loquax.co.uk

...one of the ways that loquax.co.uk pays for itself. If you want to buy something click on the Special Offers links and it will take you to its shop. Obviously Loquax doesn’t sell anything – it has links to other websites and so therefore will earn some money (I think) through referrals.

For those of you that like to play games there’s a small ‘arcade’. In my opinion it’s not that great – there’s ...
...other rather simple and boring games. There’s also links to Trivia Games from Uproar.

How about sending someone an e-postcard? They’ve managed to get themselves together a rather nice collection of postcards (I’ve only just looked at them for the first time) for all occasions. Sending them looks very simple – the usual message, to and from business.

The last main section of the site is the “Break ... more

Not being content with spending all of my free time writing opinions, contributing to heated debates on forums, posting messages on Yahoo groups and playing games I recently joined loquax.co.uk. I read an opinion about it at the beginning of February and decided to pay it a visit. I was hooked immediately.

So what is it? Quite simply it’s a competition website that’s just celebrated its 4th birthday. There are no competitions on the site itself but instead there are literally hundreds of links to other sites that have competitions. However, it’s not just about entering competitions, there’s a whole host of other things this site offers – all of which I’ll mention later.

The layout. The front page is very quick to load (as are all the pages), and is very simple in format. There are adverts along the top and right and side of the page and everywhere else is simply covered in links to competitions and other parts of the site.

Navigation. This is very simple as most of the links are pretty self explanatory, you do sometimes find, however, that a link can take you back to somewhere you’ve already been. At times you could feel like you’re going round in circles – but you soon get used to it.

Finding a competition. On the front page there are several different links to take you to competitions

1) You can click on the day’s competitions. This will give you a list of all the new and updated competitions that have been added on the site. These are split into different categories – Top Site (the one the webmasters think is best), Sport, Computers, Cash/Vouchers etc. In each of those categories it shows you which websites have got competitions and what the prizes are.

2) You can search through the prize directory. This simply gives links ALL of the prizes in different category (unlike the day’s competitions which only shows new ones).

3) You can find the competitions that are ‘Closing Soon’. This section – as the link suggests is a list of all of the sites that have competitions closing on any particular day. In this section you can search for ones closing this week, next week, closing in May or even unknown closing date!

4) If you want to know what competitions/draws you can enter everyday then you can click on the ‘Daily Competitions’ link. Here you can find sites that offer up to 1 million pounds (the lottery sites) to just a few pounds (like Uproar).

5) Perhaps you want to see the ‘best’ competitions they have – you know the ones with the cars, holidays and wide screen TV’s worth thousands of £’s. That’s ok the site owners have compiled a list of “Pick of the Prizes” – they’ve basically picked out what they think are the best prizes on offer at the moment and have given you them all on one page. Remember though, they’re only human so they’re ‘best’ prizes might actually be your ‘worst’ – but I doubt it.

Entering the competitions. After you’ve seen a link to a competition you want to enter – lets say for example that BBC Norfolk are offering a case of wine – you click on the BBC Norfolk link. It will take you to a page showing ALL of the current BBC Norfolk prizes. They will be shown in the order they were added to loquax – not necessarily the order they will close though. On this page it will probably (not always) give a little more detail about the competition – answer a question, register for the site etc. Just click on the particular competition that you like the look of and it will open the relevant page in a new window. Just follow the instructions on the window that opens and sit back and wait. It’s important to remember that any problems you have with the actual competitions sites is NOT anything to do with loquax – all they do is offer you a link there.

Your Loquax. While it is possible to enter the competitions without registering with the site I definitely recommend that you sign up. This is a very simple process - name, username, password, email address, DOB and gender – is the only information they ask from you.

So what are the benefits of joining up? The first – and most important is that you can keep track of all of the competitions you’ve entered. Actually the site does this for you – and all you have to do is tick a box after you’ve entered. On the pages that I mentioned above, where all of particular websites competitions are listed there’s a little box you can tick once you’ve entered all of the competitions. After you’ve ticked the box you can also add a comment (lets say for example that you need to go back and re-do a quiz on a particular site). Once you’ve ticked the box if you go back to the same section of the site you will be able to see at a glance whether any new competitions have been added since you’re last visit.

In addition to this facility you can also access a link of ALL of the websites you’ve entered competitions at. The list shows you when you last visited that particular site and when the competitions there were last updated. In addition to this any site that has new or closed competitions is also shown. This gives you a very good idea of what’s going on in your comping life – lol.

