It's the end of the year as we know it.....

It's the end of the year as we know it..... and I'm feeling great.

Here is a recap of my comping year in 2018.

I won 407 prizes with an accumulative RRP of approx. £17000. I don't have an exact figure at the moment as I'm awaiting several bundle prizes that I'm unsure of the exact contents/value for.

Of those 407 wins the most productive platform for me was Instagram where I had 126 wins - this is even with me taking a couple of months off! Here is a pie chart to show how my wins breakdown across platforms. The 'Other' category refers to apps as I was lucky enough to win on a few apps such as Snapchat and MediaRewards this year and didn't feel those wins would fit in any other category.

My best month wins wise was August which saw me win 45 prizes followed by December with 44 but generally I was winning over 30 prizes a month apart from April, September and October where I was having issues with J and schools. It works out at an average of 1.12 prizes per day.

Value wise my average prize value is £41.77 per prize but this is massively skewed as there are small wins such as my lowest value win of a Chocolate bar valued at £1 to a highest value win of a pair of designer watches worth £1600 followed by the amazing Enid Blyton book win worth over £600!

I did partake in several effort competitions this year although I could have done more but we did well with what I entered. My favourites being Pancake day which saw us with 8 wins and Halloween with 5.

I tried my best with the Heart Family Challenges which frustrated the hell out of me as I had great feedback from everyone except Heart themselves!

At the start of the year as a family we create a Wishlist and out of 25 items we managed to tick off 17 which I'm really pleased with especially as they were things I've wanted to win for years like a PS4!

We have another Wishlist prepared for 2019 to get working on!

My favourite win of 2018 has to be the tickets to Cbeebies Summer Social as J got to meet Andy Day who is one of his idols. It was amazing to see his face light up when he realised it was the real Andy and he could touch him and talk to him about dinosaurs. 

It's because of prizes like that that I comp as it gives me the chance to give my family the treats and experiences they wouldn't normally get. It's allowed me to provide J's old school with a large quantity of books to restock their library. It's allowed me to feel like Santa and take a large sack of puzzles, toys and DVD's with us to our appointment on Christmas Eve for the children who aren't able to spend Christmas at home and it's allowed me to keep my nan stocked up on enough lotions and potions to see her till she's 305.

Comping in 2017

I have to say I had a pretty spectacular year for comping in 2017. 

I won a total of 425 prizes.  

Some were small - like a bag of chocolate buttons or a really awesome ring made from a penny. 

Some were big - like Jacob's Sphero Ultimate Lightning McQueen 

Some were priceless - like tickets to Paw Patrol Live and seeing my boys face light up. 

Before I started 2017 I made a little wish list of things I wanted to win, and we managed to tick quite a few things off it. Hubby got his track day, I said I wanted to win a FitBit but won three... and whilst I didn't manage everything on it I am so pleased with what we did. 

I've managed to give friends and family some amazing presents that I wouldn't have normally been able to. 

My family have had days out from the Cinema, to Paw Patrol Live, LEGOland Discovery Centre in Manchester and we have tickets and passes to use throughout 2018 for things like the Jorvik attractions and Thackray Medical Museum. 

I've done a little breakdown of how I won my prizes, social media was definitely my friend this year, and we did amazing with childrens magazines winning 45 prizes from them across the year! 

So now as 2017 ends and 2018 begins I'm looking at what I would like to achieve from comping next year. I've made my little wishlist again like I did last year so I can focus on finding prizes that are on it and some of the prizes that we missed out on in 2017 have carried over. 

I hope my friends and comping buddy's have an amazing year of winning.


Danielle xx