I've launched a new blog on the Word Press website. You can find it by clicking - http://a21cntony3.wordpress.com/. I have put a permanent link to it in the "Navigation" links on the right hand side of this blog.

It's not my first Word Press blog (I previously used one on a website I worked on) but it is my first online blog at the Word Press site. It will deal with all of my website work plus random other stuff happening in life.

As I get so little time to update this blog it might seem a little strange to be taking another one on but my Word Press blog will be very much work orientated so will feature a lot more work content. This one can then deal with more personal stuff, rather than resembling a website promotion board.

I haven't finished changing the look and feel of it yet - primarily because I haven't learnt how to yet! The initial photo of a person walking in the countryside is quite nice though so maybe I won't change it too much.

My first post has been made though - http://a21cntony3.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/hello-world/ - dealing with my latest finance related website (car loans and car finance) and my new foray into camping.

My competition wins have been updated - Competition Wins 2010 - with another small win. No sign of a biggie at the moment even though I'm finding enough time (just about) to enter plenty via my favourite competition site - The Prizefinder.com.

This site has recently had a complete overhaul and the changes have not been universally well received. I have found it to be a change for the better, after the initial learning curve which comes with all change.

Fingers crossed for a big win soon - we could really do with it.

Well that's my holiday screwed for another year. I was due to fly to Thailand from Heathrow at 12.30pm last Thursday, when they cancelled all flights from 12pm! So the volcanic ash has claimed another victim, one of millions Europe-wide.

It cost me some money, not on my main flight but on a connecting flight, plus a wasted day and diesel travelling to and from Heathrow. Plus I apparently have to wait several weeks for my refund (why?). Anyway it could have been worse and many people are in a much worse predicament stranded abroad or missing really important events rather than just a sunny holiday.

It will be interesting to see when flights resume, and whether the airlines apparently succesful test flights in the volcanic ash sway the decision to re-open European air space. There are going to be some serious economic consequences if flights don't resume soon.

So it's back to the day job instead of lazing on the beach. Currently continuing work on IVA Debt Problem, a website dealing with debt problems and solutions including debt management, debt consolidation and IVAs.

Starting to make its way up the rankings, albeit rather slowly, but I have high hopes for it making the front page for a key phrase or two in the next few months.

Nothing much else to report, no competition wins, no good luck of any kind in fact! No new projects on the go, I really need to concentrate on the ones I already have and start to make them profitable (easier said than done).

So just to remind you there are pages on the main website for making money, online business opportunities and more. If you haven't given them a read so far now is the time - everyone could do with some more money in these difficult times.

Despite my optimism in previous posts, and my continual entering of hundreds of competitions every week I'm still awaiting my first competition win of 2010.

That's just the way it goes, I had a great December which has spurred me on to enter more comps but I've just been unlucky so far this year. But the luck does tend to even out so a big competition win could be around the corner.

I have enjoyed a competition prize this year, although it wasn't won by myself but by my Mum. She received an email from a PR company last Monday informing her that she had won two tickets to the Strictly Come Dancing tour taking place on Tuesday!

Very short notice which is always a problem with ticket entry prizes. They should allow at least a week so that people can move any plans they have made and sort out their travel plans. At least this one was for a local venue.

Anyway with only two tickets she couldn't really choose between either of her two best friends so passed them onto me. The tickets had to be collected from the Box Office on the night so myself and my wife went along.

When we got there we were informed that we had actually won 4 tickets and a meet and greet with the stars after the show. Very annoying as we wasted two tickets and couldn't go to the meet and greet as we had already made travel plans to return home after the show.

The seats we got were fantastic (front row) which made it all the more galling to waste two of them. It was a brilliant show which I would recommend to anyone who likes the TV show.

Anyway I'm still entering all of the online competitions I can at the moment, even though slightly disheartened, and keeping my fingers crossed that the next prize is a big one. Good luck to all the other compers out there.

2010 hasn't been a particularly good year so far. No competition wins for a start - a bit disappointing considering how many I've entered recently.

Plus the weather is playing havoc with travel plans and getting to work. Can't wait for the snow to go and things to get back to normal.

