How to Win Contests
by Martha Krienke
I have a reputation. My family calls me the Contest Queen. And I can’t argue. Ever since I won a drawing for a balloon that had a stuffed animal inside, I’ve been hooked on entering contests. I’ve won concert and music festival tickets and CDs from radio promotions, two photo contests, a recipe contest, gift certificates, a home security system and a giant cooler on wheels. (Unfortunately, I don’t own a home, and I use the cooler for storage.) But, I won. And that’s what counts.
Here are my top five tips to be a winner.
1. Drawings: If you’re attending a home and garden show with your parents or some type of event with many drawings, be sure to enter them ALL! The more you enter, the better your chances! Bring some address labels to slap on the entry, rather than repeatedly writing your name and address. Then before slipping your entry into the box, wrinkle the paper in your hand. This way your entry will feel different from the rest when one is randomly selected.
But take note, most drawings are designed to establish mailing lists. If you enter every drawing you see, you may get tons of junk mail and e-mail.
2. Radio promotions: Be the 10th caller and win! The key to this type of contest is to be persistent. One night when I called a station, I was the first caller! So I called again. I was the second caller. I called again, and I was the third caller. I don’t remember how many times I called to win, but I’m pretty sure I was that station’s only listener that night.
3. Recipe contests: I’m not that great of cook, so the secret to my success in the recipe contest was making something that at least looked good. Check the Internet for kid-friendly recipes. A cookie shaped like a mouse has a better chance of winning than an average pot of chili. Also, give your recipe a cool name such as “Better Than Sleeping In on Saturday Cookies.”
4. Photo contests: Creativity is the be all, end all in this contest. (OK, color and clarity are important, too.) One of the photo contests I won asked for photos from a vacation. I grabbed my sister, and we took a photo in a cornfield. Somehow that idea won over a girl in front of the Eiffel Tower and a guy at the Taj Mahal.
5. Door Prizes: Stuff the ballot. Just kidding! Unfortunately, this kind of contest is out of your hands if someone else is handling the entries. If you don’t win, be sure to celebrate with the person who does. You never know what may happen. The prize could be a gift certificate to Charlie’s Lobster Shack, and the winner is allergic to seafood. Then you could be a likely candidate to receive the prize instead!
This article appeared in Brio
magazine in August 2006. Copyright © 2006 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Hey, we'd love to have some feedback from you! If you've got a comment about this article, send it to Brio@briomag.com. Please include your name, age, mailing address and the title of this article.
We Brio editors, Susie, Martha and Ashley, will eagerly try to read every single message (count on it!) and will assume you are giving us permission to reprint your comments, if we so choose, at briomag.com and in Brio or Brio & Beyond.
But, we can't promise we'll send a response to every email. We'd never finish the next issue of Brio if we did! So, anything you really need an answer to must be sent via snail mail. Write to Brio, Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO 80995. Thanks. We hope to hear from you!
|
