Entering competitions to try and win prizes is a popular hobby and many people enter lots of competitions every day! These are often termed compers or "professional compers". "Professional Compers" is a misnomer! Gone are the days of huddling around baked bean tins in order to deliver a prize winning tiebreaker, online comping has created a new type of comper, and they have access to thousands of competitions. However, these potential customers shouldn't be dismissed and ignored.

Appearing on a competition site or forum can generate a lot of interest for your site. It may not result in immediate sales, if you're a retailer, but embracing compers into your site is a good way to grab people's attention. Use your competition wisely to promote your site, products, offers or sponsors - and use compers to help promote your site by word of mouth. Avoiding Compers we appreciate that some sites want to avoid the "comper" entering their competitions. For example, rewarding the loyalty of regular readers by giving them the chance to win prizes or the prize is featured in a specialist publication! On the whole it can be difficult to prevent others from entering/finding your competition. As well as using portals, compers will try Google and other search engines! However, here's a few useful tips. 1. Use Hidden or User Specific URLs: For example use your mailing list to tell subscribers the URL of your competition, and don't advertise the web page on your site until a user has perhaps logged in. 2. Use Forms: If you want people to visit your site and enter a competition, use a web based form. Email addresses and answers can be distributed quite freely and are often picked up by automated entry services. 3. Complicate Questions: Aim the questions at your users - or ask them for a password from your newsletter? Answers will quite possibly find themselves into the public domain so why not rotate the questions too (a randomiser script can do this). 4. Set Restrictions: Country, age and other restrictions can be used to prevent entries from certain areas. 5. Ask For Link Removal: If your site is on Loquax then just ask us to remove it and it'll be removed. 6. Use Common Sense: The web is after all worldwide. Sites with competitions can be found easily using the search engines, or word of mouth. Competitions can be used as a traffic builder, to gain new customers, so make the most of the opportunity. By preventing entries to your competition you could end up losing out on potential visitors, users, and possibly even future sponsors! Remember "compers" do talk, they do have opinions and they do shop on and offline. A well run competition can generate you positive feedback and good comments in many public forums.