| She calls herself The Contest Queen and for good reason. Oshawa resident Carolyn Wilman submits about 100 contest entries a day, and wins about one in a hundred. Author of You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter, Wilman shares her contesting tips with anyone interested, and according to her, anyone can win. “This is a really good hobby for students,” Wilman said. “Students tend to be computer-savvy and that’s the number 1 way to enter right now and you can win stuff that isn’t in your budget like concert tickets, CDs, DVDs, theatre tickets, all kinds of stuff like that.” Wilman began entering contests as a young girl. One of her earliest memories was entering a radio phone-in contest to win concert tickets. “I remember being 14, standing in the kitchen with a rotary-dial phone, calling into the radio station to be the fourth caller,” she said. “And I won tickets to go see Burton Cummings with The Guess Who at Hamilton Place.” Although she started young, entering contests didn’t become a hobby until 2001 when she read an article about a married couple who worked as teachers and entered contests on a daily basis, which supplemented their lifestyle. The article inspired Wilman to start entering contests every day as well. In addition to entering contests, Wilman also runs her own business, ContestQueen.com, through which she helps companies create effective contests. “I have two sides to the business. (The first) is what they call B to C, business to consumer, which is where I teach people how to find, organize, enter and win contests and sweepstakes,” Wilman said. “The B to B, which is the business to business side, is (teaching) companies how to design better promotions from the outside in.” Wilman submits at least 100 entries to various contests per day. She counts by the number of entries as opposed to the number of contests because depending on the prizes, she’ll sometimes also enter her husband, friends and family members. “So one contest might have two people, five people being entered so I do at least minimum 100 entries a day—usually they’re closer to the 200 mark a day,” she said. Of all the different types of contests, Wilman most often wins contests that allow participants to enter only once. “They’re faster to enter and the odds are even. Everybody’s got the same amount of entries.” So far, Wilman’s biggest win is a four-day, three-night trip for four to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, valued at $40,000. The contest also offered several prizes of the red Olympic mittens. “They were giving away 210 pairs and even if you didn’t win the mittens, you were in for the grand prize draw and they were giving away three trips to the Olympics and we won one of them,” she said. One of Wilman’s most memorable wins was a trip to London where she visited the Harry Potter set and enjoyed a feast in the Great Hall. “It was so surreal sitting in the benches on the movie set and looking around. It’s almost unbelievable that I was actually there,” Wilman said. “Every time you see the movie you can remember what it felt like to be walking around that room. It was so cool!” Wilman’s number 1 contesting tip is to read the rules. Unfortunately, she learned that tip the hard way. “The big mistake is I skimmed the rules and I ended up having to sumo wrestle a guy for the big prize,” she explained. She had won silver passes to the Steelback Grand Prix and was told she had to participate in a sumo-off for a chance to have lunch with Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart. Three other winners were supposed to participate, but two of them didn’t even show up. “It was just something else, I got squashed,” she said. “I showed up and it was a guy and myself and of course he’s taller than me, he’s bigger than me. He’s sumoed before and I got munched. It’s the middle of the summer in 90- to 100-degree heat, down at the CNE on the asphalt, the ring is in the middle and you get into this huge, plastic, sweaty suit. I mean it was gross.” Canada has so many contests running at any given point that there are enough prizes to go around for people of all lifestyles, Wilman said. “If you’re a student, you might be entering for the laptops and the big-screen TVs and the concert tickets. What you’re going to want to enter and focus on is going to change based on your current lifestyle.” Even though Wilman has had lots of luck throughout her contesting hobby, she’s still not immune to losses. “I enter a lot and I lose 99 per cent of what I enter,” she said. “You have to enter a lot, it’s a numbers game. The more you enter, the more opportunity you have to win. It’s not really rocket science.” Wilman recommends that people who are interested in entering contests as a hobby should check out her website at www.contestqueen.com and click on “10 Easy Steps to Begin Winning.” “You never know which one’s going to hit, it’s like Christmas. Every time the phone rings, I’m thinking somebody’s going to tell me that I won something.” |
Geoffrey Gooden
DISPLAYING HER KEY TO SUCCESS: Carolyn Wilman holds a copy of her book, You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter.
|
