Despite there being 3000 weeks in January we’ve left it to the very last moment in order to do the first Loquax Update of 2024. So belated Happy New Year to you all. It’s been a strange old month. There was short post holidays lull, which is usually expected in comping circles, but then every promoter decided that they wanted to give away loads of great prizes again, especially over on Instagram. If you read our December 2023 Update, Facebook posts or forum posts then you’ll know we had some interesting visitors to Loquax during advent. Our investigations didn’t stop there and sadly we found other groups and well known sites actively using Loquax to populate their own content. That’s just not on and we have taken steps to limit the damage this does to us as a community and a business. We’ve terminated accounts – or in some cases switched off access to the listings – plus started masking links on the site. This doesn’t stop copying but to get the link you need to click it which makes things a little more laborious (plus we can track it). Anyway hopefully this is something that we don’t have to keep revisiting in 2024.
Comping Podcast
Whilst Loquax is undoubtably the best site for comping ever we’re pretty stuck in the old ways of internet life. We’re still trying to up our social media game and let’s face it we’re not the most frequent of bloggers/newsletter writers. Unboxing videos, writing books, running social groups etc is just not on our radar. You’re very unlikely to see us on Tiktok! But kudos to those people who add some extra spice to the comping community. The new kids on the block are “A Little Friendly Competition” which is a podcast about competitions and comping. This may well be the first podcast that focuses on competitions and it comes from a couple of compers who have won £20,000 worth of prizes in January alone. You can listen to it on Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcasts (presumably, the only thing I know about podcasts is that there’s a whole bunch about grisley murders and Mrs Jason listens to them a lot – which is quite worrying). It’ll be interesting to see how the podcast develops and what kind of content it will offer. Anyway good luck to them with that venture.
Win A House Update
The win a house competitions arena has changed considerably over the last few years. Individuals using services like Raffall has all but stopped whilst pay to enter sites (or raffle sites) have spotted the opportunity to get involved. McKinney, Elite, Bounty, Bear, Tommy French, That Prize Guy are just some of the platforms trying their luck with property prizes. However it’s not all plain sailing for these kind of sites either. Dream Comp is a relatively new site that has launched with the chance to win a luxury holiday home in Cornwall. Despite the stylish prize and a reasonable ticket cost of just £9.99 sales have been slow. The reason for this comes down to audience figures and reputation. McKinney for example has 1000s of social media followers and has been running prize draws for a long time. Dream Comp are new and are struggling to establish numbers. In an attempt to drum up business, Dream Comp have set up a Crowdfunder promotion. It’s actually a prize draw for the prize draw. By helping the Crowdfunder you’ll have the chance to win 1400 tickets for the Cornwall Holiday Home draw. So for £5 you could win a prize worth £14,000 that could then win you a holiday home. Dream Comp want to raise funds to use on advertising to boost sales. It’s a long shot and you have to admire them for trying, but the property sector is rarely an easy one.
Listing Adverts
We’re not big fans of adverts but they are a necessity for keeping the lights on and running a business. Over the years we’ve always aimed to keep ads on the competitions side of things as minimal as possible. We’ve been able to do this with the likes of Loquax Bingo. Banner adverts do appear on the listings but despite an increase in visitor numbers and therefore number of ads we show, revenue from them isn’t great. So going forward we are going to be including a few affiliate related ads in the listings. For most of you these extra occasional additions won’t be a problem. You can choose to interact with them and potentially earn us some commission or you can just ignore them like other listings. However we are always aware that there are some users who prefer not seeing adverts. Therefore if you go to Preferences then there’s an option to hide these particular additions to our listings. Note that this option doesn’t hide banner adverts or switch off any other affiliate links we have active. We think that this is a fair and transparent approach to what can be quite a sensitive subject. However at the end of the day we are a free service and we do need to generate revenue in order to maintain our online presence.
Love Is In The Air
Comping does tend to revolve around themes so as Veganuary closes it’s doors, February brings us things like Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day. There’s also Galentine’s Day which occurs on the 13th and is a global holiday to celebrate women’s friendship! Thanks to our new platform we can now bring together some of these themed giveaways and we have almost 100 Valentine’s prize draws and competitions for you to look at. Amongst the prizes listed you’ll find hampers, red roses, meals for two, romantic breaks and cleaning products! Now we’re not claiming to be love experts but we do suggest that offering a bunch of cleaning products to your Valentine might not be the best idea. Another vital tip is don’t rely on prizes to arrive in time for the 14th February. Actually that has got us thinking about whether anyone has presented a Valentine’s prize to their loved one? Perhaps you whisked them away on a trip to Paris or had a huge bunch of red roses delivered care of a win? Let us know in the comments or on the forums.
The Traitors Season 3
How many of you watched Season 2 of The Traitors? Having overlooked the first series because we took a look at the recent series based on plenty of recommendations – and got hooked at the scheming and lying exploits of the contestants to try and win up to £100,000. It’s a huge cash prize and one that isn’t easy to win. Could you convince other contestants that you’re faithful whilst acting the traitor role like Harry managed to do with such great skill (and luck). Or could you be a faithful, identify the traitors and also avoid being banished or murdered because you’re seen as a threat? If that sounds right up your street then applications for The Traitors Season 3 are now open. To apply you need to be over 18, resident in The UK and must be available to take part in the programme for up to 4 weeks currently anticipated to be in Spring/Summer 2024. The closing date for applications is the 11th February 2024.