I've added a little free download to the free stuff page. This is an analysis tool for your computer. It tells you, amongst other things, the make and model of the motherboard and chipset. This is useful info for anyone looking to upgrade their computer.

I'm also working on a new project in conjunction with Britcover Home Insurance. They offer really good savings on home insurance, buildings insurance and contents insurance. If you are currently paying £20 or £30 each month you could be paying £10 or £15 instead. It adds up to a big money saving over the course of a year.

I will be posting more info on this and putting up a dedicated home insurance page on the site in the coming weeks.

Another site I've been promoting is The Online Business Directory. This lists businesses across the UK in a variety of categories. If your business has a website you can list for free and drive targeted traffic to your site.

Finally I have a number of items posted on Ebay for sale currently. If you are looking for a 42" rear projection TV, 6MP Olympus digital camera, King Keg half full of beer, Reddyvac vacuum cleaner, old computer bits or a DVD recorder visit my ebay page and get bidding!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. Ours was very busy and I'm looking forward to a few days off now to relax (as much as you can with a 15 month old in the house!).

Nearly at the end of the year, in fact the end of the decade. It's a good time to look back on what's happened and take stock of the past, present and future.

2009 has ended well. My competition wins in December (three arriving in Christmas week) cheered me up no end. Although I have had a few problems this year, particularly with work, I am at least in work and nothing disastrous has happened this year in terms of death or illness.

We are a bit poorer financially than this time last year, a trend which looks like continuing for the forseeable future (lottery win permitting), but things could be a lot worse and there are plenty of people worse off than ourselves around the world.

I'm already looking forward to 2010. I've been hammering the competition entries over the last few days and am extremely confident that prizes will be showing up in January. I've already set up my 2010 competition wins page in anticipation.

I desperately need to lose weight and something drastic may need to be done on this front. My gym membership has had to be cancelled and I haven't had chance to try out my new running shoes with all of the snow and ice underfoot.

Need to do something with this website too. The money making DVD is still available as is the free money making ebook but neither have been making me any significant money so I'm looking at changing track. Not quite sure where to go at the moment but I have some time now to give it some thought and come up with some ideas.

Happy New Year to everyone. Hope 2010 brings you everything you wish for.

My latest competition win arrived today and has been added to my list of 2009 competition wins. It's an Anthony Worral Thompson Breadmaker from the Gadgetspeak website advent calendar comp.

According to the invoice enclosed with it it's worth around £100. A nice win. It's going to get some use to. My wife made some pate (following Jamie Olivers recipe from last week) and it is going to taste even better on some fresh home made bread.

We just need some time now to look at the instructions and work out what to do. Time is in very short supply at the moment as our toddler seems to get more of a handful with each passing day. At the same time I'm moving all of our family bank accounts from Lloyds TSB and it's taking a lot of time and effort to get it all sorted.

Unfortunately Lloyds TSB have let me down badly. I was with them for around 15 years but this apparently counts for nothing with them. Nor does the fact that during this time I paid all of my bills with them for loans, credit cards and mortgages on time by direct debit.

I'm still trying to sort out problems with my mortgage with them after several weeks in which they appear to have forgotten I exist. It will end up with a formal complaint being made and, ultimately, I will be moving the mortgage elsewhere too.

They are not only losing my accounts but those of my son and wife too. Don't suppose they care much, although they should do judging by the empty branch this morning when I went in. Only one other customer in, I've never seen it that quiet before. Clearly others are being treated in a similarly appalling manner and leaving in their droves!

Once you lose a customer in that way you will never get them back. I certainly won't be using Lloyds or any of their subsidiary companies again.

Good service on the other hand should be rewarded. I recently wrote about a good experience with Virgin Mobile. As a result I've upgraded my phone with them and taken out a new contract for my wife in addition. It has all gone through smoothly and she's happy with the new phone, and I'm happy with the tariff. I would recommend them to anyone.

This is probably going to be my last post before the 25th so have a Happy Christmas everyone and a prosperous New Year.

The first of my two "mystery" competition wins has arrived today and can therefore be added to my list of Competition Wins of 2009.

It is a pair of Salomon XT Wings running shoes, courtesy of the SAAB in motion website. They look absolutely fantastic and they will certainly get used as I will be starting running again soon now my gym membership has ended.

