With so many bank holidays coming up we thought we’d better try and put out a bit of a Loquax update now otherwise it’ll not appear for another few weeks. After a flurry of Easter competitions and prize draws all eyes have now firmly switched to the forthcoming King’s Coronation. Plenty of brands and social media accounts are waving the red, white and blue by giving away hampers, breaks and other goodies. In some cases like Butlins and Buyagift it helps having a royal name in order to enter their Coronation Competitions. Whilst that’s good news for compers, there’s also sad news with the closure of iWon-iWon. They’ve given away 100s and 100s of prizes over the last 5 to 6 years and have powered prize channels on a variety of brands including Pick My Postcode, Skint Dad and more recently Bauer publications like Bella, TV Choice and Take A Break. The owners of iWon-iWon have cited falling ad revenues and increased costs as the reason for closing. And this seems like a good time to talk about advertising on Loquax.
Adverts On Loquax Or How We’re Funded
Like iWon-iWon and many other sites we use Google Adsense or similar advertising platforms to earn revenue. Revenue is earnt either by banner views or banner clicks. We know people implement adblockers either through their browser or a download thereby cutting out our ability to earn whilst they use the site. If you do use an adblocker then please consider not blocking ads on Loquax. Now those of you who don’t use adblockers will see we’ve implemented some new ad positions (mainly down the side of the content) and hopefully these aren’t too intrusive. We’re not fans of loads of advertising on sites nor adverts which are detrimental to the user experience but they are sadly a necessity. Our aim is to make their presence as painless as possible. Remember we don’t push leadgen sites like MyOffers (and haven’t done so for way over 10 years now) nor do we sell your data. There are a few affiliate links in play within the listings but these are rare and hardly cover the cost of a cup of coffee at Costa or Starbucks. We do have other sources of income thanks to Loquax Bingo but the gambling sector has changed considerably and we can’t rely on it as we once could.
“Very Dated”
We had a bit of a laugh this week thanks to a new arrival on the win a house market. Someone asked on Facebook why they weren’t working with us and the reply was “we did look at Loquax but their website is very dated and marketing very limited”. Given that we’ve been the go to place for win a house prize draws since 2017 and have featured in numerous publications, such as The Telegraph and The Independent, how dated we look is kind of irrelevant compared to the content. Wikipedia doesn’t exactly look modern does it, nor does Google come to think of it! Of course we’d love to have a flashy modern website but we’d rather have something that people can use and is functional. You’re not hear for pretty pictures but to access the best prize draw and competition listings. And as we’re not trying to sell £2million of tickets for a property we want to give away the modernity of the site isn’t a high priority. We’ll take substance over style any day. However being dated is something we do need to touch on but not because of visual reasons. Loquax as you use it now has foundations stemming back to 2002. That means that we do need to make some changes. We have alluded to this before but there is light glimmering at what has become a longer tunnel than expected. Hopefully we’ll be able to give a bigger update next time around.
Searching For Competitions
It’d be nice if we could say that Loquax lists every single prize draw and competition that currently exists. But we don’t so we can’t and we’re unlikely ever to do so. Each day there are new giveaways added across social media and on websites and finding them all is a tough task, even with the kindness of our contributors and input from Loquax admin. However day in day out there are plenty of new additions to the lists and for the most part we think there’s plenty of choice. We could add more but we have limited time. When we’re searching for competitions to add there is some selectivity involved. For example on Instagram or Facebook we tend to ignore prize draws without obvious terms or closing dates, especially if we’re unfamiliar with the brand. We might also not list small prizes being given away by small, localised brands. Brands that giveaway prizes when they reach x00 or x000 followers also get ignored. If you want to find these things then competition themed hashtags are your hero and it’s quite easy to scroll through and locate things. It’s also very tedious but can be rewarding! You might also want to follow social media accounts of compers who say that they’re doing well with finding and winning low entry comps. They still have to like and share at times so it’s not too difficult to jump on their coat tails and see what they’re doing. It might also give some clues as to the hashtags they’re searching too.