The leathal mix of free booze & close friendships

That's right, it's the work Christmas do season!

We had ours last night. Oh dear, it was messy; but fun!
Pictures to come soon hopefully.... (we had 3 camera spies in force)And there was lot's of drunken behaviour.

Today everyone in the office is very tender and slightly green looking. The office also has a slight odour of egg butties and stale beer.

How was yours? Did anyone do anything embarrassing?

3 more working days until our Christmas break, yay!

Car Competitions & Bulging Cupboards!

OMG you should see the amount of prizes we have in our office cupboards ready for the Christmas rush!

I'm practically green! You non win4now employee's are so lucky.(we can't win anything)

Myself, Lucy & Kerry have just been discussing which new car competitions we are going to run next year. Should we go for another Mini Cooper? a Focus? a Fiesta? a Mx5? or Win a Zonda... hehe just messing, we aren't that rich!

How cool would it be to Win a car online though!?! wow. You'd be stoked for years to come.

Quickly make sure you've entered our car prize draws on Win4now at the moment, because they end on the 31st of December.
Win a Toyota Yaris here
Win a Honda Civic Hybrid here
Win a convertible Peugeot 207 here

I haven't done all of my Christmas shopping yet, so I'm actually tempted to 'borrow' some prizes..... I'm sure no one would notice if I disappear for a few weeks and return with a tan :)

I can't afford to buy any Christmas presents

Oh yes you can! (full panto styleee)
Don't buy stuff, Win it!

That's right, enter Win4now's competitions and you still have time to win stuff for Christmas. No one needs to know that you didn't pay for the presents yourself.... we won't tell.

We've been busy little elves at Win4now to make sure that we have a great selection of Christmas prizes that you'd really want to win, so return the favour and enter as many competitions as you can.
Tell all your friends about the site and say yes to joining a few of our partners offers, because they help fund the competitions - without the special offers Win4now would not be alive today.

Give it a go, it won't cost you a penny to try. Join Win4now today.

Here's a few free entry Christmas competitions to get you started - click the word win:

Win £100 worth of luxury Christmas food here
Win 1 of 2 Ninetendo DS handhelds and games
Win a laptop so you can enter Win4now competitions anywhere!


ps. Thank you to everyone that has left comments after reading the blog, we're glad your enjoying it.

Free Instant Win's VS National Lottery Instant Win Games

This morning I received an email from the National Lottery to tell me my tickets had ran out. So I clicked on the link and re funded my account so that I had another 8 weeks worth of Lotto tickets. I'm old school because I only play Lotto and don't even do the extra dream number jazz.

Anyway I digress, the point is that I noticed after buying my tickets, I still had £3.50 left so I thought I'd give the instant win games a go. At £1 and £2 per game I decided to choose carefully which I wanted to play. (they were all very hi tech looking with interactive features and movie style graphics)

Well all I can say is that I lost my money within a few minutes!

It felt like a game, rather than actually handing over money. I know for sure if i'd have had to have handed over real money and play via a scratchcard that I would have stopped at 1 game. With these I had to really control myself from re funding my account again to play more games until I did win.
I'm not blaming the National Lottery at all, because they had numerous warning pages and security features to try and help; its just that there is something in your head that makes the whole experience not feel like your using real money.

I'm going to stick with free entry instant win games like our site Instantwin4now.

Pro's -
It's completely free to join and play
Loads of prizes and cash to win
You can instantly win
Con's -
Nothing worth more than £20k in prizes

Whereas the National Lottery:
Pro's -
Big cash prizes - life changing amounts
You can instantly win
Some of the money is donated to good causes
Con's -
It's NOT free, you have to pay to play
It's addictive and may lead to gambling problems

It doesn't take a genius to tell you which one's more cost effective! Free Competitions are ace.

Do you refer friends to competitions?

When I say 'refer friends' to competitions; I mean do you tell your friends the website url/link, forward email newsletters, tell them about it when you see them face to face or do you tell effectively strangers via comping forum communities?
After all it's a game of luck so why not share it out and see what fate decides?

Or do you prefer to increase your odd's (less people entering) and sneakily enter alone. Rubbing your hands together cackling away in your secret hide away? (Sorry I got carried away there.)

Would you be more likely to share good competitions with your friends if you had an incentive; like an extra entry into the competition, if the company makes a charity donation on your behalf or a small reward like a voucher code?

I would recommend that you start a little syndicate, where you all enter the same competitions sharing any new prize draws leads as you find them.
Then if any of your syndicate wins, you share the prizes between your group. You might need a contract between you or just good old fashioned honour & trust.

Power in numbers.

Most popular competitions in November

Top 5 competitions on Win4now in November were:

Win Argos Gift Vouchers
Win £300 in Cash
Win Amazon Gift Vouchers
Win a Nintendo Wii Package
and Win Christmas Food!

Good luck to everyone who entered.

We have lot's of new competitions starting today, so log in and get entering!

Free samples, what's the point?

Yesterday I got a Jordons muesli sample through the post. To be honest I don't even remember asking for it, but it had a nicely written letter enclosed that explained I'd requested the sample and they have even included a 50p off token if I decide I like the cereal and buy myself a box.
Great I thought! I love freebies.

Now this got me wondering, what's the point in free samples? Will I actually buy the Jordon's cereal now rather than my Tesco's own brand? The answer for me will be yes; if I like the taste, if it's as healthy as my current brand and the most important factor for me (being a skin flint) - is it as cheap? If they can satisfy these 3 factors, they will have themselves a new customer.

Why do companies do it? Well free samples are a great tool to spread their brand and new product as long as they're confident it should increase sales, as people were so happy with the free sample. (There is a negative risk though - if it's rubbish, it can have a worse effect on the brand, than if not letting so many people know about their product!)

I think that free product samples are fantastic for us the customers. It's a win-win situation.
Thank you Jordon's, and all the other companies who give us consumers something for nothing. :)

Win4now currently has quite a few free sample offers ( look underneath the competitions for our partners offers. ) We will soon have a special free offers section for you, so that you can easily spot the freebies from our other promotions.

Offers underneath the competitions.

On Win4now underneath every competition there are 3 offers or questions about yourself that we have hand picked for you personally.
All you have to do is say yes please or no thanks to these to enter the prize draws. Hopefully you'll say yes to a few that you think are good deals.

Today, I want to talk about my personal favourite 5 offers that are currently active on the site.

1. Cheapflights - A simple newsletter join up. Easy and it means that you get to hear about their latest special offers and cheap flight prices first.

2. 02 - This mobile company are offering you free sim cards if you join them. (You can get up to 4.)

3. Intrepid travel - Another simple newsletter sign up, which means you are kept up to date with Intrepids latest adventure holidays. They are currently sponsoring the Adventure holiday to China competition. Emma from our office actually took a few months off work to go travelling with them and had the time of her life! Very cool company.

4. Consumer Information Centre - free brochures sent to your home (so you don't get weighed down when your in town!) loads to choose from and completely free.

5. Instantwin4now - This is another one of our sites that I think every Win4now member should join up to. It's just like Win4now in that it's free to join and enter the competitions, the main difference is that you have to select 3 numbers and if they match the winning combination then you win the prize instantly! You get 50 entries per day and theres 100's of prizes to enter. Well what are you waiting for? Join Instantwin4now today :)

Check these out next time your on Win4now. Don't be scared to tick yes please, these are genuine companies. We won't allow dodgy offers on Win4now.

Unusual Thrifty Tips

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of hearing the word credit crunch and economic downfall!

Entering competitions and winning free stuff is a easy & free option that you should already be doing on a daily basis if your even reading this blog. But what about being thrifty in the more unconventional ways?

I asked a few people from Win4now to give me their top 3 money saving tips - what they actually do themselves not what we should do....

Here are our personal thrifty tips:

Rob uses free moisturiser samples and makes sandwiches in the morning rather than buying them every day for lunch. He also uses Deezer to listen to music ("never buy another cd!" he says!) and rides or runs to work to save money on fuel (an extra bonus to this is, if you can have a shower at work it saves your own electricity bill as it reduces the number of showers you take at home!).

