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Comping is a slang word for ‘competitions’ and is used in the UK to describe the entering of competitions. A ‘comper’ is the name given to a person who enters competitions regularly. This is a great side hustle idea for anyone looking to earn a bit of extra cash or win prizes such as electronics, holidays and gift cards on the side. For some people, comping is a serious business; they spend hours finding and entering competitions. In fact, some compers enter hundreds of competitions every week.
Why do they spend so much time on comping?
Different compers have different reasons, but for many, it’s about the prizes…
Yes, it is possible to make money doing competitions. In fact, many online competitions offer cash as a top prize. Make sure you check what the prizes are before entering if you’re only interested in winning money. It could be an idea to look into whether you can make money doing surveys online in your free time as well as comping.
But there’s so much more on offer. Different competitions offer different prizes, and some are more unusual than others. Long-time comper Di Coke, the founder of SuperLucky, has won everything from holidays and shopping vouchers to a £15,000 24 carat Gold Brewdog can (plus £10,000 shares in Brewdog). In fact, over a period of 20 years, she has won over £300,000 worth of prizes. Check out our 7 unusual ways to make money to find out more methods that people are using to earn money on the side.
Comping is a numbers game. The more competitions that you enter, the more success you’ll have. For example, if you only enter one online competition, the chances of winning are slim. However, if you enter 300, your chances are higher.
That said, you still need to be selective with which comps you enter as there’s only 24 hours in a day. It’s all about time management, especially if you’re doing comping as a side hustle.
Whilst winning prizes when comping relies a little on luck, there’s ways to enhance your chances. It’s about using a strategy, being consistent and choosing the right competitions.
Here’s some ideas for increasing your chances of success:
The lower the amount of competition entrants, the higher your chance of winning becomes. Keep an eye out for:
Entering competitions is a bit of a numbers game. The more comps you enter, the better the odds of winning are.
These types of competitions remove the randomness of luck as compers are judged on hitting the competition objective.
For example, you may be asked to submit a recipe or finish a slogan in a certain number of words.
Always be sure to stick to the competition brief – don’t exceed any set limits. Make sure your entry is clear and concise and don’t be afraid to show your human side with a bit of humour.
Be sure to track details of the competitions you’ve entered. This can help avoid duplicate entries that risk disqualification. Use something as simple as a spreadsheet to track:
If you fancy giving comping a go, here’s a few tips to help you get up and running:
First thing first: before you do anything, it’s time to set up a new email account. You can use any free email service, such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo Mail.
A separate email account helps keep things cleaner so that your personal emails don’t get mixed up with your competition related emails.
Another benefit to having a separate email account for competitions is that it’s much quicker to find out about any new comps on offer. It’s possible that some comps may have limited numbers so it helps if you can get involved straight away.
Remember to always check your junk folder!
As with most things these days, there’s terms and conditions attached to competitions. It’s vital that you fully get to grips with any competition rules.
If not followed, entries might be ineligible which can be infuriating to find out after you have completed an entry.
Here are some example terms and conditions:
Once you are familiar with the standard terms and conditions of competitions, you should be able to skim through the usual ones and focus on the additional ones.
Depending on the competition, you may need to agree to special terms. For example, if you enter a competition for a radio station, you may be asked to appear on air. If that’s not something you feel comfortable doing, then it’s worth avoiding entering.
You’ve heard the expression ‘it’s too good to be true’ right? Unfortunately, even with competitions, there’s some unscrupulous scammers about.
These can range from non-existent prizes to false prize descriptions such as a 5* hotel holiday actually being a room in a B&B.
One of the best ways to avoid scams is to only enter comps by brands you trust. If a well-known, trusted brand is advertising a competition, there’s a good chance it’s for real. Another way to spot a scam competition is that you could be asked to pay in order to claim your prize. Regardless of whether you paid to enter, the actual claiming of the prize should cost you nothing.
A scammer may ask you to call a premium rate phone number or send you an official-looking letter asking for an administration fee. You can find more information about scam competitions at the Government Competition & Markets Authority.