A quick search online shows them to be worth between seventy and eighty pounds. A nice win and the type of thing I could never justify buying in "real life". I would have to look for a second hand pair of running shoes on Ebay if I were paying for them myself.

Just in time for Christmas too. I might wrap them up for myself as we are having a VERY low-key Christmas this year. Than and I aren't really buying for each other and will probably only buy a couple of little bits for our son. He's still a bit too young to really understand what's going on at Christmas.

A lot of people I talk to at the moment are doing the same. For many people Christmas has lost it's magic. It's just become far too commercial and starts far too early.

As a reaction to this more and more people I meet seem to have an anti-Christmas feeling. I know I would rather be on the beach in Thailand supping a bear on Christmas day. Maybe when our son is older we will feel differently. But for this year we aren't getting involved.

Anyway if I don't post again before Christmas have a good one, whatever you are doing, and here's hoping 2010 will be a LOT better than 2009, which has been a pretty miserable year chez nous. All the best.

First things first, the Samsung Mobile Phone winner has been drawn. There were 730 entries in total and the winning number drawn was 304.

And the winner is............Georgina Parker from London. Your prize has been posted today and you should hopefully receive it in time for Christmas.

Good news too on my comping. Another prize win notification. Not giving too much away until it arrives but it is a decent prize - that's two good prizes in a matter of days, although neither have arrived yet.

This one was a win in an Advent Calendar competition. These are always a good source of prizes as there are lots of prizes available and entry is limited to one day per prize so there must be fewer entries for each. I've won a few prizes this way before.

This has spurred me on to enter even more competitions - I'm in a comping frenzy at the moment. Every spare moment seems to be spent on the computer, much to my wife's annoyance. But it will all be worthwhile if a nice holiday comes our way. Fingers crossed as it may be our only chance of a break next year!

If you want to find a list of Advent comps they are conveniently seperated on the Prizefinder site, my favourite competition site. Only seven more days to enter though so get in quick.

That's it for now, I'm back to my comps and dreaming of my next prize win. Good luck to you all.

Our second competition to win a Samsung U600 mobile phone has now ended. There were about 500 plus entries and I will be making the draw this weekend after they have all been collated.

I've also won another prize myself, although I don't want to publish it until it arrives. I was very excited as it is something I can use and which I really wanted to win.

I've been unsubscribing from hundreds of email lists in the last couple of days. Most of these subscriptions arise from my competition entries.

Although I normally tick the box NOT to go on the mailing list sometimes I miss it in my rush to enter and for some comps subscribing to the mailing list is part of the terms of entry.

My competition inbox is getting too full now so I'm having a good clearout and trying to get my emails back down to a manageable level. It will slowly creep up again in a couple of months and I'll have to go through the whole process again but that is just the way it is.

There is no news on our next competition. I don't have a prize to hand so unless something turns up over the Christmas period (which could well happen), or a sponsor wants to offer a prize it will be a few months before the next prize draw.

Well, just as I was moaning about the lack of competition prizes coming my way I receive two competition wins in three days!

As I've always said, it's a numbers game and the more comps you enter the more prizes you are going to win. However, the distribution of these prizes is not always equal, so some months you won't win any and others you will win two or three.

That's why I've been so disappointed recently as I've been managing to enter plenty of competitions but without success. But all good things come to he who waits, and I've had a couple of prize wins this week.

They are listed on my Competition Wins of 2009 page and make it look a bit better, at least numerically if not in terms of the prize value.

The State of Play goodies, a clipboard and T-shirt, received on Tuesday without any note of who sent them, and the Tanning Mousse from Cosmopolitan will both probably end up as stocking fillers at Christmas for some lucky (?) person.

I've just entered a couple of competitions with GMTV and ITV which offer considerably better prizes, and I'm hoping as it is my birthday today (40th!!!) that I will have some luck and land a big one.

I used my Visit Liverpool prize last night to spend my birthday at the Holiday Inn Express in Albert Dock. I have to say it is a lovely hotel, very much recommended, and very handy indeed for the Albert Dock area which I really like visiting.