Adele uses hot water bottles instead of leaving the heating on at night, brews her own beer and bakes her own bread.

Gemma keeps the same hairstyle for two months - this saves her £40 a month! She also goes to her mum's for tea and gets lifts to work so that she doesn’t have to pay bus fare.

Patrick keeps his heating on all the time but at a low rate and turns it up when entering the room.

Kerry says she shops at 'Primarni' (Primark) and warns everyone not to have children because they cost too much!

Graeme says that you shouldn't fully fill your car up with petrol at the garage as, when you only put a tenner in, you're saving money due to the extra weight loss thus improving mileage. Take out anything in your car that does not need to be there (grannies in the boot, sledgehammer on the roof etc) to make the car lighter, once again saving petrol.

Steve says he freezes his credit card in a bowl of water in the freezer (It doesn't damage it) and leaves it there. That way you don't make any rash purchases and will have to think before you use it (and it'll probably taste a lot less like plastic than the vegetarian bacon that someone left behind after the BBQ in the summer).
He also says once you break into a note (currency), put all the coins in a jar. That way you will always have money at the end of the month and, if you are like me, you make full use of every note you break into.

Annette turns up at parties with a bottle of Lambrini - then just drinks everybody else's nice expensive wine. (I don’t do this but I notice lots of other people do….)

Ruth cooks on residual heat, does menu plans and then writes shopping list to avoid food wastage.

Carryn says it's good to do your grocery shopping online if you can – make a list and stick to it. You’re less likely to impulse buy if you have to search through pages and pages of offers! Make use of club card points, especially when buying petrol/diesel – we often get vouchers through saving us loads of money.
Start a £1 jar – every time you have a pound in your pocket – put it in the jar. It’s amazing how you never miss a £1 and even more amazing how quickly it adds up so you can use it to pay something off!

Helen says she has a thermostat on the radiator in each room so that you can heat the room you are in without having to heat the whole house.
Also instead of buying compost make your own with a compost bin. But don’t buy one from a garden centre or DIY store - contact Recycle Now who work with your local council to sell a variety of home composters cheap and deliver them to your house at no extra charge.

There you have it, money saving tips from the Win4now staff themselves! ( We can't guarantee any of these tips will save you money, these are just the things that we do. )

The Big Christmas Giveaway

Here's some news for avid compers from Rob at Smartspend...

There is over £50,000 worth of prizes to be won in SmartSpend’s Big Christmas Giveaway including £10,000 cash, gadgets, games, furniture and days out!

You’ll be pleased to know that you can get even more entries (we’re talking thousands here) simply by using SmartSpend or by completing selected online questionnaires.

Get over to the Big Christmas Giveaway to find out more about how you can win.

Extra Fun4now mystery image clue:
Go to this Wiki page for your Charity event clue.

Save Money On Christmas Presents

Winning stuff is an exciting surprize to any day and really cheers you up whatever you win (no matter how big or small.) You've got something for nothing!

When it's this close to Christmas and you have to spend so much more money than usual months; winning a free prize from a competition site is even more thrifty.

I've just counted the Win4now prizes that end before 24th December and there's 42 as of today!

That's 42 chances to win some Christmas presents for your friends and family! (or even yourself if you've been a good boy or girl this year)

Enter as many prize draws as you can from today until Christmas to increase your chances of saving yourself money. Good Luck!

More charity pink wearing win4now staff

Between us in the office we made over £100 to support the Breast Cancer charity, which is an excellent days work.

Pink Wearing Win4now Staff

On the 31st Of October the Win4now office dressed up in pink & made cakes to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness Day.

Here's a picture of James in his pink tutu, looking fabulous.... or is that terrifying?

Hopefully later this week I'll have a scary picture of Kerry in a pink wig and dressing gown for you & Gemma in her masseuse outfit.

Congratulations to all the staff members for doing their bit for charity!

ps. the Fun4now mystery image charity competition clues will be coming on the blog shortly, so if you're struggling, come back soon for help.

Win4now Tricksters!

Halloween came early for Win4now employee's today.

The evil bosses at Win4now just tricked the more gullible employees to go outside into the freezing cold & pose for a 'company picture'.....

So here we all are, smiling away like the good members of staff we are.

As we descended the stand, we then found out that it was a Halloween hoax just to make us look stupid! (and a good job they did too! lol)

Hard working & loyal, but betrayed by the top dogs. Life would be so much easier if you worked from home huh? :)

Everyone's still laughing in the office how we fell for it!

Pet Competitions, a purrrrrfect new feature for Christmas

We've had a big success with our Win4now members entering our pet prizes,(on wacky win4now.)

So we're curious whether we should have more pet related competitions as a permanent feature. Would you like that?

What type of prizes would you prefer?
Win Pet Food?
Win Pet Beds?
Win free kennel stays?
Win pet insurance?
Win free grooming?

Let us know!

Also - Do you buy your pets Christmas presents?

Earn money while you shop for Christmas presents

That's right! Get paid for doing your Christmas shopping this year!

Most people are thrifty by using supermarket loyalty cards to earn money off vouchers, but lot's of people still don't know how you can earn money (cashback) when you shop online!

At win4now we’re always on the lookout for new ways to reward our members. Recently we launched SmartSpend, which is our new cashback site that pays you money for shopping on the internet.

It’s the one site that we run where members of staff are allowed to use themselves to benefit from the rewards, so we’ve all signed up and are making money ourselves. With all the talk of recession this year it’s one way to ease the cost of Christmas!

One thing worth knowing is that there’s a really useful tool called the Rebate Catcher which will automatically log any purchases you make where you earn money. We recommend downloading it so that you get all the rewards you deserve.

Our top earners on the site earn hundreds of pounds a month! So Win4now members make sure you don’t miss out by shopping online the old fashioned way this Christmas.

Xmas competitions & meet the marketing team part 5

Christmas is approaching fast (groan), and it's getting to that time when you start researching what prezzies to buy your friends & family members.

Your best competition friend (that's us) is trying to help your bank balance by giving you the chance to win Xmas4now Competitions. Live on the site today!, so have a look and see if Win4now Santa has picked the competitions that you want to win this Christmas.
If were missing a Christmas present MUST HAVE, then write a comment below for Lucy our new competition writer what prizes you want us errr I mean Santa to have on the site.

Here's a little introduction to our very own Santa Lucy:

"My bloke Nick & I bought our first house in the summer so we now have no money! As you can imagine, most of my time (and cash!) are now taken up with DIY and stuff! However, I live on the same road as my sister so we always have someone handy we can rope into helping!

I’m a bit of a gym bunny in my spare time and go as often as I can! It’s a means to an end really though, if I’m honest– the more I go to the gym, the more chocolate/wine I can have! You do the math!
I also read whenever I get a spare minute as I’m sure most of you have probably already noticed and I think it’s fair to say that books are a bit of an obsession with me (yes, I know, I’m very sad!)

Other than that, I like the usual things, TV, music, films and that, but generally what you see is what you get! I have a light hearted view on life and try not to take it too seriously, after all, your only here once as my mum always tells me (she does also tell me not to talk to strangers, but anyway!!)
I’m really looking forward to working with everyone here and would just like to say thanks for, so far, making me feel really welcome!"

Welcome to Win4now Lucy :)

Back from A4U Conferences

Vicky and myself just got back from a week in London, attending lots of networking parties and listening to conferences on the industry.
(Vickys the one writing in the picture, i'm concentrating to the right of her....)

The Affiliate Marketing Conference
is a great event for companies like us to speak to other website owners who have links to our sites and to learn more about how we can improve our sites to make them even better for our users.

Both of us learnt allot and had lots of fun drinking free booze all week! It's a definite detox for us this weekend.

Remember if you own a website, you can contact Vicky on 0114 2815760 to discuss how we can work together.

