How To Find And Enter Advent Competitions

Last updated: April 26, 2023

The festive season is just about upon us, and compers around the country are gearing up for advents. Here I discuss what advent competitions are, where you can find them, and how to enter them.

What Are Advent Competitions?

At Christmas, lots of companies (and I mean lots!) run a series of giveaways to coincide with advent. Most start on 1 December , although some do start earlier. Generally there is a giveaway a day up until Christmas. Prizes vary hugely, and the largest prizes tend to be given away on Christmas Eve. Usually you don’t know what each prize is going to be until you visit their site that day.

What all this means is that there are hundreds and hundreds of extra competitions flooding the internet in December. These are in addition to the regular competitions that are usually going on. It can send compers into a frenzy because it is pretty much impossible for most people to be able to enter all of them every single day. I know from experience that it takes hours each day to just do the advent comps, let alone adding in any extra ordinary comps. Despite that, it’s still my favourite comping time of the year and I really look forward to it. I wasn’t able to participate in them much last December as we moved house and I had no internet at home until January. However, in 2015 I spent a lot of time on advents and ended up winning on average a prize a day in December. It is of course down to luck, but as with all competitions the more you enter, the more chance there is of winning.

Where To Find Advent Competitions

There are several comping sites out there that have annual lists of advent competitions. The forum users add the comps to the list every time they find one. Some of the main comping sites’ advent lists for 2017 are:

The Prizefinder

Money Saving Expert (I explain how to use this comping forum in this post)

Loquax

Advent Competitions

You can also join a Facebook group to find out about new advent competitions. I like to be involved with this group each year. People in that group work really hard to find competitions for others to enter.

You might otherwise prefer to find your own advent competitions by using google (just type in ‘advent competition’).

How To Enter Them

There are a couple of tactics you can take to organise yourself during the advents. You might decide to use one of the comping sites above. You can visit their lists daily to enter each competition via those links. This is fine, although it can take you a while to sift through them all. The plus side of this method is that, if there is a question to be answered in order to enter the competition, the forum members will often have it written right there for you.

I like to take Di Coke’s advice and use bookmarks. (Read my review of Di’s book, Superlucky Secrets). I set up folders in Chrome and save each advent competition I want to keep entering into a folder. So if I come across advent competitions run by a company I really like, and I know I definitely want a chance to win their prizes, I save their advent page into one of these folders. I save around 20 pages into one folder, and usually label them ‘Advents 1’, ‘Advents 2’ and so on. Then when I start to comp that day, I open all the bookmarks in one folder, enter those advents and then open the next folder’s tabs. I do this because it’s a quick way to access the comps I want, and doing them 20 at a time doesn’t slow my computer down.

My Tips For Coping With Advent Competitions

The advents can make you a little crazy, and I find that people either love them or hate them. The key is not to let them fluster you or dominate your life. If you don’t have time to enter them, then it’s not the end of the world. One of the things I love about comping is how you’re able to delve in and out of the hobby whenever you feel like it or have the time. I go through long periods of not entering any competitions. If you miss the advents, there are still thousands of competitions running throughout the rest of the year.

To avoid getting completely overwhelmed or if you won’t have much time each day for comping, try to only bookmark the advents that you definitely want to enter. Have a ‘Favourites’ folder and stick to entering those first.

If you decide you’re not interested in the advent comps, don’t forget lots of regular comps are still running alongside them. While the attention of many compers is turned to advents, it could be a good time to swoop in and enter the other comps while there are less people doing them.

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Are you an advent fanatic or do you prefer to give them a miss? If you are taking part in advents this year, good luck!