A belated Happy New Year to you all from Loquax! Hopefully the festive period was a peaceful and enjoyable one for you all. It was quite a quiet one for us and a far cry from the olden days of working all the way through advent and Christmas as we used to do. It’s actually nine years since Loquax “closed” and then regenerated into the site it is today. It’s strange to think that this time nine years ago some people said the site would be gone forever within a few weeks. Our presence within the comping sphere is down to those of you who visit regularly, who recommend us and who contribute to keeping the site up to date.
Loquax Competitions
A start of a New Year is time for reflection and 2021 was a busy year for Loquax. The biggest changes came towards the end of the year when we decided to divorce our bingo and slots content from the competition site. Loquax Bingo is now the home for those of you who like a flutter whilst Loquax is now back pretty much in the hands of compers. To reflect this we’ve not only restructred the Loquax site but also updated our social media platforms. All were simply named “Loquax” but are now “Loquax Competitions”. It’s a simple change but one which we think makes a lot of sense. Long term compers may know what Loquax is but newbies may just wonder what the heck that strange name means. The addition of Competitions to the title just clarifies our position. We’re still unsure whether we’ll go back to sending out a newsletter but watch this space as they say.
Win A House Updates
Elsewhere we made siginificant improvements to our win a house section, which has been utilised by the press and media during the past 12 months. Ironically now that the section is pretty intuitive the number of raffles has dropped considerably. This perhaps isn’t a massive surprise as there does seem to be a dwindling interest in the mechanic from entrants and home owners. In fact 2021 was more about win an Irish house than a UK one, especially on platforms like Raffall. The arrival of Omaze on to the scene hasn’t boosted interest in other house prize draws or platforms. In fact we’d suggest that the last 12 months have been terrible for the likes of FrogHopping (poor results), Prize Villas (closed) and Raffle House (no house winners). Only established raffle sites like Elite and McKinney plus Tramway Path were successful. And we’d all love to know the secret sauce behind Tramway’s ability to create house winners.
Reflection On Advent 2021
Our advents brought compers to the yard and damn right they were better than everyone elses (probably). LOL! Thank you to those of you who did help out with listing advents as it really does help take the load off ourselves. There were plenty of competitions to choose from and hopefully the main ones were all listed. As usual interest in advents was at a peak on the 1st December but that tailed off to normal user levels within a few days. We do find that a little frustrating especially as our free tracking system is pretty good so there’s no need for spreadsheets, bookmarks, folders etc. Anyway it’ll all be back later in the year for another run so you can see just how good it actually is if you missed out in 2021. If you do have suggestions for improving our advent service then do let us know. More so now rather than the first week of December.
Loquax In 2022
As yet we don’t have mad ideas or plans for Loquax in 2022 so for now it’s as you were. We’re always looking for ways to improve things and make the site better but for now we’re coasting along. We did think we may have to do some forum tweaking but thanks to Kirsty’s efforts in the background we’re managing to keep the old format – which everyone likes – trucking along. There are a few things we’d like to improve including the competition posting form but at the moment these are urgent. We will be going through the listings and options over the coming months just to make sure things are still relevant. For example we don’t think a Pinterest competition has been listed for years now so perhaps that’s an option that can be removed. If we remember we’ll keep the blog ticking over too and get the various comping guides updated. The good news is that we’re not going to do anything drastic! As always if you’ve got ideas or suggestions then do let us know.
Low Entry Competitions
Don’t forget also to enter our own prize draws. They are still running and whilst the prizes aren’t huge they’re good fun – they also don’t attract that many entries. One bit of advice we saw over December was to find low entry comps you shouldn’t use a listing site like Loquax. In some ways that’s true because a listing site gives a particular competition more exposure but that doesn’t always equate to large entry levels. Of course we would say that because we want you to use Loquax and not spend time on Google or doom scrolling Instagram. But there are still comps which end up on listing sites that don’t get many entries. In general big prizes, big brands and competitions that use online forms usually result in large numbers of entrants. Low entry comps are usually lost in the noise on Instagram or Twitter – but once one comper has liked and shared then it’s hard to prevent others piling in.
Big Winners
It’s always nice to hear of people winning comps that have been listed on Loquax and it’s great that people still share their success on the forum. Based on user reaction we create a Top Winners list each month and that’s a nice way to reflect on the past 12 months. Actually looking at the page we do need to give it a bit of an update. A quick crawl through the months and the following prizes are amongst those that have been won: Jet2Holiday, £1000 of National Trust Vouchers, Cash & Samsung Tech, £2000 Wickes Vouchers, iPhone 12, £1700 Tent, Afternoon Teas, Majorca Holiday, Dubai Holiday and just the small matter of a £61,000 cash prize. Well done to everyone who has won prizes, no matter the size, during 2021 and good luck for the next 12 months. If you can share your success on the forums then that’s a great motivator for us and for other users too. We wish you all the best for 2022.