
• Anorak Magazine needs a Happy Pal! There are loads of fab prizes to win if your pal is chosen as the winner (two sets of prizes for under 13s and over 13s)

Closing 31 August
• Win His and Hers Polaroid sunglasses at The Lichfield Blog

Closing 1 September
• WIn a £20 voucher to spend at Little Beau at And Then All I Thought About Was You

Closing 5 September
• WIn a book of your choice (2 prizes) from the Book Depository at About Happy Books (international entries welcome)
• Win a blog makeover worth £400 at Family Vie

Closing 6 September 2010
• Kidstart members can win a Stokke Tripp Trapp highchair in purple

Closing 12 September
• Win a Close baby carrier at Boho Boxmoor

Closing 16 September
• Win a trip to the Oktoberfest at London's Bavarian Beerhouse at This Little Lady Went to London

Closing 18 September 2010
• Leave a review on the Wiggle site and win a folding bike

Closing 20 September 2010
• Win copies of Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol' at the Liverpool Museums Blog

Closing 24 September 2010
• WIn maternity pyjamas at Hip Little One (international entries welcome)


Good luck everyone!

Vote for Di (and Ry!)

Since winning my Flip Ultra HD Camcorder I just can't stop filming as it's super easy to use, and it's so much fun editing the movies in iMovie. Here's my entry for the second part of the Flip 'Share Your Summer' competition...

Hope you like it! If you're a Facebook member you can vote for it at http://apps.facebook.com/shareyoursummer/?vID=27&ref=mf and just by voting you could win one of 20 Flip camcorders - you can vote for me daily until 6th September. I know it's a pain to vote for these things so I really appreciate it!


Yesterday I decided to do an entry for the Dermalogica competition, to win $1500 of Dermalogica products. What an amazing prize! It's hard to get much done with a baby around so the solution was to have Ry starring in my film...



If you like this one, then please could you vote for it at http://dermalogica.strutta.com/entries/79413 (unfortunately you'll need to register for the Strutta site first!) - if you have time to make a comment too that would be fab - thanks again!

My next challenge is the Diesel Be Stupid with £50K competition. I think I might need to get drunk to get the inspiration for this one, anybody fancy a booze up?!

(Anti) social media

Today's post is about social media and how it's ruining competitions, in particular the terribly unfair voting competitions that are taking over Facebook right now. Companies have realised that, rather than relying on traditional print, radio and TV advertising, they can recruit thousands of people online to help spread the word about their products on their behalf. They know that Facebook and Twitter are the easiest way to recruit new 'fans', so they are running competitions offering fabulous prizes, with a skill element to entry such as a photo, video or slogan. Then they are asking the public to vote for their favourite entries, and those with the most Votes or 'Like's will win the prize. In order to get the most votes, entrants will tell their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and post anywhere they can to get the most people over to Facebook voting for them. This obviously is of huge benefit to the promoters, as to vote these visitors have to 'Like' and become a fan of the company on Facebook. This will appear on their News Feeds and in turn more people will see and click their links to the promoter's page. 

If the promoter ran a traditional competition where the winner was chosen through a random prize draw, or the entries were judged independently, they would get no traffic to their site through the campaigning of the entrants. So why should they bother? With voting contests, the promoter wins because they have thousands more visitors to their site. The problem is, these visitors are there to vote for a specific entry (one that their friend has emailed or tweeted about) - these aren't members of the public who are fairly judging every entry and voting for the best. As an example, the current 'Design a Kleenex cube' competition to win an iPad has thousands of entries - how on earth can the promoter expect someone to looks through 250+ pages of designs to find the very best? Kleenex have adjusted the terms and conditions since starting their competition too - now they will be judging the 'entries with the most votes' - I imagine this means they can go through as many of the top scoring designs as they need to, until they find one that they like (rather unfair to the entrants who have managed to get the most votes!). 

I'm a finalist in a Flip Video Facebook competition that starts tomorrow, where 20 of us are submitting videos of our Summer and the one with the most votes will win £3000 - it's open to daily voting for two weeks, so unfortunately it's going to be quite traumatic for us to get the votes from our friends and family without infuriating them! I imagine the winning entry won't be the best film, it will be the person who has the least scruples in going about getting their votes (and I know for a fact that at least 11 of us are in the same Compers Voting Group on Facebook!), so Flip will probably end up with a bog standard winning video rather than the best one. But perhaps they should have thought of that before deciding on how to run the competition!