The room was large, spotless and had views over the central "lake". It was well fitted (lovely big flat screen TV) and had everything we needed. The inclusive breakfast was good too, lots of choice and very tasty.

Anyway, I have some more celebrating to do this evening so I will end here and keep my fingers crossed for more prizes soon.

Well, my latest competition win has been received, although I should point out that it was actually my wife's win. I've posted it on the competition wins 2009 page and it is.........

.....a face mask. Retail price around 79p from Wilkinsons. Not exactly what we were hoping for. However, a win is a win and we should be grateful for every bit of good luck we get at the moment.

It will get used too as my wife likes a long soak in the bath from time to time with some sort of gunk on her face.

I've been keeping on top of the competition entries fairly well recently which makes it all the more disappointing that no decent prizes have been forthcoming.

In a desperate bid to change my luck I've altered the email address I use on some of the comps back to my old one which seemed to do really well. It shouldn't make any difference as the draws should always be random but anything to try and improve our "luck" will be attempted.

We will soon be into 2010 and I have to say that so far 2009 has been very disappointing on the prize front. There is still December to go and one big competition win could change all of that.

Have you entered our latest competition yet? There are only 17 days now until entries close. It will be despatched in time for Christmas too so if you don't even want it yourself you could pass it on as a nice gift.

Best of luck to all of you compers out there.

I've just finished entering my competitions for today. It feels like ages since I had my last win. In fact it's just over a month according to my record of 2009 competition wins.

That was only a promotional glass, it's been a couple of months since my last "proper" win. My lack of success in comping this year pretty much mirrors how life has been this year.

Despite my best efforts we've really taken a couple of steps backwards this year. We're in a position where our income is not really enough to cover our outgoings. It certainly isn't going to cover extras such as a holiday or anything that is not absolutely essential.

It doesn't leave me very hopeful for 2010. We've already cut back about as much as is possible and most of our shopping is now done at the car boot. I don't want to buy anybody any Christmas presents this year. After all, what is the point of spending money we can't afford to buy presents that people don't really want?

Miserable, miserable, miserable. I just need something positive, something to go right to cheer me up.

I know I should count my blessings. I'm healthy, as are all of my family, and although life is a struggle financially it's not all about money.

I once read a book called "How to enjoy your life in spite of it all". Quite a long read considering the thought behind it was pretty simple. Too many people are striving to make their life's better in the future without enjoying the current blessings they have. Although I can see that this is correct, and that it applies to me as much as everyone else, it is very difficult to get into the right mindset to really enjoy life as it happens.

I find myself regularly looking towards retirement, wishing my life away, when I might not even make it that far! I bet retirement is not all its cracked up to be either.

So I need to sort out my current situation. I'm going to start some training in computers (CompTIA A+) as it is something I'm interested in and would enjoy doing as a job. This should also, in the fulness of time, lead to a better salary and perhaps enough to pay the bills with a (little) bit left over.

In the meantime I will continue to keep this site updated in the hope that it will eventually start to bring in some money. A bit of a vague plan but I'm finding less and less time to concentrate on it and give it the necessary focus.

Bottom line is I need to stop worrying and be happy. I'm putting a smile on my face now. Cheer up, life is good.

Our second competition is open for entries and we have to date received 182. Actually we have received a great many more than that, but unfortunately these were sent from an automated bulk entry system and have been deleted.

As a result of this attempt to cheat I have added an extra field into the comp form (post code) plus changed the validation question. This seems to have stopped the auto spammers for the time being.

If there is any question that other entries have been submitted via this method or that entrants are making multiple attempts to enter (remember it is only one entry per household) they too will be deleted.

It's only fair to the genuine competition entrants that people trying to gain this type of advantage are excluded.

Remember when entering competitions to check the rules before you enter if you are thinking of making multiple entries. Some competitions do allow them, or allow entries on a daily basis.

We don't, so keep your entries honest and you'll be in the draw for the mobile phone in December, despatched in time for Christmas.

Good luck to all.

Just about ready to get the new competition up and running. I'm charging the mobile phone as I write this, although it will need charging again nearer the time of despatch.

This blog post will form part of the terms and conditions of the competition so make sure you read it carefully. Basically the prize is as sent and any problems after are down to the winner!

