Deciding when to enter an online competition is often given a lot of thought by compers. Do you enter early to make sure you're in the draw or do you enter late so you don't have to wait long to see if you're a winner. With offline competitions many compers feel that if they enter late then their entry won't be lost or at the bottom of the hat come draw time.
Unlike offline prize draws (where good advice is to send an entry just before the closing date) - online competition entries are stored on the host computer and winners are often selected at random by that computer. This means that there's no entries at the bottom of a sack.
Increasingly, daily competitions are appearing. These tend to have VERY low entry levels in the early days. The earlier such a site is found dramatically increases the chances of winning. Some sites also run competitions where the number of prizes in a month is limited, therefore in these cases the best time to enter is right at the start of the time period.
In our opinion, the date on which an entry is sent seems to have little bearing on the chances of it being selected. Skill competitions will generally be judged along side each other after the closing date - again the date of entry seems largely irrelevant. Our advice though is enter competitions as they're newly listed. Using the closing soon lists can leave you short for time and you may miss out on prizes you'd like to win.