On the flipside (no pun intended!) Radox are currently running a competition where you have to submit a name for their new 'Shower Smoothie'. For this one, Radox are choosing a shortlist of 3 names, and these will go to a public Facebook vote. Nivea too have shortlisted 5 entries for their Moroccan holiday competition, and you can vote on these (well, you could when I visited this morning but now they're nowhere to be seen!). This method is fairer, as the promoter ensures they have a winning entry that they're happy with - although if you visit their Facebook walls you'll see that people still aren't happy with this method of choosing a winner, because this still comes down to 'who has the most friends'! Personally I feel the promoter should offer a prize to the voters too, to encourage more votes from people not affiliated to the entrants - in the case of the Flip competition, there are 10 camcorders on offer to voters.

Today my son has been announced as a finalist in the Baba Me Bonnie Baba competition, but this has opened up a real can of worms as most of the finalists (including myself) have admitted to sourcing votes from unrelated Facebook groups and voting forums. It wasn't against the rules, but other entrants have been hurt by the revelations and feel cheated. Unfortunately it's determination and cheek that wins you this type of competition. Rather than running the competition as a fabulous marketing strategy to promote real nappies (which it has been!), Baba Me only intended for the competition to be small and friendly, but a month later they have over 12,000 new fans. Which proves my point that these competitions, although unfair, are the easiest way to get traffic to your website.

So, in conclusion, it's easy to win a voting competition. You need to have lots of Facebook friends, lots of Twitter followers and you can also join 'Voting Groups' where contestants will swap votes with friends in other competitions. If you're determined enough, and have the time to dedicate to sourcing these votes, then you'll win the prize, even though your entry to the competition could be an absolute shocker. As for me, I always make sure I put 100% into any competition entry I submit, so if I am lucky enough to win then I'd like to think I deserved it.

But really, I wish promoters would bring back proper judging of every single entry. Please!

Competitive Mum, that's me

I'm afraid to say that just 8 months after giving birth, I can now officially consider myself to be a Competitive Mum. I didn't mean for it to happen, honestly! The first competition I entered Ryland in was to be the local Disney Baby for the Nottingham store. He won that one - although to be honest the web uploading didn't work and I reckon our store only had one entry - ours! So when I read about Baba Me's Bonnie Baba competition I thought I'd give that a go. My main reason for this was not to show the world how handsome my son is, but because I wanted to win vouchers to spend at the fabulous Baba Me website on real nappies! The aim of the game was to get a top ten spot based on Facebook 'Like's. I thought this would be a doddle. How wrong I was. Three weeks on and 299 'Like's later, I'm awake each day at 6am emailing and tweeting people asking for votes to keep Ryland in the top ten before it ends tomorrow at midnight! I imagine most mums would have given up by now - but I never give up, so I'm still beavering away here gathering support from all corners of the world. I've swapped votes with lovely new friends in some truly interesting Facebook competitions - the cleanest car, the best moustache, the best dressed dog - and am truly amazed at the lengths some people will go to for their votes!

Anyway, there's 38 hours left in the Baba Me competition so if you haven't voted for Ryland yet please feel free to do so! You need to 'Like' the Baba Me page first at http://www.facebook.com/babame.co.uk and then 'Like' Ryland's photo at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6728124&id=147979925379

If you're in a voting contest yourself, please leave the link in your comment and I will happily return the favour. Thankyou! 

Blog comp round up!