Star winners fate is in your hands

For a few years now, Win4now has had a daily cash prize of £250.
It's called Star Winner and basically if you see your name in the top right star box, you need to contact us and then you get a £250 cheque from us.
It's a Simple way for us to reward our loyal members.

Do you come back to Win4now weekly to check the star winner is you?
Or would you prefer it if we used the prize money for star winners to make weekly competitions instead?

Let us know what you would prefer - it's your site :)

Ps. I've got to share this good news with you!
Robs car is finally fixed after 2 months in the garage! He wants to run a wacky win4now prize to win his fractured engine piston, but we've told him to stop being silly!

We love food competitions!

Over the weekend I had a cold which ruined my girls night in plans!
So I spent Friday and Saturday curled up on the sofa watching chick flicks and feeling sorry for myself.

By the time it came to Sunday, I was bored so I decided to cook for the first time... well ever really. I made (Jamie Olivers) shortbread buscuits and a funky morroccan chicken main course.
Very exciting and very tasty! (I sadly even text my mum to brag, who was very proud of me)

Check out Win4now's Cookery competitions.
You can win a selection of kitchen gadgets, or win a set of Jamie Olivers Tefal Pans

It's my birthday tomorrow, or fish pie day as we call it now. (i'm being cooked my favourite dinner) maybe i'll win Win4now's birthday prize draw?

ps. This is my favourite recipe site, it's called 101cookbooks, have a look.

Halloween, Treasure Hunts & New Marketing Member

Check out Kieran & Ruth in their Halloween costumes! Don't they look fabulous! I wonder if anyone will out due their valiant efforts this year?

I think that Vicky wins the scariest story though, she once got attacked in the face by a bat!

We'll also have a Halloween competition on Wacky Win4now going live soon, which we hope you'll enjoy and not be too scared of. (It made me giggle when I was writing it.)

A special Christmas Treasure Hunt is now in the making, so watch this space for an exciting new way to win prizes on Win4now!

Lucy started today, so a big hello & welcome to Win4now from us all! She'll be writing all the new competitions, so if there's anything thing you'd like to win that we haven't got on the site already - let Lucy know.

ps. Remember that the Fun4now Clues feature is now live!

Top 5 Competitions - it's all about the ££££

I've just been doing some analysis on which of our competitions are the most popular.

We try to ensure our new prizes featured on the site are the kind of prizes you want to win most, and I thought I'd share the results with you:

In Aug 08 - W4n's favourite competitions were:
1. Win £2000 cash
2. Win £500 cash
3. Win Hong Kong flight tickets
4. Win £2000 supermarket vouchers
5. Win a Debenhams £200 gift voucher

So loyal compers, doe's this mean you want more cash prizes rather than products?

Extra Competition Clues For Fun4now - Goe's Live

Wahoo! The Fun4now clues feature is now live on Win4now.

This means that you can increase your odd's of winning Fun4now competitions by checking if your on the right lines before submitting your answers.

All you need to do is login and answer a question to see a clue. Remember to make a note of it though as it will disappear once you've logged out.

We'll start with one clue a month but we may well change this if you want more help and offer weekly hints. (put comments on here - we listen to all our members) You'll find out first if we change the frequency here.

We hope you enjoy the new clues pages and happy competition entering!

Do people really win competitions?

Yes! Real people do really win competitions!

However I can totally understand how people can be sceptical and I can relate to your frustrations.

On a personal note, for about 2 years now I've entered the same monthly competition on a furniture website to win £100 vouchers for that store, and for about 4 years I've entered the monthly competitions on an extreme sports site.
I still haven't won!

BUT every month other lucky peoples names are listed on the sites to have won the goodies. I know they are real because I've even seen their names on different forums bragging how happy they are to have won such cool prizes. I think you'll agree, it's lovely to see other peoples enjoyment. So I can't stay miffed for long.

I keep entering prize draws, as every good compers knows that people really DO win competitions online, you just need patience and to understand that you can't win everything! (riddle time) Because then everyone BUT YOU would be asking the same question! (do people really win competitions?)

PS. Boss if your reading this err, I keep entering other companies competitions during work time for research purposes.... honest ;)

Personalized Prizes & Rob's back from his adventures

Rob's back from his 2 weeks holiday walking & camping along the coast of Devon & Cornwall. It was wet & windy, but he has been furnishing us with funny stories all morning.

The Dmri Group is doing so well across all of our websites, that we are expanding fast and pouring more and more cash into buying more prizes for you to win!
It's not long now until it's 'meet the marketing team part 5'. We have a new starter joining us in October who will be writing up new competitions for Win4now, Instantwin4now, Voiceinacrowd & Opinioniser sites.

So if you have any ideas of what prizes you'd like to enter, write some comments here (model number, price & link to product on another site) and we'll see if we can make a prize especially for you. Talk about personalized prizes 4 now! (ooo that's an idea....)

One last thing, did you know that on Win4now there is a links page?
Get in touch with us ( ask for Adele ) to discuss swapping links if you have a website that you think our competition members would enjoy.

ps. Have you entered the new Wacky Win4now Prizedraws yet?

Meet the marketing team part 4

Meet Vicky! Our new affiliate marketing team member. Vicky wrote this to introduce herself to you:

"I think it’s only right that I tell you about my obsession with food as you will probably find out soon enough that I enjoy pretty much all aspects of food. When I am not working I am usually watching cooking shows, reading cookery books or just thinking about food in general. I do try and cook from time to time but would much rather eat food that other people have made and as I only have a camping stove at the moment (we are in the process of having a new kitchen fitted) it can be quite difficult if not challenging!

I have just recently bought a new house and moved to the Sheffield area, hence the new kitchen, so the rest of my spare time is primarily taken up with DIY pretty much or just socializing with friends over a glass of wine.

I am really looking forward to starting my new role within DMRI and have thoroughly enjoyed my time so far."

So young, so naive..... I wonder how long it will take before we crack her ;) hehe


Also today; Going, Going live!

Check out Wacky Win4now & Win4now's Competitions Tips Pages.
Awww look at this little doggy in it's coat. Just one of the Wacky competition prizes you could win our new feature!

We'd love to hear your thoughts on what you think about the new features and if you have any further recommendations to what you'd like to see on Win4now.

Win a breadmaker, irons, grills, icecream makers & more!

Why is it that when an electrical appliance breaks shortly after, another few break as well?!

This weekend saw the last dance of my faithful BaByliss hairdryer & our hand-me-down Dyson Hoover! So off to Argos I went to buy some cheap replacements products.
My new hairdryer is so far doing a good job of making my hair sleek & shiny, but jeez the bag less hoover is a mistake! You need to have Popeye muscles to just push it along it's so powerful!

So as bad luck always comes in 3's, I'm now waiting for the next explosion....

Win4now has a few cool electrical competitions currently live on the site, like this:
Win a Steam Simac Iron competition
or this Win a selection of Kitchen Gadgets including; a Panasonic Bread Maker, Magimix Le Micro Mini Chopper, George Foreman Grill & Magimix Ice Cream Maker.
I can highly recommend that you get (or even better win!) a bread maker, we use ours quite a bit for bread and making pizza dough. You can even freeze it if your not going to eat it in time.

Wacky Win4now Employee's

It's Friday afternoon, raining so hard were worried it's going to flood again, and everyone's going slightly mad in the office.

We've now had about 20 silly emails from the staff after this simple group email was sent. "Can we have a Tea Spoon amnesty as we have only one Tea Spoon in the kitchen."

Here's a few crazy snippets:

"I once remember, I had a teaspoon on my desk… It was brusk and chill morn way back in November, where shafts of sunlight would occasion, break through the skies hangin o’er’ed, and dance across the tree shadows cast onto the car park. I remarked to my colleague at the time, I think it was Oliver, but it may have Rudyard Kipling, that my zealous guarding love of the said shiny could cause a rankling amongst my colleagues, who were erstwhile seeking an implement with which to stir their hot beverages and measure in sweet demerara. Hot sweet sugar to dissolve into their cradled dreams and carry them onward through the day. Alas for spoons, zootikins… etc"

"Dear Randall, Kieran and to whom it may concern. As chance would have it, I was driving into work today when I noticed a figure, loitering at the work gates. Through the mist, he beckoned to me and I wound my window down. He explained that he was a travelling cutlery salesperson – “Gobblin-irons Inc and had a selection of fine silverware up for grabs. On enquiring further, he opened his coat to reveal no fewer than 17 teaspoons for the special price of £11.24 or a date with Kath in reception. Obviously I baulked at such a suggestion and sent him on his way.
Beware the tinker!!!!"