The phone is currently locked to the Virgin Mobile network as it is a replacement phone sent by them for one that broke. It hasn't been used by me and still has the screen protectors on.

I found an old PAYG Virgin Mobile sim in the garage and have put it in. It is however showing "Limited Service" - this may mean that you just need to put credit onto it or register it or the sim may not be working. It is up to the winner whether they try to get the phone unlocked to another network, try and get it working with Virgin (or flog it on Ebay!!).

I found the original box for the phone and inside were earphones and USB cable, both still bagged as they have not been used. The charger, CD and manuals are also included and are in excellent condition.

Although this is a "new" phone I cannot provide you with any warranty. If it breaks in a months time then it's down to the winner to fix it. My original phone lasted about 10 months so I would expect that this new one should at least last that long!

OK, those are the rules, so to enter the competition visit the competitions page and follow the link.

The winners have all replied very promptly with their details so here they all are:

Shaft/Deep Blue Sea - Hannah Prosser

A farewell to Arms/The Snows of Kilimanjiro - Margaret Hamilton

Vacancy/Captivity - Angie Rhind

Hopefully the prizes will be despatched this afternoon, although not sure when they will arrive given the possible postal strikes!

Our next competition will be online soon, the chance to win a Samsung U600 mobile phone.

My own comping going very slowly, no sign of a decent win on the horizon. Keep your fingers crossed for me and I'll do the same for you!

All the best and good luck.

Our first competition has ended. It closed yesterday at midnight and form submission has now been disabled so no more entries can be sent.

We received a total of 285 entries and the three winning numbers have been drawn. I used our random number generator to pick three numbers between 1 and 285.

For information purposes, although it won't make any sense to anyone, the numbers picked were 223, 128 and 112. I will match these up to the entries that were received 223rd, 128th and 112th and email the lucky winners.

Once I receive address and date of birth confirmation from them I will post the winning names on the relevant competition page. Prizes will probably be despatched Monday subject to getting all of the details in.

The next competition will probably also start on Monday, once I have more time to get the necessary pages sorted out. Keep reading this blog for more info.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Congratulations to the winnners and, if you didn't win, better luck next time.

Another competition prize received today. A Mighty Glass from Irn-Bru. Not exactly what I've been comping for but it will at least get used. I've added it to my competition wins for 2009 page.

As mentioned previously, the breakage of my laptop has meant I've entered very few comps in the last week and I don't know where I'm going to find the time to enter all of those I've missed.

I will have to be very selective and just enter the big ones where there is a holiday or big electronics prize involved. The rest will have to wait or just not get entered.

I'm just about up and running on my new computer. The final few bits of software I need are now in my possession, just have to get around to installing them. Then things will be back to normal.

However, for the future I need to think about what would happen if my computer breaks again, or is lost/stolen. I need a better form of data recovery to get myself moving in double quick time.

I have seen that there are online storage websites that might allow me to upload info on a daily/weekly basis. This might be the answer. I will have to try and find a free one.

Or alternatively I suppose I could use this website and just ftp everything on my hard drive every week. Could take a little time though. I would probably prefer a professional solution.

Anyway I'm back online and working hard now. My new competition will probably be delayed a few days, I'm thinking around the 20th October for a start date now.

Good luck to all of those that have entered the DVD competition. Only a couple of days until the results are announced!

I already have a page dedicated to free stuff which is for permanent free offers.

Occasionally I come across time limited free offers and these will be posted on this blog.

I've received an email from the Nokia music store today offering me 5 free tracks. They can be downloaded and played on a PC so no need for a Nokia phone.

They sent me a special link to sign up, however at the bottom it stated that there are more spare accounts (for a limited time only).

Click here for 5 free music tracks.

By signing up you are also entered into a competition for Christmas shopping in New York with $1500 spending money!

The PC software downloads quickly and easily and now its just a matter of choosing my free tracks.

Keep checking back for more free offers, in particular the free money making ebook which will shortly be available online.

Well done Virgin Mobile. My replacement Samsung U600 mobile phone has arrived exactly as promised.

However, in the meantime I had borrowed a beaten up Nokia 3510i from a friend of a friend.

