It’s now six years – yes six years – since Loquax evolved into a competition listing service where the comps are predominantly posted by the community. Back in 2013 the site was given little or no chance of survival. A “dinosaur” of a site ready for extinction as one person put it. However, thanks to those who stayed and dug deep to keep things going, Loquax’s competition listings are still here. We’re no where near as “big” as back in the day, but we had a decent advent which saw plenty of return and new visitors. Whilst it’s good news that we have dedicated contributors, for a community like this to progress it can’t just rely on the same people. Only a fraction of those who use the competitions listings make an effort to post. We’d like to improve things and increase the number of contributors. We’re not asking for hours of time – just a few dedicated minutes a week to “do your bit” and join in with the community aspect of Loquax.
Weekly Prize Draw
To encourage this we’ve updated one part of the site and introduced a new feature. The new feature is a contributor prize draw. Each week one lucky contributor will win a £20 voucher in a random prize draw. At the moment you only need to post one valid & unique competition (i.e. not a duplicate) to be in the draw. We may mix things up over time but for now we’re keeping things simple. We had plenty of happy winners in 2018 and hope to repeat this in 2019!
I don’t want to post
We can’t force people to post, nor can we change a mind that is dead set on never posting. We can only focus our efforts on those who want to get involved. C’est la vie.
I don’t have time to post competitions
As mentioned above, we’re not asking for you to sit for hours locating competitions. We used to do that and know that it will drive you nuts! Looking for and posting comps shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. Just keep an eye on your emails, Facebook, Twitter etc and if you spot a competition that looks new – check to see if it’s listed. If you’re feeling especially brave do a quick Google search on something like “competition prize” and set the time to “past 24 hours”. These steps don’t have to take a lot of time.
Every competition I find is already listed?
To assist with this we’ve made changes to our “Recently Closed” list. We created this almost five years back but haven’t really done much with it. Basically this lists all the sites that have had competitions posted on Loquax – but currently don’t. By looking through the list you may spot for example “Your Dog” is on it. This site runs a weekly competition so it’s worth checking for an update. We’re not expecting you to wade through every site on our “Recently Closed” list. As a suggestion, pick one or two letters and pop back once or twice a week and review what’s on the list. Quite quickly you’ll know which ones to check first and hopefully you’ll get lucky. Remember these sites don’t have current comps posted to Loquax – so you should be fine in terms of finding something new to post. Don’t worry if there are no comps to post – just try another day. If you do the above then at some point you may discover that one or two sites post comps once a week or fortnight. This then makes it even easier to find a comp to post as you now have a regular to check and hopefully post. More on this can found on our forum post.
Someone’s posted “my” competition
No one owns a particular competition to post. However, where magazines or long answers/crosswords are involved a regular poster is usually in situ and it’s polite to contact them before jumping in and stealing their thunder. Everything else is generally fair game. The key is not to get annoyed if someone stands on your toes and resolve any issues politely (e.g. I’ll post one week, you post the next).
We’re here to help you
If you have any questions or suggestions about posting competitions then do comment below or on the forums. Myself and Kirsty are looking at ways to improve the site in terms of listing format, duplication checks and making posting easier. However if there’s anything else we can do to improve things we’re happy to listen.