Are other offices like ours on a Friday?

Anyway here's a Sneaky Wacky Win4now Prize Preview!
I've just made 2 new competitions ready to start next week and quite sadly I've been chuckling to myself whilst researching the prizes. Can you believe that people sell pet dog all-in-one trouser suits?! .....

Have a lovely weekend, think like a duck and you'll be reet.

New Fun4now Quiz

September marks the start to our new Fun4now competition Guess Who, which has replaced the famous landmark quiz.

We'll give you a few clues about the person and the picture will signify if they are male or female.
BUT NOTE the silhouette picture isn't actually the person so don't worry if it doesn't look like the person you think it is!

All you need to do is guess correctly who it is and you could win a prize!

The Guess Who person could be anyone from; film stars, politicians, scientists, musicians etc, and be from any era in our human history!

I hope you enjoy our new feature.

Here's a sneaky clue to this months Win4now's 'Guess Who' quiz:
He has famously stated that he hates his feet. (he's still perfect in my eyes.... drool)

Red squirrels, wasps, wind & new prizes

I'm back from my adventures! And boy what an exciting time I've had.

Day 1 my boyfriend broke a rib after crashing his mountain bike chasing me ( i'm too fast for him! ) then we didn't think we'd make it through the night it was so windy; sure enough in the morning the tent pole had snapped!
So day 2 we slept in a shed (he treats me well doesn't he?!), day 3 onwards we stayed at an amazing camp site that has wigwams, red squirrels, free hot tubs & saunas, high wires & rope courses. It was like the Ewok scene from Star Wars (but alas without the Ewoks)

The only problem camping there was how every morning wasps would come into the tent and buzz around.. ( I'm petrified of them and just shivered scared in my sleeping bag praying they wouldn't evolve to figure out how to unzip the sleeping compartment )

Anyway, enough about me, lets talk about what's new on Win4now in September! Loads of new prize draws have opened today.

Here's a few new free entry holiday prize draws that you can get started on:

Win Flights to Dublin competition ( Don't worry they are return flights and we'll also give you £250 spending money as it's quite expensive in the city )

Win A mini break of your choice (worth £600) competition ( you could stay in a wigwam at the Scottish camp site like I did....)

Win a York Weekend break competition (I'd love to go to York, great shopping & museums)

I'll give September's first Fun4now clues later in the week, so come back soon.

Cry for help from hungry win4now staff!

Hello, Rob here! I'm looking after the blog while Adele is away in sunny Scotland doing some biking at the 7stanes trails. We're all keeping our fingers crossed for good weather for her!

Avid readers of the blog will know that I've been having some problems with my car (if anyone can explain why a Skoda Fabia 1.9 SDI would be overfuelling, causing the car to disappear in a cloud of black smoke, please leave a comment on the blog!) so I've been getting around by bike and on foot for the past month. If I didn't work for Win4now I'd be trying to win one of the cars we've got up for grabs in our motors category. Unfortunately, no amount of arm-twisting seems to be enough to pursuade my managers to change the rules.

One of the side-effects of not having a car is that I can't get to the supermarket and my packed lunches (once shining examples of what can achieved with a little imagination and forward planning) have been scaled down as a result of having to be made with what's left in the cupboards. Today I'm getting by on Marmite sandwiches and a couple of biscuits.

After visiting the Marmite website my hunger forced me to become terribly confused about one of the prizes on Win4now. "Flake Bake Self Tanning?" I thought, "that sounds great - the tasty goodness of an under-rated chocolate bar with all the practical advantages of a sun-bed!" On closer inspection I realised the competition was for Fake Bake Self Tanning. Although, this is no help for my increasingly boring packed lunches, it's a good way for our Win4now members to get through this dreary summer with a tan!

Don't worry, Adele will be back next week so normal blog service will be resumed.

As for the fun4now clues here are a couple of points that may help.

Landmark: it's the 4th tallest thing in London.
Mystery Image: You might see grannies trying to keep their hair dry in one of these.

Marmite, Midges, Kerry & Blogging Cherries!

This is my last blog post for a week, but the other marketing team members may lose their blogging cherry (snigger) and post next week - so beware readers!

I'm off to Scotland for a week camping & biking. Lets hope I avoid the evil highland midges & rain, wish me luck.

Our lovely receptionist Mara has just shown me this midge link which is handy as she studied midge behaviour for her dissertation bizarrely. So now I know I need to eat lots of Marmite (B12) & wear white not to get bitten!

A massive congratulations to Kerry who has just passed her marketing diploma. Well done!

Before I forget, the last Fun4now clues for August are:
Landmark: It can carry 800 passengers per revolution - equivalent to 11 London red doubled-decker buses
Mystery image: Chlorine is used in these to keep them clean

More Prize Draws, new tecky & pizza

We have a new I.T Tecky (Steven- who looks like a young Keanu Reeves from the Point Break era) starting at Win4now this week.

This is excellent news as we have a bit of a backlog of new site improvements! So hopefully we can get the competition tips pages, Fun4now clues and wacky Win4now live faster, which means: More Prize draws for you to win!

I normally weigh myself on Monday mornings, but I don't dare next week, as I had pizza for tea last night, i'm having Domino's pizza tonight at Kerry's house for a bit of a marketing team party & i'm having pizza on Friday too!

My complexion is going to be shot! I think I could do with a trip to Champneys Spa. I've got a plan though..... why don't you win it for me on Win4now?

Olympics, Handbags & DIY

Well that sums up my weekend.

I've been watching the Olympics a lot and we are doing really well aren't we. For a small country we are proving to the World how brilliant we are. ( espeically at cycling! )

I've also been helping (on the technical side of things) my sisters new handmade leather bags site Cherry Leather. If high street handbags are more your thing, as if by magic we have a Win a Designer Handbag competition worth up to £500. What a great prize!

That's the exciting part of my weekend. The dull and practical side was Sunday when I had to do some home improvements to try to finish off our bathroom. (half finished since Easter!)
I hate diy, do you enjoy it? I spent a few hours on Sunday scratching paint off our plastic windows & painting the ceiling, what horrible jobs. Kerry has the day off work today, and is doing some bathroom do it yourself too. Rock & Roll Win4now weekends ;)

Win4now has a competition to win £500 of DIY supplies! Me and Kerry can't enter, but you can - good luck.

Win Theme Park Tickets & Meet the marketing team pt3

Today's blog entry is dedicated to all the UK's parents, who are desperately trying to entertain their kids as cheaply as possible during these wet school summer holidays.

Meet Kerry who is our marketing team manager.
I've know her for years and 3 key things I like best about her are:
She says it like it is (honest and no bull), she makes us all laugh with her stories and local sayings & her daughter 'princess' is always put first.
As a single parent, Kerry knows what its like trying to keep your little prince & princess's busy without breaking the bank.

That's why on Instantwin4now (which she helped design & create) we have competitions to win tickets for all the family, to just about every UK theme park, castle, zoo & safari park you can think of! (We also provide some spending money for your day out!)

Just match the 3 numbers up and you can instantly win tickets to Alton Towers, Warwick Castle & Whipsnade Safari Park to name just a few of the amazing competitions! Win a day out for nowt today.

August Fun4now clues I haven't forgot!

USA's Phelps is currently winning gold medals via our mystery image.
You need pay to go on the famous landmark.

We've gone plant crazy!

Here at the Win4now HQ, it's pot plant mania!

This is what a section of the office looked like before the green invasion:

Now it's like an office jungle! I just hope that they aren't triffids in disguise.