Yes, it's that time of the week already - I'm down in South Wales for a few days staying with the folks, so I get to use my Mum's cute little MacBook to do my blogging. Since Friday I've won a goody bag from Original Source on Facebook and a Galibaldy ring from the Boots 17 Twitter leopardskin comp I blogged about ages ago... hope you've been lucky too! Here's a collection of blog comps to keep you busy:

No closing date - enter ASAP
• Win two Tailball games by letting Family Vie know your tips for entertaining kids over the summer holidays
• Win Shawnimals Ninjatown goodies at Scooter and Jinx

Closing 22 August
• At New Mummy's Tips you can win a Cherish and Cherub wooden name train for your little one (UK entries only)
• Win one of 5 copies of 'After You' by Julie Buxbaum at Chick Lit Reviews  (UK and ROI entries only)
• Win £20 to spend at Little Beau at Babyrambles

Closing 23 August 
• At Vintage Amethyst you can win a chunky charm bracelet (open to international entries)

Closing 25 August
• Tell Culinary Travels about your favourite baking memory and win Tate and Lyle goodies

Closing 26 August
• Win Hipp Organic goodies at Transatlantic Blonde

Closing 27 August
• Win a Senseo Coffee Machine by telling Rebecca Bakes Cakes what your favourite cake is (UK entries only)
• Tatty Devine is giving away Whip It DVDs and limited edition necklaces

Closing 29 August
• Win two MAC lipsticks by telling I Heart Cosmetics about your favourite make-up brand (open to international entries)

Closing 30 August
• Madhouse Family Reviews have three bottles of eco-friendly Method laundry detergent up for grabs (UK entries only)
• Win a Little Scholastic Finger Puppet book at Me and My Shadow 

Closing 31 August
• Tweet your Feet to Skin and Make Up Blog to win a Jessica Nails ZenSpa travel kit

Closing 23 October 
• Enter the story competition at Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books and win one of ten signed copies of 'The Silver Fox' by Sean Beech

Be lucky!

Essential reading for compers

I've just arrived down in Porthcawl to spend the week with my parents at the seaside - and while Nan and Grandad are entertaining baby boy, I'll finally get an opportunity to settle down with my two favourite comping reads... so I'm telling you all about them!

Sometimes people ask me why I still subscribe to comping publications - after all, these days most of my wins come from online fast turnaround Twitter and Facebook giveaways, and radio phone-ins - often, these will be competitions I hear about in the morning and have won by the evening! But I've still got a soft spot for good old-fashioned print - there are times when I need a break from my iMac or iPhone, and it's great to sit down with my highlighter pen and a copy of Compers News or The Competition Grape-vine. There are always loads of comps in there that I haven't seen elsewhere.

I started subscribing to the monthly Compers News newsletter ten years ago, and over the years the content has changed to reflect the popularity of text, online and instant win competitions, but maintaining a good amount of slogan competitions. The editor Steve Middleton (alias Smid) is a good friend of mine (well, I hope he thinks so!) and when I pop round for a cuppa I can hardly see him over the piles of entry forms, prizes and promotional products... he works super hard on the magazine and I'm never surprised to get an email from him at 2am! A year's subscription will cost you £44 - in my opinion it's money well spent, because as well as the magazine you get access to the fabulous friendly Chatterbox online forum. This is a great source for information, help and general chat and we will also organise get-togethers in real life (gasp!) too. Rumour has it that Twitterphobe Steve will be relaunching twitter.com/compersnews in September (stop sniggering at the back!)

Another friend of mine, Jane Willis, produces the monthly Competition Grapevine newsletter. Handbag sized (always useful, that!) it contains a handy checklist so you can take it out shopping with you and never miss an entry form. If you subscribe to the Grapevine (£45 a year, £25 for six months, £13.50 for 3 months) you'll also get Jane's email update between issues. This is a great source of last minute competitions and I was lucky enough to win £500 from a competition Jane listed in her update earlier this year. Jane also has a blog which is full of helpful hints on comping, at http://competitiongrapevine.blogspot.com/ and you can follow her at twitter.com/compergrapevine

Sometimes it might feel hard to justify spending so much money on a newsletter when there are already thousands of competitions acessible for free online, but I guarantee you'll easily win your subscription cost back within a year. Oh, and it's always nice to have something current to read when you're waiting at the doctor's surgery!

Blog comp round up!

I can't believe it's Friday again, where does the time go? Hope everyone's been lucky this week, here's your regular round up of blogtastic giveaways! As usual, email me if you want to be included next time!