Whereas my Samsung could barely get a signal at my workplace, the old Nokia gets a couple of bars, meaning I can make and receive calls!

OK, so it's not got a camera or any features, but the idea of a phone is for talking and texting and the Nokia does this just fine.

Plus I'm due my upgrade with Virgin in November so only a handful of weeks to wait for my next new phone. I'm definitely choosing Nokia this time!

So I'm not putting my new Samsung phone into service, I'm saving it for next month's competition prize.

It will come with a Virgin Mobile sim card and all of the other bits I can find (charger etc.). So come back after 15th October for a chance to win it.

In the meantime look at the competitions page for this months DVD competition.

Good luck to all.

Received an email yesterday evening from Visit Liverpool advising me of another prize win. Tickets to Underwater Street and a 1 night stay at the Holiday Inn. I've added this to my list of 2009 competition wins.

This comes almost exactly two years after my last win with Visit Liverpool in September 2007 (see competition wins 2007). That time we had a 2 night stay in a boutique hotel.

We really enjoyed our last trip to Liverpool and it will be nice to get back there and see if anything has changed. We have baby with us this time so it will be his first trip there.

Can't decide whether this should be on my 40th birthday or it could be for our wedding anniversary. Either way it is likely to be in December so hope weather is not too cold as we really enjoy walking around the city.

2009 has picked up just as I expected. As I've been able to enter more competitions more wins have started to flow. And with every win comes an extra spur to enter some more.

Good luck with your comping but don't win any prizes I want!

We have launched our first competition on Improve Your Future. You can find it by visiting our competitions page.

The prizes are three sets of DVDs. You can choose which one you want or try to win all three.

• Vacancy and Captivity - two thrillers (horror?) so over 18s only for entry to this prize.
• A farewell to arms and The snows of Kilimanjiro - two classics based on Ernest Hemingway novels
• Shaft and Deep blue sea (pictured) - two films starring Samuel L Jackson.

Closing date is 14th October 2009.

We will be adding regular new competitions so keep checking back. Hopefully the prizes will get better as the site expands!

If you are a business looking to promote your products and would like to sponsor a competition please contact us by email (link is on our home page). We will be happy to give you some space to get your message across in return for some great prizes for our visitors.

Just got really excited as I received an email with the subject line - "Daily Mail Euro Prize Giveaway - Winner".

With it being a large daily newspaper I anticipated opening the email to see I'd won 500 euros or similar. How disappointing.

Apparently I've "won" a prepaid MasterCard® loaded with 5 Euros. About £3, and no doubt there will be some sort of catch that it can't be withdrawn!

Not sure whether to claim my "prize" as I am not intending to go overseas in the near future and I don't want to end up getting caught out with the small print and find I end up out of pocket! That would be just my luck.

In any case I already have a prepaid credit card which I'm happy with so, on reflection, I'll give it a miss. It's not being added to my list of prize wins either. Thanks, but no thanks.

Fingers crossed for some better news next week on the competition front. We live in hope.

Just arrived this morning, a DVD of "The Young Victoria" courtesy of Compton and Woodhouse. This has been added to my list of competition wins in 2009.

Not sure it's going to be my sort of thing but I will give it a look and  could be enjoyable.

My last comp win, Max Manus, was a pretty decent watch. I would probably give it 6/10.

No notifications of any more wins in the pipeline. I'm managing to enter quite a few competitions currently so hopefully this extra effort will pay off in the future with a decent holiday or some vouchers to spend.

Didn't manage to sell my hard disk system on Ebay which was a bit disappointing. If anyone is interested in buying it let me know. Email address is on the website.

It's an Imation Odyssey system with one cartridge and USB adapter. Apparently retails around £168 but only want £50 for it so I can get a couple of Wii games.

I've been catching up on all the competitions I've missed during the week whilst I've been at work. I've probably entered a couple of hundred this weekend.

Some of these sites require you to be registered to enter. Once you have logged-in it makes it easier to enter the comps as they already have your details. Often it is one click per comp.

I'm currently updating my details on sites where I'm registered as I recently changed my email address. Which brings me to another golden competition rule I forgot earlier: keep your details up-to-date.

Whilst changing my email address I've come across several sites where some of my other details where out of date. For instance some had my old home address on them, others had my old mobile number.

