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.

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.

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.