The simple rule is, if you think it looks dodgy, don’t enter.
Be sure to allow yourself time to search for the right online competitions. You’ll also need to have time to fill out entry forms so you provide the required information on time.
A bit like writing reviews for money, you’ll get quicker at submitting entires as time goes by. As you enter more and more competitions, the standard information required will become second nature so you’ll know it instantly.
Also make sure to check everything before your submit it as you don’t want to go to all that trouble and then the entry be invalid.
Never dismiss anything outright and cast your eyes over as many competitions as you can. Consider it as a mini business where you’re working from home on a freelance basis.
Smaller competitions could offer better odds of winning as there could be a lower number of entrants.
Times have changed from when you would see competitions in the local paper or on a cereal box. The vast majority of competitions are now available online.
So, let’s have a look at where you could try to find online competitions in the UK:
Type ‘online competitions’ into any search engine, and you’ll get thousands of results. No, you don’t have to trawl them all. On the first page alone, you’ll find competition directories which have already done the trawling for you.
There’s plenty of UK based competition websites that offer great prizes including cash, holidays, electronics and cars.
As well as following the accounts of competition database sites (such as @competition.finder on Instagram), you can also search hashtags. For example, at the time of writing (August 2025), Instagram has 20.8m posts in #competition and 190,000 posts in #winmoney. Again, not all of these will be relevant to you, and there will be some amount of trawling, but you might find something that catches your eye. If you’re stuck for ideas, check out sites like Best Hashtags for inspiration.
On Facebook, you’ll find groups to join and pages to follow. There are so many options when it comes to finding online comps.
As well as online comping, a lot of brands advertise competitions on their packaging. This means you can get access to competitions from food and drinks companies when you make a trip to the supermarket. Although, it’s likely you’ll still need to enter the comp online.
Just be careful of the eligibility rules as they might require you to buy something.
Competitions are available in magazines on all topics. Pick almost any magazine up off the shelf, have a flick through the pages, and you’ll most likely find a page dedicated to comps.
Alternatively, Compers News is a hub, gathering together UK competitions from hundreds of newspapers, magazines, shopping centres, and supermarkets.
In fact, it’s the UK’s only magazine devoted to competitions and winning prizes. As always, look to enter online. That means you won’t have to pay postage on a postcard entry, which makes the competitions free for you to enter.
In the most, yes they are. However, as we pointed out earlier, there are some scammers out there.
If you stick to page 1 of Google search results, you should be dealing with reputable companies. They will have done at least some form of due diligence on the comps they are recommending.
Be sure to always check the T&C’s because even when you’re using trusted competition websites, there’s always the odd one that can slip through the net.
Some of the biggest online competition websites and forums will be ones you’ve heard of. For example, MoneySavingExpert has a dedicated Competition Time forum. You don’t have to register to view posts.
Similarly, Hot UK Deals has a ‘Freebie’ section and whilst it’s not competitions, it’s still a way to get products at no cost.
Comping could be a great side hustle to make money on maternity leave or in retirement so long as you are finding and using legitimate competitions.
Spotting competitions to avoid won’t be obvious to begin with but it’ll soon become second nature as you enter more and more competitions.
The two main competition types you need to avoid are spam and scam. We covered off scam comps earlier so let’s have a quick look at spam comps.
Spam comps aren’t always bad but can get a little annoying. With spam competitions, the prizes on offer might be genuine but the objective of the company running the competition is more about the rewards they get. A lot of the time, your personal details are what they’re after so they can sell them.
Tips to avoid spam competitions
Comping is very unlikely to provide a full-time income but it definitely has the potential to make some money and prizes on the side.
There’s loads of ways to make money in your spare time, it’s just about finding one that works for you. Have a look at the OddsMonkey side hustles hub to see if anything catches your eye.
One that we can definitely recommend is matched betting. This involves making free money from promotions that are on offer from different bookies. You can find out a little more in our beginners guide to matched betting.
*DISCLAIMER: We’re legally required to state that there is no guarantee of specific results each month. The amount of money that you earn can vary dependant on the time and effort that you commit each month.
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