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.

 

Over the past few years I have dabbled with affiliate marketing with varying success. At the moment I don't have a steady stream of income from this source, although I have had in the past.

When selecting your affiliates you need to make sure that it could be worthwhile all of the time and effort spent amending your website and promoting their program. Some affilate programs don't last long and others pay a pittance.

If the commission payable is 3% and the average sale made is £20 then you are only going to receive 60p for each sale. You need a LOT of sales to make a living. Plus affilate links tend to have a poor conversion rate, so think of the number of visitors you need to generate even a tenner!

Concentrate on the bigger paying sectors. One of these that I had success with in the past was the finance sector. Unfortunately this sector is not paying out anywhere as much or as often as it used to. Plus finance affiliate programs seem to be closing all of the time at the moment!

Another sector that has paid me well in the past is the mobile phone sector. Payouts tend to be on a flat fee per sale and this could be around £30. A few sales here soon add up and could make into a viable business.

However, with the popular sectors competition is always going to be greater. If you are spending money to promote your site you are going to have to pay more for programs such as Google Adwords.

It is unlikely too that you can just set up an affiliate program on your site, leave it alone and watch the money roll in. At the moment I have several programs that need to be closed as the affiliates are no longer going and I need to find other programs to replace them. This is time consuming.

Plus you have to keep on top of promotions from the various companies and, if you have signed up to multiple programs, keep checking your various accounts for tracking and statistics.

So affiliate marketing can generate you income, but it is not as easy as it looks (unless you already have a high traffic site within a specialised sector) and is time consuming. As with everything, the more you put into it the more you are likely to get out of it!

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.

I've been selling some stuff on ebay recently, a lot of which needs collection, but one item needed to be posted.

It's a real pain to traipse to the Post Office and go through the rigmarole of weighing your item and then finding out it's going to cost more than you thought (more than you've collected on Ebay!)

Plus you have to go during standard office hours - not very convenient when you have a day job. Some things can't wait until Saturday.

So a new service from Collect Plus, recommended to me by my Dad, could be the answer.

They are using local convenience stores as their collection and pick up points. My nearest one is literally a hundred yards from my house. It's open seven days a week and I've just been down there on a Sunday afternoon to drop off a parcel. Very convenient.

Delivery is only £3.99 for a fairly large parcel up to 10kgs. This would cover quite a few ebay sales.

However, it does rely upon the recipient also being within easy reach of a delivery point. The network of stores is growing all the time.

Rather than getting home from work to find a "you have been out" card, and then having to somehow collect it from your local depot at the very restricted hours they open (plus coping with the queues!), an email tells you it has been delivered to your local store and you can pop down, often up to 10.30 at night, and pick it up.

I'm certainly going to be using them whenever possible for ebay sales in the future and would recommend you visit their website to see if their service might be handier for you.

UPDATE 4/12/2009 - After four days my parcel hasn't moved an inch! It is still waiting at the original drop-off point to be collected. From there it has to go to a central depot and on to its destination. So it looks like it could be weeks, at the current rate of travel, before it is delivered.

Oh dear. I have often said if something looks too good to be true it probably is and here is another example. I may be able to retrieve the parcel as it hasn't been picked up yet and send it by Royal Mail. Next time I'll wait too see how good the service is before posting on here. Doh.

UPDATE 10/12/2009 - I've had to pick up the parcel from the original drop-off point and send it by Royal Mail instead. To be fair to Collect Plus they haven't tried to make any excuses  for their disappointing service and have provided a prompt refund in full. I think the idea of their service is good, but perhaps they have been overwhelmed by the response. They might be worth another try in the future when their network is up to speed.

 

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.

Just had a thought that the bumper money making DVD might make a good novelty Christmas present for anyone you know who wants to make a little extra cash.

At only £4.99 with free delivery it could be a bit of a stocking filler for someone. Before you wrap it up you could download it onto your hard drive so you can benefit from the thousands of programs yourself.

It contains over 4.4GB of data. When I was copying it yesterday it showed a total of 1,752 folders containing 33,806 files! At £4.99 that's 0.01p per file - 100 files for a penny. Great value.

You could also use the disc yourself to make some other Christmas presents. For instance hypnosis CDs, coasters, keyrings, horoscope forecasts, novelty bank notes.

To see some more ways you could use the DVD to make great Christmas gifts visit the bumper DVD page which lists just some of the contents.

I'm making it my mission to put ALL of the contents on this website. This means exploring all of the 1,700 plus folders, using the programs and info and cataloguing them all.

There's so much on there this is going to take some time so I'll break it down into smaller chunks. At 10 folders per day it's going to take me nearly 6 months working every day to get through all of the data!

Still, there are bound to be some nuggets of gold hidden away deep within the 30,000 plus files. It's going to be fun finding them and you never know, one of them could be the key to my fortune! I live in hope.

So for the perfect novelty Christmas gift for under a fiver buy the IYF Bumper DVD while stocks last.

As promised in a previous post I've now added the new bumper DVD to the website. To find out more visit the "make money online with our bumper DVD" page.

The reason it's on DVD is simply that it contains so much data - over 4GB in total! You would have to package a number of CDs to contain that much. There really is an incredible amount of stuff on there.

There is something for everyone. I don't believe there is a single person out there who wouldn't benefit from at least one of the programs, ebooks, manuals etc. At only £4.99 it represents incredible value even if you only use one of the hundreds of software items.

How do you make money out of it? As well as money making ideas, ebay tips and tricks, advice on starting a business etc. there are a number of useful programs that can be re-sold seperately. For instance there are a number of hypnosis CDs.

You could record these individually onto CD and sell them seperately. The subjects of weight loss, stopping smoking, and improving confidence are bound to be sought after by many. Each CD could potentially sell at £4.99 (or more) giving you a 100% profit from just two sales!

You could sell them online as audio downloads at £1.99 each, or send them to people by email. The money making possibilities are endless.

There are also a number of artworks and images which could be turned into posters, key rings, mouse mats, coasters and other items. Plus a variety of programs which you could use to offer services or sell on CD to other.

This bumper money making DVD is available now at £4.99. Payment is handled by Paypal and it will be despatched within 24 hours of your order.

It doesn't come with any fancy packaging - it's the contents that are important! Get your copy now and have some fun with it.

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.