The reason we have so many green additions to the office is due to helping a good cause.

Buy a plant and all the ££ goe's towards Malealea charity organisation which Louisa's 14yr old son's school is involved in. He's trying to raise money for an expedition to Africa to help to assist with: Water for life, School / partnerships, Aids Orphans, Smokeless stoves & environmental sustainability.

We also have some garden plant competitions on the site, enter today to Win seasonal plants every month for a year! Maybe with the money you'll have saved on garden plants for the year, you could put towards charity?

Whats really clever and is black & white? Clever Zebra!

Win4now has a new friend! In fact, not just a friend, but the cutest friend ever!

Clever Zebra is the new insurance comparison site that has been set up to bring you more quotes than would normally be included from a standard comparison site.

If you're after any sort of insurance, it's worth visiting www.cleverzebra.co.uk for a quick quote - it only takes a couple of minutes and you might be surprised with what you get back.

If you're not looking for insurance at the moment, we think it's worth visiting www.cleverzebra.co.uk just see how cute a zebra can be!

Get to know the DMRI marketing team pt.2

Meet Rob from our marketing team today:

I work on new projects at DMRI like our new cashback site Smart Spend, and our new insurance comparison website Clever Zebra.

After a day slaving over a hot computer I can be seen cycling around the Peak, running up and down hills or playing trumpet in my band Watchthisfirespread.

Occasionally you may hear a faint tapping noise on the night breeze. Though I can't guarantee this will always be the case, this faint tapping you hear may well be me performing surgery on my house!

I'll add to this by telling you that Rob's car has broke and is going to cost £400ish to fix, so he's not a happy bunny at the moment. He unfortunately can't enter our car competitions, but you can! bruhahaha (that was supposed to be an evil laugh)

More Fun4now Clues;
You have to wear a special outfit for the mystery image and the landmark is like a ride. Hope these hints help you to win on Win4now.

Fun4now is evolving

This is the last month that Fun 4 now will be like it is now.

Next month the famous landmark competition is going to be replaced by a Guess who? competition, which will be a series of descriptions & facts about a famous person that you have to guess correctly to win the prize! You heard it first on the Blog, loyal readers.

The competitions are going to get even harder over the next few months to test your brains to the max- be warned! Can you handle it? Are you clever enough? Don't worry though, I'll still be giving you clues on the blog and also on the site a new fun4now clues feature will be live by then....


Mystery image: Think of when your on holiday, not travelling.

Famous Landmark: It's in the UK

Win4now Shout outs -
Any messages you want to share with your loved ones? Let me know and I'll include it in a shout out on the blog for you.

Happy Birthday Toni for this weekend!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and enjoy all of Win4now's new competitions that went live today.

Win4now's marketing team introductions day 1

Hello, after writing this blog for some time now I thought I should introduce myself and others from the marketing team over the next couple of days.

My name's Adele. I've worked for Win4now since 2003 doing various internet marketing job roles. I'm currently managing the search engine marketing for some of DMRI's websites and I'm very lucky in that I really enjoy my job!

My main aim is to get more new members to our sites and entering our competitions, but also keeping you existing members happy and still coming back to enter competitions every month. Real People, Real Prizes - this is the message I try to get over.

My main interests outside of Win4now are rock climbing, mountain biking, camping, scrambling, bird watching and generally being in the countryside! Here's a picture of me on my bike in Winter:

My biggest Win4now competition winning tip to you is to stay patient and keep entering every month. It's a game of luck and if you don't enter, you won't be in with a chance.

I'll introduce Rob to you next.
Right what are you waiting for? Help me & help yourself by quickly entering all of July's Win4now Competition's, because there's loads of prizes ending 31st July. (don't worry Toni's preparing loads of new prizes for August)

Earn cashback from Smart Spend

Win4now are now working with Smart Spend, this is a great new site that rewards its members by giving them cashback everytime they spend online.

If you haven't already, we suggest you get involved with shopping reward sites; especially now everyone's purse strings are that bit tighter. If you were going to buy something anyway, you can't lose. This one is a cracker.

Earn free cash today!

Join Smart Spend here today and you will earn £2 instantly.

There's no catch on Win4now

It's always really nice to hear from our winning members

Here's a message from a Fun4now image competition winner:

A big thank you. I have just received my cheque for £50 for winning last month's Mystery Image competition. It was my first entry on Win4now and I was very surprised to get your email telling me I was a winner and to be honest I was waiting for the catch. (I wonder how many times you have heard that!) So to anybody reading this it really could be you next time.
J.Parsons

I wonder if J. Parsons used the blog clues?

This message is nice too. Everyone loves our Joy who spreads the good news to the winners.

“Thank you so much for for being the bearer of good news. My comment is that I am simply over the moon to hear that I have won a Playstation 3, my son is going to be well happy now. Thanks to the Win4now site and I will certainly be referring my friends to join the site. Once again thank you Joy for brightening up my day. ”
D.Smith

Thanks for the comments! We're all one big happy family of win4now'ers :)

Keep entering, it could be you next month.

Windscreen wipers & Win4now medals

Warning Moan alert- skip the first paragraph if you want to

When will it ever stop raining? I don't like moaning about stuff that no one can change, but this is getting silly now... I've had to buy some new windscreen wipers for my car because they've had so much action this 'summer'!

Check out this competition if you agree with me. You can Win European Flight Tickets & escape this nasty weather.

A lot of you have already guessed correctly to our Fun4now comps, well done. But here's some clues if you are still waiting to be sure:
Landmark: Tour de France's rider Cadel Evans is from this country
Image: Traditionally yellow balls used.

Remember to give us your opinions on Win4now Survey Poll's, this week we want to know how many gold medals you think we'll win in the Olympics. Win4now has a potential Olympic athlete in the office, the lovely James competes in Trampolining. Team Win4now! Go James.

Wild Goose Chases

Apologies to our faithful blog readers for two reasons; Fun4now clues & holidays away- lies...

1. Fun4now June image - "Toni the muppet" as she's now known, unfortunately gave me the wrong answer to June's landmark. Which mean't that I had been giving clues for Edinburgh Castle when infact it was Windsor castle! I'm very sorry to all of you, that had been following the clues. Please don't lose faith, we'll make sure that it never happens again - the clues are NOT supposed to be wild goose chases!

2. Scottish holidays for me - well as it was forecast rain, rain, rain, I didn't go to Scotland camping after all. I booked a last minute Corfu holiday on Saturday and flew on the Monday! 100'+ hot, relaxing, yummy Greek food & mosquito bites galore.

Right, please believe me that these Fun4now clues are for real:
Image: Rackets are used in this sport.
Landmark: 3 words to describe this landmark, one of those is 'Harbour'

Scottish holidays, green competitions & quick clues

I hope you've had a chance to enter our cracking new competitions, if not get to the site now and enter them all!

I'm heading for sunny (cough) Scotland to go camping & mountain biking at the famous 7stanes man made trails. Fingers crossed it will be dry and there won't be too many midges! Although I have stocked up with Avon Skin So Soft just in case.

We are still after your views for what eco friendly green competitions we can run for you to win.
Also if you or a friend has a small company and wants some free branding, then give us a prize to let our members win! Call us for more details.

So here's some clues for July's Fun4now competitions before I go:

Look at yesterdays first paragraph - theres a clue to the blurred image in there....
The famous landmark picture is quite tricky, I can tell you that the country where it is located is well known for it's corked hats....

Close calls, July Fun4now & new comps galore

Phew! It was a close call at Wimbledon last night, but Andy Murray battled through to the next round. It's nice to see the public & the press supporting home grown players.

Dozens of competitions came off Win4now last night, but don't fret we've got loads more new prizes in July for you to win.
Including these great free giveaways:

£500 cash
£300 Play.com vouchers
Samsung wine cooler
Elliptical trainer
Canon printer
& there will be more added mid month, so don't go far.

Mum's the word, but soon we'll have a new type of competition feature - Wacky Win4now. Crazy competitions that you won't see anywhere else on the web. Sssshhhhh for now though, I'll tell you more nearer the time.


