New Zealand
United KingdomForum
General Chatter
I've finally got around to designing a database to help manage comping instead of using a bookmarking system which has it limitations. Apart from my bookmarks are an organised chaos after a year of comping. It's an ambitious project slowly working on aiming to help automate managing giveaways to enter and check back on when drawn.
What challenges does everyone have with managing their comping and what methods/tools/sites do you use to help manage them?
The biggest challenges I find apart from my slow PC grrr are the following:
-Facebook giveaways for checking back when it's drawn
-Daily bonus for all those numerous time zones.
-Remembering to do creative competitions which I normally file away as bookmarks to the to do later list/forget.
-Checking emails for winning notifications among the tsunami of daily emails.
For Facebook giveaways I send notifications to email folder to search via common filters eg win/congrat etc. Keeping up with notifications can be a challenge. Thou it's not foolproof if they decided to post the winning notification using a pic etc. God I wish they would tag winners or at least post a comment in the original giveaway post.
Daily bonuses I use bookmarks for each month split into time zones. This works fairly well as can switch between devices. The issue comes for new months remembering to transfer still running giveaways to the new month.
I'm aiming to just paste in the giveaway link and exact automatically from the site the important details such as end date etc. Then do various forms/reports for items such as ending soon, daily entries to do etc etc.
So far storing the basic details of end date, giveaway link, prize details and classifications of giveaway type eg random, creative, prize categories eg technology and added a notes section and what site type it's hosted on eg Facebook, Instagram etc. Also entered, completed and drawn checks.
The first step I've just completed is handling the major issue of time conversion.
As I do numerous international giveaways it gets confusing converting mentally ending date/time especially when Daylight Saving in various regions occurs. It becomes an issue for those daily bonuses.
To solve this I've automatically converted end dates to a common timezone Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) allowing for Daylight Saving for the timezone of the giveaway. This will help with sorting/filtering by ending date/time.
Also done a form for displaying giveaways in order of expiration.
From there want to do:
-Daily entry report grouped according to the major time zones for those daily bonuses EG Australasia, Europe, USA. That way can stagger during the day those daily bonuses.
-Check back report for social media sites for draws.
-Reminders for giveaways to complete/enter eg creative comps.
-List of giveaways sites for new comps
-Reminders for reoccurring giveaways
-Extract giveaway info from the webpage.
- Gleam run comps will be the first be looking at.
Future ideas a giveaway crawler
-From emails, promoters etc.
-Automatically import details from bookmarks
Integrate web browser and database.
Lemond
16 Feb 17 7:48 AM
Sann-oh, I also use your system...check emails....check facebook. I on occasions feel I should be more organised but life gets in the way
KittyKat65
17 Feb 17 9:21 AM
With a bit of thinking and discussion of what works or doesn't for managing the entry of giveaways, easier ways of doing things maybe found. Then with a touch of "hard work" easier solutions can be developed or existing solutions found.
It's fine if doing the occasional giveaway once in a blue-moon to use a pieces of paper as reminders. Facebook notifications/emails work to a point but who wants to be constantly checking. You've can also have twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc notifications of drawn results.
What if could be done automatically and condensed and the notifications highlighted that are directly relevant to the giveaway entered. Then presented in an organised manner to save time for more fun things. :)
What I'm investigating is combining notifications on various social media and emails into a database to condense and present in an organised manner to help make things simpler and easier. From storing your creative responses to reminders when giveaways have ended or drawn.
Competitions sites makes finding them a lot easier but most don't manage well what competitions you have entered for checking back. I.e. your most likely using multiple sources and entry methods for giveaways. If doing a half a dozen comps each day by the end of the month you got 180 giveaways to check back on. If only 1 minute manually spent checking back to each link that's three hours per month!
I don't a have problem finding giveaways, it's sorting through numerous sources then checking back. Why bother wasting time entering if not organised for checking back etc.
There are many ways to save time from auto entry of your details and clever email filters to put into separate folders. Even storing your creative responses for later use.
A database just brings it all together with more powerful tools to organise to make things simpler. Eg this site runs on a database to present giveaways in a "simpler" format which probably take for granted.
What if could cross check what you had entered with your emails to help identify wins verses what is spam! Or automatically remind you a Facebook giveaway has been drawn and a winner announced without having to trawl through Facebook notifications, which are only display for the last couple of days.
@sann-oh Checking emails and notifications is fine until you get a flood of them from all social media, like during the Christmas period. I noticed a lot of compers seemed "frustrated" during that period with the overwhelming notifications. Also some promoters can be slow at drawing a winner.
Generally I don't bother with checking notifications on various social media and send then all to a separate email folders. Then just filter for keywords eg win/winner/won/congrat etc. It's not a foolproof method if they post using a picture.
Notifications can be easily missed and lost. I also use bookmarks for checking back thou that relies on labeling them end dates for sorting and checking back manually. One of the many ideas will look into is combining with a database notifications of giveaways entered and cross checking with the emailed notifications. Which will notify that the promoter has posted and expecting a winner to have been announced.
Possible could automatically the winner details from their post excluding if winner is notified using a video/pic.
@gemini69 And the discussion was to get members thinking how to make comping easier. If got something constructive to discuss regarding that feel free to contribute. :)
You never know the admin might take up some of the ideas for this site.
I wonder if anyone has noticed their recent hard work adding a notes section under each giveaway on the main page.