Enter soon - no closing date!
• YinnYang are giving away a gift card for Food Secret in Soho
• Family Vie has Tooli nightlights to be won, just tell them your tips for getting little ones to sleep through the night

Closing 14 August
• Win a copy of 'Let's Play Teddy Tennis' on DVD at Family Panel
• Win Maltesers goodies at Food Stuff Finds
Closing 16 August
• There's a signed copy of the Will Write for Food book at Dianne's blog (open to international entries)
Closing 18 August
• Mummy's Little Monkey have an Easy Weaning Guide from The Baby Chef to be won
Closing 19 August
• Win an Urban Decay 'Naked' palette at Naked and Natural (open to international entries)
Closing 20 August
• Red Ted Art are giving away three sets of two Duck Duck Moose iPhone apps for kids (open to international entries)
Closing 23 August
• Win delicious Rude Health goodies at Pyjama Drama

Closing 24 August
• Win £50 to spend at www.mybag.co.uk at The Fish Tank
Closing 26 August
• At Dark Readers you can win a copy of 'Nightlight: A Twilight Parody' - make sure you're following them on Twitter too
• Ji Ji Kiki are giving away a £20 voucher to spend on their site
Closing 29 August
• The lovely Mellow Mummy has a Splash About Floatsuit to be won
Closing 30 August
• There's a pink Matilda t-shirt up for grabs at All Baby Advice

Closing 1 September 
• Hostelbookers blog is running a travel photo competition to win an InterRail or Eurail pass
Closing 6 September
• BabyTod has lots of prizes on offer: a family ticket to Staunton Park, a 'Baby's Here! Who does What' book and a 'Guess with Jess' DVD.
Closing 9 September
• Win a bathrobe by submitting a review on the Babi Pur blog
• Hip Little One have a lovely Swan & Sparrow Carry All bag up for grabs (open to international entries)

Closing 30 October
• This prize is a biggie! Win a £1000 wedding dress and more at the Boho weddings blog - just let them know how your fiancé proposed. The top five proposals will be posted up on the Boho Facebook page for the public to vote for their favourite.

And the award for best director goes to...

Many of you will be aware that I was lucky enough to win a fabulous HD Camcorder in the Flip UK Facebook competition recently. But that was only the first part of the competition - now I need to make a 2 minute film about my summer. My seaside trip with baby boy is scheduled in for next week (oh please be sunny!) and I'm currently planning what visual delights to include - donkeys, old people, 2p arcade machines, sandcastles, rickety rollercoasters...! You'll be able to view and vote for my movie from 24 August and the winning film gets a £3000 prize!


Hopefully once I've got into the swing of using my Flip, I'll be able to enter loads more film competitions, and I've already found some exciting ones online to get started on...


Harper Collins are running a fabulous competition at www.seussreadaloud.com - upload a video of you reading a Dr Seuss story, and you could win a family trip to Orlando. There are props and excerpts from stories online for you to download, but I reckon you'll get brownie points for featuring a proper book in your film too. The videos will be judged by Harper Collins (hurrah, much fairer than going to public vote!) and you need to enter before 31 October 2010.


Sustrans - the national cycle network - are challenging you to record a 2 minute film about the National Cycle Network. There are three age ranges - under 11, 11-17 and adults with prizes of a Forest Holidays holiday for four, VIP Festival tickets and an Aardman studios day. Again, this competition will be judged. Luckily for me, my prize bike from Smooth FM arrived yesteday so I'll be out and about exploring my local cycle network very soon! Closes 30 September 2010.


Dermalogica want you to make a video on why you can't live without Dermalogica - this one goes to a public vote, and the top ten videos will then be judged. The winner gets a year's supply of Dermalogica products. It's an American competition but I've checked and international entries are welcome, as long as your video is in English! Enter by 31 August 2010.


You can win an iPad if you enter the Car Rentals Video Challenge. Make a video (no longer than 90 seconds) on anything to do with your car, upload to YouTube and they will choose the funniest video as their winner. Closing date 30 September 2010.


I've already sorted my male lead for this one - my 7 month old baby! Triton Showers want footage of you getting mucky - the most viewed and best rated film on 31 December 2010 will win £1000, and five runners-up will win a Triton shower. 


Right, that should be enough to keep you busy for a while! I've got two nice wins to report this week - a copy of Just Dance for the Wii from Zavvi on Twitter, and an Eden Hall spa day for two on Heart FM. I can't wait to go there, maybe I can have some sort of mud wrap and get some footage for the Triton comp...hmmmmm...