Did you guess last months Fun4now questions right?
June's mystery image was a box of tissues & June's famous landmark was Edinburgh Castle!
I'll give you some clues to this months new Fun4now prizes later this week. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few days!

I've never won anything in my life

Until now! Well, that's what a lot of our winning members tell us after we contact them.

Here's two recent winning testimonials:

“Thank you very much Win4now - I've never won anything in my life up until now! ”
P.Rowley - Won a Lonely Planet Guide Book to Vietnam

“Thank you Win4now I am really really pleased. What a pleasant surprise I never win prizes!!! ”
D.Kettel - Won £500 Off Your Credit Card

Our mission is to get as many Win4now members into our winning club as possible. If your lucky enough to hear our receptionist Joy's voice, there's a good chance you've won a prize!
To help yourself become a winner, make sure you enter all our free competitions, month after month.

Also please support Win4now & help us to bring you bigger prizes every year by Opting in to some of our sponsors offers too,
(No sponsors = no big prizes unfortunately.)

So to all our lovely prize draw sponsors - THANK YOU

ps. I'm still waiting patiently for my first National Lottery win. Maybe this Saturday will be my lucky day.

Closing Soon Competitions

There are massive 20 Win4now competitions that are closing soon. Make sure you've entered all of them before it's too late.

I could do with winning this cash prize right now, Win £500 Off Your Bills! Only 10 days until it ends
I've just treated myself to some shiny new bike kit, when I should have been sensible and waited until I'd saved up. Oops.

It's easy to see which prizedraws are going to end soon.
Just go to 'View all' then select on the 'show' drop down: 'competitions which are closing soon'
You can also filter to see all the new competitions, monthly prize draws and just see all of them in one go. Easy peasy.

Right here's some more fun 4 now clues to help you guess the correct answers. ( They finish 30th June, make sure you remember to enter )
Blurred image hint - people use them for hay fever & colds.
Landmark picture hint - It's located in Edinburgh.

Quick question - Did you know that if you have your own website or even your own blog, you could advertise Win4now's Competitions and get paid?
We love spreading the Win4now word, you don't have to be a massive site to make a difference. Check out the 'Affiliate info' button on Win4now and speak to our lovely Jess if you would like more information.

ps. Good Luck Kerry - we've all got our fingers crossed for your exam results to be passes!

One year on after the floods

Well it was about this time last year when most of South Yorkshire & Hull were under water. It took everyone by surprize & caused a lot of people heartache.
I got through it lightly, just having to wade thigh deep through the streets of Sheffield to get home.

One year on, and it's a horrible soggy June, the forecast is rain, rain, rain. I hope it brightens up soon....

We should write to our MP's and see if we can change the clocks so that's its day light saving all year round, as our seasons just aren't what they used to be.

We can't rely on mother nature, so Win4now's here to help with it's funky Fake Bake competition (fake tanning prize) that should help you maintain a summery glow.

Have you taken part in our new members Poll feature?

Fun4now clues - have you got them yet? I thought my last clue was quite good.

Mystery image: made of paper
Landmark: there's also a very famous bridge in the city

Red Bull Flugtag & branding

I watched the UK's Redbull Flugtag 2008 on TV yesterday for the first time and rolled about laughing. It was hilarious!

Basically a team of people make a flying machine and launch themselves off a huge ramp into Hyde Park lake, then they get marked on creativity, performance and distance flown.

It got me thinking what a great branding exercise it was for Redbull who often sponsor extreme sports events & silly stuff like flug tag. So I might mention this to my boss later and see if we could do a Win4now flugtag next year.... I can see us now riding a big orange shaped paper mache plane straight onto Heathrow's terminal 5 :)

Right back to the Fun4now clues!
June famous landmark - Tartan, Kilts & Bagpipes
June mystery image - they also come in plastic packets, but this example is a 'box of'

Forget your cash woes, you still need a holiday

I hope that the credit crunch hasn't affected you & your family too much and you can still afford to go abroad this year.

Win4now would like to save you some pennies, and help you to win lots of freebies & comps. We are just working on adding a new competition tips page to give our members some comping strategies & techniques. We hope this will help you win more prizes this year when everyone's purses are tighter.


Every month we run a Guess the famous landmark competition on Fun4now.

This month I think the picture & site clue is quite hard (blame Toni!). So like the mystery image I'm going to give you a helping hand to Win a Lonely Planet Guidebook of your choice this month.

Where's this famous landmark? It's not in England but is still in the UK and if you look closely you can see the turrets....

June mystery image hint: It also cleans bodily fluids (ewwww)
So it's not a water filter. Read back all the blog posts this month to get a better idea

Big Cash Prizes - Quick Comps

Did you know that Win4now has a prize section called Quick Comps ?
(It's on the right hand navigation bar after you've logged in.)

There are some big money prizes on offer this month. Currently we have prizes varying from: win a Toyota Rav, Win £1000 cash to win a million pounds!

These competitions work slightly different to our usual comps. All the quick comp prizes are sponsored direct from our partners, so in order to enter the competition you have answer our sponsors question.

Keep your eyes peeled on them, because they are updated throughout the month.

More Fun4now clues:
This product is useful for cleaning (liquids)
(hope this helps you Liam C.)

Is the Win4now office like Santa's Grotto?

Where are all the competition prizes kept?

Can we put down 'Win4now elf's' as our job title on our cv's?
Do we have to clamber over piles of prizes to get to our computers?
Do we get to play with the prizes before giving them away? Sadly no. (no matter how much we beg to 'borrow' the wii competition prize or try out the Mini Cooper prize we aren't allowed!)

Some of the prizes are kept in the office (in a locked room), but most of the prizes are ordered online when we have drawn the winner. This is so we can send our winners their prize winnings direct to their house and we can check what colours etc they want the prize in. We pride ourselves on sending our winners their goodies really fast.

June mystery image clue:
I've just checked what the entries are like so far and there's allot of you saying its a teddy bear, a bird, a woman or the incredible hulk!
Not many right answers so far, so the winning odd's are really high if you guess it right this month. My clue to you today is that none of these guesses are right.

Have a good weekend in the sun, check back next week for more clues and competition tips. If you want clues for the other fun4now competitions, just post here and I'll see what I can do to help you.

Alton Towers, Poll's & tapping feet

Cha cha cha cha.

Apologies for that outburst, but I'm listening to cuban/jazzy style band called The Cat Empire and it's making me bop around as I'm writing the blog.

Right back to business!

Win4now has an exciting new feature about to go live in the next few days: Win4now Member's Polls.

Join in the fun and tell us what you think about different subjects from silly stuff to the latest current affairs. Then you can compare what you said, to what all of the other Win4now members think. We hope you enjoy it.

I found out today that we had a technical problem with June's mystery image - so many apologies about that, but it's all fixed now so get entering to win the cash.

Do you want another clue?
I'd imagine sales for this product are highest in Winter.... Got it now? Keep coming back for more clues if not.

ps. Have you seen our new Alton Towers competition? Make sure you enter the comp, no matter how old you are Alton Towers is fun day out and you don't have to have children with you to enjoy it!

Big Green InstantWin4now

How many of you recycle? Cycle to work or have an eco friendly car?
Have you got energy saving light bulbs? How do you actually reduce your carbon footprint? I've heard of the term but I'm not entirely sure how to do anything about it.

But I know a site that can help answer any of my questions about being green. Have a look at this fabulous site Big Green Switch

Win4now & Instantwin4now have been working together with The Big Green Switch for a while now and currently have this Win a Toyota Prius competition. The owner of the site has asked us to suggest a new green competition to have on his site - can you help us think of something unique? (post your comments after this article)

In the meantime get entering green competitions like this Win a Green Makeover & have a look round the Big Green Switch site and see if you can do your bit at home and at work to help the environment. I go on daily to have a look at the green tips of the day.

June's Fun4now clues: The blurred image Is pretty hard again this month, so make sure you check the blog frequently for clues. The item is sometimes seen on the parcel shelves of cars ( I've never understood why people do this?)

