Web Wise Winners

There are thousands of comps on the Internet but unfortunately only 24 hours in a day, during which most of us need to do things like eating, sleeping and working which all eat into valuable comping time. So it makes sense to turbocharge your comping as much as possible, and make sure too that you don't waste time making entries that could be disqualified. Here are a few tips to help you.

First of all, make sure your computer is running as fast as possible. Obviously if you have a broadband connection, web pages open much faster - as much as 20 times faster - which means you can visit many more sites in the same time, but not everyone wants to pay the extra cost, or lives in an area where it is available. Even without broadband, though, you can speed things up. Try to have as few programmes running at the same time as possible while you are connected to the Internet, and clear out your temporary Internet files regularly. To do this, in Internet Explorer go to the Tools menu at the top of the page and select "Internet options"  then on the first page, General, look at the "Temporary Internet Files" box and choose "Delete Files". You can also delete cookies, but you will then have to type in your log in information again at many sites you use, especially Internet Banking ones, so you may prefer not to do this.

One of the most time consuming aspects of Internet comping is typing your details into all the forms. You can speed things up a little by setting Internet Explorer to Auto-complete - to do this, go to Tools > Internet Options > Content  and select Auto-complete. Then when you type the first character into a space, it will give you a list of all the phrases beginning with that character that you have used before and you can choose from the list by clicking on it. You can move quickly between the spaces on a form by using the tab key rather than moving and clicking the mouse each time.

But for really speedy form filling, you need a special programme that will input all your details with one click of the mouse. The most popular of these is Roboform which you can download free from http://www.roboform.com/  . You can save all your personal details into it, along with passwords for sites you visit regularly, and when you are familiar with it, it will really turbocharge your comping! There is a [paid for version too, which you may want to upgrade to when you are  used to the free one, which will help you to operate even faster.

Now your comping is so much swifter, here are a few tips from owners of websites that run lots of comps, to help to make sure you maximise your chances of winning.

• Always double check that you have typed in your details correctly. If your email address has a mistake in it, you won't get notification of your win and will miss out on your prize. Using a form filling programme will help to rule out slips of the finger.
• Give your real name, not a nickname, unless you are specifically asked for the nickname you registered with a site. The promoter needs to know who they are dealing with.
• Don't use a spam trapped email address - no promoter is going to bother to work out how to remove the trap and will just send the prize to someone else.
• If you are entering comps by email, never request a return receipt. It causes problems for the mail collection system at the promoter's end, so they often set their software to automatically delete any entry requesting a receipt.
• Make sure you follow all the instructions - for instance if you are asked to give a choice of size, colour, DVD or Video, be sure to include it. You entry will be ignored if you don't. And pay attention to all the "one entry per person/household" rules - with entries going straight to a computer it is very easy for promoters to check.
• If there is just one form for several comps, look carefully to see whether you need to send it once for each comp or do one entry to cover all the comps you want to enter - if it is the latter, doing separate entries may disqualify you.
• If a site asks you to click on a link to another site, take the few seconds it needs to do it. Many sites use the profit from these click throughs to pay for their comp prizes and doing this will ensure they can afford to keep providing comps.

To sum up, use as many tricks as you can to save time and speed up your comping, but never begrudge the time it takes to read the rules and instructions - you can be the fastest comper on the web but if your entries are disqualified you won't win anything!