Tune in to win

As I'm at home for most of this week, I'll be channel hopping on the radio and listening to:

• the XFM breakfast show - win a trip to Scotland and £250 with Maynards every day (you can also win £1000 just by entering online here too) - you need to identify film audio that's got chewing noises over it!

• Heart FM lunchtime show - win a trip to London plus £500 spending money with BT at around 12.30 every day, you just need to identify the soap opera couple (it was Scott & Charlene today!)

• Heart FM East Midlands - win Eden Hall spa days on both the breakfast and evening shows

• TalkSPORT - win Sky+ HD for a year on the breakfast show (register to play here)

And for those of you too nervous to go on air....

• Absolute Radio have a nice online competition to win a trip to Europe (must be taken from 24-26 August) - describe your greatest ever journey of exploration at www.absolute.co.uk before 15 August.

• Classic FM have an online competition to win £2500 towards your ultimate life experience - describe it in less than 250 words at www.classicfm.co.uk - closes 26 September.

Good luck, and don't forget to read my blog post about the best ways to win at radio comps!

Just the ticket - why I love raffles!

Ah, raffles. Just hearing the word used to strike fear into me - I hated them, they just seemed so shambolic and random, buying a ticket (and then misplacing it) and waiting three hours for a draw, and really hoping that maybe this time could be the time I actually win something...but no, it wasn't to be! Of course, my opinion changed when I actually helped organise one.

In 2007 my friends and I promoted a 'Comping' Day at Pride Park (cleverly called 'Comp Pride') and we wanted to run the raffle to end all raffles. Letters were written, phone calls were made, more letters were written and we begged and begged for prizes (I say 'we', but essentially my friends did most of the work whilst I designed the website and programme!). When the big day arrived we had at least 400 prizes, they covered the tables, the floor, the walls - it was chaos. We sold tickets in aid of Rainbow's Children's Hospice and raised over £2000 (at last year's event it was £3560!). I realised that the trick to winning in a raffle is simple - you need to buy lots of tickets! And NEVER feel guilty about buying lots of tickets, because EVERY PENNY of your cash is going to charity! Some of our guests spent £30 or £40 on raffle tickets, and they went home with prizes worth much, much more than that. You would be amazed at what companies are prepared to donate - gorgeous expensive toiletries, jewellery, handbags, make-up, luxury food hampers - even if it's not your thing, prizes like this will make fabulous Christmas gifts.

I went along to an NCT event on Friday afternoon - I had meant to get there early on but been sidetracked by a pub lunch, so I arrived 20 minutes before the end. I bought 10 raffle tickets for £4, then moved on to the remarkably full tombola stall. Now, I used to hate tombolas even more than raffles simply because they always look so damned shabby, but here many of the prizes had been donated by Boots so I knew it was worth spending some cash. The organisers certanly didn't want to take all the prizes home, so they'd halved the ticket price - after much rummaging by baby boy in the ticket box, he pulled out 27 losing tickets and 9 winning ones - not a bad haul for £6! By the time we'd finished here, the raffle was being drawn - there were only a few stragglers left, so anyone who wasn't there was assigned a random prize. Three of my numbers came up, and as I was there I could choose my prizes; a couple of smart toys and some cute tomato shoes for the little fella. The top prizes were spa days, and as there were only 115 tickets sold there were pretty good odds of winning!

So, after all this rambling - my advice is to ALWAYS buy raffle tickets. It's an easy way to give to a worthy cause AND have a chance at winning a prize. And always arrive at the event late so you don't have to hang around for hours waiting for the raffle to be draw - you can choose your own prizes, and won't be assigned a tea towel! Oh, and PUT THE TICKETS IN A SAFE PLACE!

And while we're on the subject of raffles, this year's charity comping day - called 'Raising for Rainbows' now - will be held in Mickleover in Sunday 17 October. There are a few tickets left, and we're collecting prizes right now for our super-duper raffle so please, if you have anything you could donate to a very worthy cause drop me an email. And if you're coming along, don't forget to bring loads of cash and check out the prizes we've already got on our website.

Blog comp round up!

Here's this week's round up of blog comps... again, where entry restrictions are stated I've added them here!