Being unfit is healthier than being sporty.

Being unfit & a couch potatoe is healthier than being sporty....

What do you think to this statement?

It got us musing in the office today because Rob from Lucky Hammer-(the amazing reverse auction site) rang us up this morning to tell us he'd been knocked off his road bike last night. Luckily he's just badly bruised, as his bike took the worst of it (I feel your pain Rob! r.i.p bikey)

Now if you were at home watching the tele, you'd be safe and sound.
It's dangerous doing sports.

So get well soon Rob & to our sporty readers, eat some pies, enter competitions from the safety of your living rooms and take care of yourselves!

Fun4now clues: no more clues for this months, but here's a cheeky insight into next months new mystery image. 'buy recycled'

What's a Competition Portal?

These are sites that links loads of different sites competitions in one place. They are like directories. (The Yellow pages of competition land!)

Pro's: variety of competition types (quizzes, multiple answers, slogans etc), saves the work for you to trawl the Internet for competitions, easy to sort, usually have communities on the site too like forums.

Con's: you have to keep repeating your details on every site to enter the competitions. There are usually lots of links from different sites promoting the same competition, but you can only enter it once (no matter which site from)

One of the best competition portal sites is: The Prizefinder. We've worked together with Prizefinder for many years now, if your looking for good comp portal, look no further.

Win4now has a mixture of exclusive & 3rd party competitions & Instantwin4now is 100% exclusive prizes. (we pay for them)
Once you have registered or logged in, all you have to do on win4now is press 'enter competition' & on IW select your 3 lucky numbers to enter - you don't have to re fill in your details on each competition. Easy peasy.

Last Fun4now clue in May (surely you've got it now?): wet nose, shiny coat & a bushy tail are all good signs to a healthy 'one.'

Beach holiday competitions 'vs' UK activity breaks

How was your bank holiday weekend?

It was sunny camping & biking in Wales for me, until Sunday when we retreated back to Sheffield after getting soaked. It was lovely to have a break and get out into the countryside though.

Check out the Forestry commissions site for more information on Wale's excellent walking & mountain biking visitor centres.

Post a comment here, if you'd like us to run a competition to win UK activity breaks . I think the work that they have done in the forests (Wales, Scotland and England!) to bring in eco friendly tourism is excellent and should be supported.

If however, your idea of a holiday is more beach based in the sun, see these brill holiday competitions There are competitions to win a holiday to Barbados, Mexico & Maldives to name a few.

So are you a beach head, adrenalin junkie or a bit of both?

Win4now mystery image clue: Bark

Fair & Square winning

No matter how sweet the email/letter is to us begging us to let you win. We won't let people win our competitions unless fairly drawn by our computer system.

So, we're sorry if you really really want to win a certain competition or if you have money troubles that our £1500 cash prize could solve and get you out of a spot of debt.

We can't be bribed either ;) Sorry we're members of the DMA & stick to their guidelines.

The only way to win is fair & square.


Fun4now mystery image May clue: Have you got it yet from the clues? If not, here's another website that might give you a clue

Can you win twice?

If you've won a competition before, can you win again on the same site?

Yes of course you can!

We won't remove your winning entry if we know you've won before.
That goe's for Win4now & Instantwin4now.

You could even win the same competition on Instantwin4now if you wanted.

See the winners pages for proof you really can be lucky more than once - in fact it's endless the amount of wins you could have with Win4now (& instantwin4now)

Fun4now clue:
Fetch

Office banter & fun:
What comes to mind when you hear the words 'Dinosaur Mummy'?
We were in stitches in the office recently, when I was talking about how I'd watched an interesting documentary on A Dinosaur mummy but Rob completely got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was talking about a documentary on old women giving birth. Then to make matters worse looked straight at Kerry! She wasn't a happy bunny! (or dinosaur mummy hehe)
Ah the wonders of the English language :)

Lucky Hammer better than eBay...?

Have you seen this new reverse auction site Luckyhammer?

The idea is that the lowest unique bet (bid) wins.

It costs from £1 to place your bid and you can place as many bids as you want. Check out the winners from last month they won great prizes at ridiculous prices!

It's brand new, so the chances of you winning for really tiny amounts are massive! I'd get betting straight away if I were you.

Whats the best time to enter competitions?

Doe's the time & date of your competition entry have any effect on your chances of winning?

Simple answer is no.
I've heard a rumour that some people worry about this, but stop fretting. We do not discriminate against people entering at the last minute and pick winners from the early entries. Or vica versa.

As long as your entry is within the competition opening times and you only enter once, any time or date is just as valid as the next.

Another myth is that when picking the winners, some companies read through the entries and pick someone they like the sound of!

At Win4now we use a computer formula to fairly pick out the prize draw winners. Your chance is completely equal to everyone else who enters.

fun4now clue: yummy bones

Sunshine, Goldfish & fun4now clues

Well I'm back from my sunny France climbing holiday, and to my surprize it's sunny here in Sheffield.(that's a rarity trust me...) Fantastic, you can feel everyones mood lifted by the sunshine.

Firstly, do you remember my plee to you all about last months Fun4now mystery image competition? The easy Goldfish image? Well we have a winner - D.Pasquale. Here's what they had to say:

"I have won the Guess the Mystery Image for April and a cheque for £50.00, fantastic Win4now!!!!!! Thank you."

Well done.

This months Fun4now mystery image is much harder. Can you guess what it is? Remember to read the clues. I'll be slipping in more clues on the blog all month to try to help you.

Have you seen how many new comps have started in May?! Loads! So get entering today - it's totally free, so whats there to lose?

Time now to plough through hundreds of emails and catch up on whats happened while I was away. I'll be back soon with a more insightful blog post!

What competition type are you?

(Just a bit of fun) I've come up with 3 types of competition people - Clancy, Percy & George.

I started thinking about this after Lisa Duffy won the Mini Cooper prize on Win4now but couldn't drive yet & reading our winners comments where we have lots of generous Georges!


1. Compaholic Clancy

Loves competitions & freebies! Enters everything possible, no matter what the prize is. Totally addicted and spends hours entering everything - some of the fun is lost as Clancy takes comping very seriously and measures fun with winning success rates.
Sites where Clancy's roams - Discount voucher sites & competition forums.

2. Precise Percy

Only enters competitions they really want to win. Doesn't see the point in entering to win something that they don't need / already have. This type might even think that it is a waste if they won when someone else (a stranger to them) might really love the prize and have more use of it. i.e win a wet suit, when Percy doesn't swim.
Sites where Percy's roams - Competition sections of niche websites & most website's special 'win' pages

3. Generous George

Combination of Clancy & Percy. George doesn't enter as many competitions as Clancy but more than Percy. When entering a competition, George has already decided who that the prize would go to 'x y z' friend/family member.They really enjoy comping, are very grateful when winning and does it all for fun.
Sites where George's roams - Win4now

So which competition type are you? Or are you a Mysterious Marvin type 4?


I'm off on holiday now for a week climbing in sunny France, so no more blog entries until after May 12th - be sure to come back then.

3 reasons why you can win, but never get the prize!

1. The company try to contact you to tell you your a winner, but your email address is fake or goes to junk and your telephone number is a dead line - so you never even know that you've won

2. You break the T&C's (IE. enter multiple times, under 18, not UK resident etc)

3. You don't claim your prize! (unbelievable but it happens a lot)


All of these reasons (and more) have happened over the years to us.

On Instantwin4now if you win, it comes up on your screen as 'congratulations' and gives you a telephone number to call to claim the prize. It isn't fake and it doesn't cost a mini fortune per minute.

On Win4now if you win, Joy has the exciting job of 'pulling the winning entries' and contacting them to share the good news with. Frequently she rings and emails winners but they've changed their details without telling us or worst still they join with fake contact details - but this means they can't win anyway! What a waste of time.
In the end we have to re draw the winners again, until we do find a real winner!

So my advice to you, is to check your contact details (go to 'update details') are correct and make sure you put our details in your email address book so your winning email doesn't go into your junk.