It's quite possible that I have won prizes which have been sent to my old address or that people cannot get hold of me to tell me I've won (and therefore I forfeit the prize!).

You don't want to spend time entering competitions when you have no chance of receiving the prize because your details are out-of-date. So make a regular check of the sites you use a lot to ensure they have your correct details.

Many competitions are run in order to obtain your email address/details for future correspondence. Usually there is an option to opt-out of future contact.

I have read people asking the question: "Will I still win if I don't sign up to the newsletter/request further details?". In my experience it doesn't make any difference, although it wouldn't surprise me if some sites "drew" regular customers rather than strangers.

However, I always opt-out to keep my email inbox as free as possible from unwanted mail and I have certainly won my share of prizes. Take a look at my competition wins.

The post has just arrived and I've won a DVD - "Max Manus Man of War" from BritFilms.tv.

Looks like a good film, although I've not heard much about it. I'm certainly looking forward to watching it.

It will be added to my list of prize wins accessible from the competitions page all of which should be finished by the end of today.

A prize win always spurs me on to enter more comps and this is the secret of regular winning - enter as many as you can.

I recently helped my Dad out with some work he was doing. My job was to get people to fill out a quick form to enter a free prize draw to win a brand new Mini.

It was amazing how many people just weren't interested, citing reasons such as "I've already got a car". Not sure they realised an extra car could be sold and the money spent in any way they wanted.

Still, this kind of attitude means that winning prizes should be easier for the rest of us.

I will be running my own competitions from this website too. I already have the first few prizes in my possession, however if anyone wishes to sponsor a competition prize in return for some free publicity please contact me.

Further to my previous post, I forgot to mention about competition questions.

Many online competitions do not have questions to answer, they just require you to enter your details.

Others have amazingly easy questions that everyone should know the answer to or questions about the products you could win. The answers can often be found in the text on the page or via a link supplied.

When I don't know the answer to a question I make a judgement regarding how long it is likely to take to find the answer. If the prize is one I really want to win then I will spend a fair amount of time researching the answer.

Sometimes I will abandon entry if I think the effort of finding the answer is not justified by the prize to be won.

Many competitions ask the same question as they are syndicated across a number of websites by the prize supplier. Once you've found the answer you will be able to enter all of these comps quickly and easily.

Answers about films can usually be found on IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase). For general knowledge questions I use the Google toolbar.

With practice you will be able to phrase the search terms in Google to get exactly the answer you are looking for on the first page of results without having to visit any sites.

I have made it a rule not to enter competitions unless I know the answer to any questions being asked. This rule has served me well.

Happy comping.

As I've said on my free stuff page I love a competition and have been doing them online since 2003. During this time I have literally won hundreds of prizes.

At some point, when I get time, I am going to put my list of prize wins online to keep track of them and so people can see that online comps are really worth entering.

There is no science to my winning online competitions, it really is a numbers game. The more comps you enter the more chance you have of winning. If you enter enough you are guaranteed to win eventually!

As I only have up to 1 hour each day spare to enter comps, and sometimes less, I don't enter as many as I'd like. I don't bother with tiebreaker comps, even though they have less entries and therefore a better chance of winning, simply because I don't have the time. I concentrate on the easy-to-enter comps and enter as many as I can.

To find the comps I use the Prizefinder website. It is free to use and helps you keep track of your entries.

Some sites have comps running all the time and you get used to the entry requirements. Others require you to log-in, but once you have logged in you can enter each competition with only 1 click of the mouse.

I use the google toolbar Autofill facility in conjunction with Internet Explorer as I find this combination works best for quickly filling out online entry forms. For some reason Autofill does not work as well with Firefox and you can't use it with Google Chrome.

Generally I enter for prizes I want to win plus the occasional prize I think I can sell on Ebay. Although I haven't yet won a really big prize I live in hope and enjoy the feeling of winning even a small prize.

You have to look on entering competitions as a fun hobby. If I worked out the total value of prizes accumulated over the past 6 years and divided it by the number of hours I've spent entering them I don't think it would reach minimum wage! But the thrill and anticipation of a possible big prize makes up for it all.