No closing date... enter ASAP!

• Do you have a sleep tip? Post it on the Sleepmasters blog and you could win a £50 Amazon voucher
• The Punchbowl Blog has £100 of Money clothing to be won

Closing today (Friday 6 August 2010)
• Anglian have two £20 Odeon cinema vouchers to give away - but you need to email or tweet them the answer (1) A Rated before 5pm today!
• At Baby Budgeting you can win £30 of clothes from Tesco Clothing - ends at 4pm today (UK entries only)
• There's a lovely handmade cushion up for grabs at Tree Fall Design
• All About The Boys are giving away a gorgeous Faith girl's dress

• Cher Chats has Sally Hansen nail goodies to win
• There's 5 Tummy Ache games to be won before 7pm today at Mum's The Blog

Closing 9 August 2010
• At Titan Books you can win original Scroobius Pip artwork and also signed CDs
 
Closing 12 August 2010
• Win tickets to the Family Fun Day (on 16 August) and a family meal at Wolverhampton Racecourse at Have a Lovely Time
• Win lashings of Famous Five books and copies of 'The Wife's Tale' by Lori Hansen at Bookrabbit (UK entries only for Famous Five comp)

Closing 13 August 2010
• Win a MamaTens Family Thermometer at Second Time Mummy

Closing 15 August 2010
• At White Lily Green you can win a Raffles Bizarre jewellery set
 
Closing 16 August 2010
• Lanalou Style are giving away a set of Bella Card Company stationery (international entries welcome)
• At Raindrops of Sapphire you can win Elsie Belle jewellery (international entries welcome)
• Diary of a First Child has a gorgeous Ju Ju Be changing bag to win

Closing 23 August 2010
• All Baby Advice have a Willvin changing bag to give away (UK and Ireland entries only) 

Closing 27 August 2010
• At Katy's Little Meows you can win books - Tease, Crystal, The Jewel Box and Selina Penaluna (UK entries only)

Closing 31 August 2010 
• Win St Trinians 2 DVDs and merchandise at Sarah Harding Addicts
• The Funky Chunks soap company want you to come up with a new tagline for them, and you could win soap for a year! 

Closing 2 September 2010
• Win a pair of Australian Girl Ugg Boots at Hip Little One (international entries welcome)

Closing 17 September 2010
• The Book Depository blog is offering an iPod Touch pre-loaded with 20 great books - email the answers to their serial killer quiz to enter!

Ongoing comps with monthly prize
• Mesina has launched her blog project 'Ask Me!' at And Then There Was Me; the current prize is a tasty Hotel Chocolat goodie bag.

Good luck, and don't forget to email me if you want your competition included next time, and let me know if it's open to UK residents only or worldwide!

Fun Facebook comps

There are loads of competitions running on Facebook and there's no easy way of tracking them down (or if there is, I don't know about it!) - maybe I'll ask Aunty Jane! Often I'll do a search on Twitter for 'competition' and 'win' and find people posting links to Facebook. These are the latest competitions I've found for you to have a go at... you'll need to be a Facebook member and click 'Like' at the top of the pages before you can see full details of the competitions!

French Connection are challenging you to create a look for day or night from their new Autumn/Winter collection at www.shopstyle.co.uk - full instructions are here. The prize is a Wisteria sequinned dress and FC bath and body products. Closes 3rd September 2010.

Young's are offering kids the chance to meet David Beckham! You need to show how active your family can be across the summer, and the competition ends on 31st August 2010.

HTC want you to come up with a unique event to invite all your Facebook friends to - HTC will organise the event and arrange for your friends to get there (including flying over 5 friends from overseas). This ends on 15th August 2010.

Phones4U are giving away three Playstation 3 Slims, answer a simple question by 8th August 2010.

Nivea want to give you £5000 for a street party! Just tell them all about your party plan by 13th August 2010. Hmmm, I don't think I know my neighbours well enough for this one! You can also win a trip to Morocco on their Facebook page - enter by 16th August.

If you're new to Facebook, why not make friends with a comper (you could start with me!) - you'll be able to see which pages they're fans of, and which competitions they're entering from their wall posts. It's a bit like stalking... but less dangerous!