I wish I didn't work at Win4now

I know the title sounds a little harsh but,

here I am in the office, writing up new competitions for all our lovely members to win and I can't win any of them!
Not fair.

I wish with my comping knowledge, I could start entering win4now and instantwin4now's competitions. I'd enter every day.

I can see myself now on the Win4now winners page smiling to the world after winning a couple of thousand pound for free, or on the mighty Instantwin4now winners page sitting in my newly won sports car....

I'll have to carry on dreaming, but you can count yourself lucky that you can play. Do me a favour and enter one for me!
Mums the word.


Office gossip alert> Eve is leaving Win4now for real, last day is May 1st. We'll all miss you! x

Competition addicts anonymous (caa)

Do you have a habit?
Do you get cold sweats if you haven't entered a competition in a day?
Do you cancel going out because it gets in the way of your comping schedule?

Just remember entering free Win4now competitions is a lot safer than some other addictions!

Post a comment here and talk to other caa'ers (competition addicts anonymous). Your not alone.

I'll start - Hi my names Ads and I'm a compaholic.

Here at Win4now's caa (competition addicts anonymous) we offer fellow competition addicts support by giving them loads of amazing free competitions to enter!

You can get your fill with us and our sister site instantwin4now where you can enter 50 instant win competitions a week!

Here's some great Win4now comps to get you started:

Smeg dishwasher competition
John Lewis Garden Furniture
Sydney Holiday Competition

PS. Loads of great holiday competitions will be going live in May, so to win a free suntan remember to come back and enter them.

Girls nights in 'vs' boys nights in

Everyone know's girls love girlie night's in with their friends right?

Watching trash TV like Gok Wan's 'How to look good naked' or chick flicks like 'Dirty Dancing' whilst drinking wine, eating chocolate and gossiping.
(The girls in the office here do this every week!)

BUT did you know that boy's love a night in with their mates as well?

Boys love nothing more than comparing nail varnish, brushing each others hair whilst watching the footie right?

err no probably not, but Win4now has this awesome luxury boys night in competition that the boy's will want to win!

They can win a massive 37 inch Wide screen TV, a fridge full of delicious ice-cold beer and a table football so they can stage their very own Euro'08!

Don't let the girls (or Gokette's as we're now known) have all the fun boys!
Enter this free prize today for your chance to win.

Fun4now we love you

Loads of new starters here in the office this morning. All bright eyed and bushy tailed at the future ahead of them working for Win4now.


Our lovely Thelma in accounts makes fabulous cakes for all our staff's birthdays and we all sing happy birthday to them. Will this great tradition continue now we have so many staff? Here on marketing we are all voting it does. (Thelma's cakes are yummy!) I'm not sure that I could survive a week without cake....

If you want to win on your birthday, we run a monthly competition to win £20 of vouchers for 15 lucky winners.
Birthday Competition

It seems that the Win4now office loves Fun4now more than our members (sob).

We voted to keep the Fun4now section live for a few more months, so please enter these great puzzle competitions. We always enjoy trying to guess the landmarks, riddles and mystery blurred images so I'm sure you will too.

Anyway, a bit of a rant but jeez, have you seen the Fun4now mystery image competition this month?
Come on this is soooo easy, so get entering to be in with a chance of winning £50 Cash. (I'll give you a clue; it's not a mushroom, Angelina Jolie or a nose - as some of our members have entered)

Do you want to win a Lonely Planet Guidebook of your choice? Just guess the famous seaside landmark from the clues and you could Win Lonely Planet travel books

Last months mystery image competition only had 7 correct answers, so take this tip from me and enter for great winning odds!

The winning lottery numbers for todays Euromillions are...

Ok, ok so I haven't got a clue what the winning numbers are! but if you play just one line you are at least in with a chance.

I got an email this morning stating impressive statistics of the odds of winning the lottery and Euromillions can increase by joining a syndicate.
Doesn't everyone knows that though? (They didn't mention the fact that you are decreasing the amount you would win.)

But these figures also tried to imply your chances of winning the Euromillions would be better odds than the National lottery's lotto if you were in a syndicate.
The reality is that in order to win the Euromillions lottery your odds, syndicate or not are much much higher than the standard National lotteries lotto. They just hand picked the statistics they wanted to show me on the email.

The moral of the story is that statistics can be misleading if you don't have all the information in front of you....


Something I can do for you is, show you a list of last months winning Win4now members: http://www.win4now.co.uk/winners

That's 58 lucky winners from 21 competitions. Costing them nothing.
None of the members will now be millionaire's from their winnings but hopefully we'll have put a smile on their faces that day.

Real People, Real Prizes.

Have a good weekend & good luck with your lottery numbers!

Going green is good but baby blue is better

OMG! my gorgeous new mountain bike frame (in baby blue) has just arrived in the office today!
I can't wipe the grin off my face. Just check out this for the most beautiful bike ever: My new Orange 5 bike

Win4now doesn't currently have any mountain bike competitions ( Instantwin4now has lots of bike competitions. Just type 'bike' into the search box for a list. )

However Win4now does have this cool Eco friendly Honda Civic hybrid car prize draw that you could win. It not only claims to reduce your carbon footprint but you will also be reducing the cost of your petrol and the car is exempt from the London Congestion Charge.


Let us know if there are anymore green competitions that you'd like us to run for you.

ps. This post is especially for you Jess, I know how much you love me talking about bikes :)

Not winning doesn't = a scam company

It's snowing here in Sheffield again, that would be nice if it was December; but i'm getting a tad fed up of all this cold weather now and i'm looking forward to putting my shorts and sandals back on.

Not a lot of office gossip over the past few days, Evo has had a new tattoo (shes braver than me) & Rob our new team member is experimenting with making his sandwiches more 'city'. Oh and I lost the table football championship in March :( boo

Not winning on comps musings:

I've been buying a lottery ticket now once a week for about a year.
That's £52 i've wasted out of my hard earnings, because i've not even won a tenner!

That doesn't mean that http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/ is a scam and no one ever wins from it.
It just means that I haven't won yet, but its more likely i'll win if I carry on trying and increase my odds.

Win4now is free so if I enter a competition every week it costs me £0, and my chances/odds of winning are massively higher than winning the lottery.

Keep trying compers you will win if you don't quit. Even if its a £10'er, at least your in profit unlike my lottery experience so far!

What are your chances of winning competitions & competition winning tips

"What are our odds of winning a competition?"
Once I explain my job to new friends and family, they often ask me this question followed by 'are competitions a scam?'

Question 2 is easy. Win4now competitions really are real and people DO win. It's not a scam and there are no catches. I can guarantee that for our sites.

Question 1 is a bit harder to answer:

If the competition is a prize draw like http://www.win4now.co.uk/ main competitions, then you have an equal chance as every other entry to winning - so it's unfortunately quite hard to answer what the odd's are exactly as you don't know how many people enter competitions until its ended.

Also if there is only 1 prize per entry the odd are different to if there are multiple. Win4now is normally 1 prize per entry but doe's have as much as 10 prize winners per competition entry. How many people enter Win4Now competitions? Anywhere from 50 - 50,000 people per competition, so thats the odd's ranging from 1-50 - 1 to 50,000.

http://www.instantwin4now.co.uk/ our sister site on the other hand you can increase the chances of winning by entering competitions up to 50 times per week, you can even try the same competition the next day. Just spending 10 minutes a day comping on this instant win site could increase your chances of winning massively. (tell your friends too)


A good tactic is to enter the more unusual competitions like Fun4now -http://www.win4now.co.uk/fun4now as these have less entries per month and are not everyone who enters can win as they have to have guessed the correct answer. ( i love the mystery image competition- have a look ) You can get a real satisfaction in these, getting the right answer.

The only other bit of insiders tip I could give you is to be patient (don't give up), increase the amount of comps you enter to per week and remember this is free and supposed to be fun.

Whatever happens your odds here are a lot cheaper and better than paying for a lottery ticket ;)