Good luck!

Di should be so lucky... lucky... lucky!

A wonderful thing happened yesterday... I won three prizes in one day! Now this hasn't happened to me in a while, so I thought I'd share my joy with you...
First, I won a prize of a £100 Westfield gift card on the Kiss FM Facebook fan page - they often run quick competitions where you need to 'comment' on the post and let them know why you deserve the prize. That was easy - it was sponsored by Diet Coke so I just said '...because my middle name is 'et'!' - the DJ Neev chose me as the winner, I knew marrying a Coke would eventually prove useful in the comping world (of course, I've never won a thing with Pepsi!). If you're interested in Facebook competitions then feel free to send me a friend request and you can click on the competition links on my wall.
I was busy shopping in Sainsbury's when I received a phone call from TalkSport - they asked if I was able to go on air in 5 minutes, so I had to leave my trolley and dash back to the car! I told Hawksbee & Jacobs all about going 'the extra mile' for my club - dying my hair blue to support Birmingham City in my student days. I've won a trip for 4 to any football league game and I get to choose and present the Man of the Match award! They're giving away this prize every day this week and its not too late to enter here.

On returning home from Sainsbury's I checked my email and had one from Flip Video UK congratulating me on wining a Flip HD camcorder - thanks to everyone who voted for my entry, this is the first time I've been successful in a voting competition! Now I have 3 weeks to make a short film about summer, and along with the other 19 finalists I'll compete to get the most votes and win the £3000 prize. I don't have much confidence in winning the public vote, but I'm certainly going to have fun making the movie!
All compers go through lean spells, where we go for months without a prize, and then out of the blue we have a day like this. I hope luck comes your way soon!

The Sport Report - eyes on the prize!

On Friday one of my male followers on Twitter pointed out that the prizes in my round-up of blog competitions were a little 'girly' and I certainly can't argue with that! Most of the bloggers in the UK seem to be female (and a lot of us are mums too) so it comes as no surprise that lots of the prizes on offer are beauty and baby-related. So, @Ace247, I'll try my hardest to track down a few more 'manly' prizes for next week's round-up , but until then here are a few sporty prizes to keep you boys (and girls) happy!

I had a great day out at the Emirates Cup yesterday and the match programme contained two nice competitions. Firstly, you can win a set of 4 shirts, each one signed by the Emirates Cup teams - Arsenal, Celtic, AC Milan and Lyon. To enter, you need to answer the question: 'Celtic are making their Emirates Cup debut, but what is the name of their Glaswegian rivals who were in the competition last year?'. The answer is Rangers, and you'll need to either email this answer, or post it to:
Emirates Cup Competition
Arsenal Football Club
Highbury House
75 Drayton Park
London N5 1BU
Deadline for entries is 18th August 2010.


The second competition is to win tickets to see England v Hungary at Wembley on Wednesday 11th August. The question for this one is: 'Who was the only Arsenal player in England's recent under-19 European Championship Squad?' and the answer is (a) Tom Cruise.
Click here to email your answer or post to:
England Tickets
Publication Department
Arsenal FC
Highbury House
75 Drayton Park

London N5 1BU

Deadline for entries is 6th August 2010.

Talk Sport always have a few good competitions listed on their website - at the moment you can register for a prize of 4 tickets to a football league game (you'll also get to present the Man of the Match award!) - fill out an online form to tell them your fanatical football story and Hawksbee and Jacobs could be calling you back on-air this week. There's only room for a short description on their online entry form though, so you'll have to make it punchy - I've told them about the time I dyed my hair blue when Birmingham City got promoted in 1995!

If you're more of a cricket fan, in today's Observer you have the chance to win two pairs of Experience Club Hospitality packages and four pairs of tickets for the third nPower Test between England and Pakistan at the Brit Insurance Oval on Wednesday 18 August. To enter, email your details to the Observer with 'Brit Insurance Oval' in the subject line before Thursday 5th August 2010.

If you like sailing, visit the Volvo Sailing Facebook page to win a VIP trip to the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta on 14th August at Weymouth. Closes 6th August 2010.

And if Formula 1 is more your thing, how about a trip to the Japanese Grand Prix at the Casio Racing website? This closes on 31st August 2010.