Once you’ve finished entering competitions for the day (yes I do it everyday now) you can find a link for ‘print records’. This gives you ability to print out a list of the competitions you’ve entered on any particular day – this includes any notes you’ve made.

If, like me, you’re partial to a bit of online nattering to other like-minded people then you’ll probably enjoy the chat room. It’s a very simple layout but there are people in there at various times of the day (you can see from the homepage whether anyone is in there or not) and they’re all very friendly.

The last thing that is ‘special’ for member of the site is the Discussion Forum. You can read the messages without being a member but have to sign in to post anything. There are several different message boards (19 in total!!) all covering different things. The first two are the Loqaux forums for discussing things related to loquax. The second lot are under “Winners and Prizes”. There are 4 boards here – Web Winners (if you’ve won a prize), Winners Lists (if you’ve seen a winners list somewhere you can post it there), Whines not Wins Forum (pretty self explanatory) and Dude Where’s my Prize (also pretty self explanatory).

The next section is called “Comping Help and Advice”. There are 5 boards in this bit – the main two are Swap or Sell Prizes (if you’ve won something you really don’t want) and Techie Comping Help (if you’ve got technical problems). The other three are general advice for comping.

The fourth section is “Loquats – The Loquax Users”. There are two boards in here – Say Hello (if you’ve just joined you can say hello and introduced yourself or ask questions), and Chat & Things (a place to discuss anything under the sun – EXCEPT competitions).

The 5tth section “Tiebreakers” – contains 2 boards with discussion relating to tiebreaker competitions – one of these boards is actually a private forum and you have to apply to join (there are limited numbers).

The last section “Miscellaneous” contains 4 boards about just that – Offline Competitions, SMS and Mobile Competitions, Get Free Things and Refer a Friend (for those competitions when you have to refer someone).

Every time you post a message it shows next to your name how many post you’ve got – I’m still classed as a ‘Junior” (with 32 messages posted). The ‘classes’ go – Newbie, Junior, Regular, Star, and Superstar - each one being achieved by posting a certain number of posts.

In addition to all of these things there’s the option to be added to the mailing list – I’m not joined up to this (I visit the site daily anyway) so I can’t really comment on it.

Right – I ‘think’ that’s all the benefits of becoming a member. So what else does this site offer?

Well there’s a search engine – which I personally don’t see too much need for. Basically you can enter a word – like chocolate – and it will come up with all of the links for any section of it’s competitions that has chocolates in it – either name or for a prizes.

There’s a small section which contains a good guide for how a Webmaster can run a competition from his own website. I don’t know much about these things but it does seem to cover and awful lot.

Shop Loquax it (at a guess) one of the ways that loquax.co.uk pays for itself. If you want to buy something click on the Special Offers links and it will take you to its shop. Obviously Loquax doesn’t sell anything – it has links to other websites and so therefore will earn some money (I think) through referrals.

For those of you that like to play games there’s a small ‘arcade’. In my opinion it’s not that great – there’s a version of Tetris (just called Chockablok) and a few other rather simple and boring games. There’s also links to Trivia Games from Uproar.

How about sending someone an e-postcard? They’ve managed to get themselves together a rather nice collection of postcards (I’ve only just looked at them for the first time) for all occasions. Sending them looks very simple – the usual message, to and from business.

The last main section of the site is the “Break Time” section. This has a crossword – I don’t think they update it very often so don’t get too excited – and it’s actually one of those ones where each number represents a letter – so not a REAL crossword.

There’s also a crossword buddy – to help you finish of those crosswords – you can enter part, the beginning or ending of a word (using question marks for letters you don’t know) and it will come up with possible solutions. It’s already come in useful several times for me this month for a few ‘puzzle’ competitions.

For those of you who are crazy enough to believe in them there are also daily horoscopes available. They’re taken from the Russell Grant website – although I don’t think that makes them any more believable.

The last link is called “News and Weather for the UK” – what it actually contains is two links to the Guardian Website - so not quite as exciting as one might have thought.

So would I recommend this website? Yes of course – I only joined less than a month ago, have entered literally hundred’s of competitions (yes it took a LONG time) but have already won two prizes. They weren’t huge ones – tickets to a small London play and a copy of a magazine – but the fact is that they were prizes. Last week someone posted on the forum that they’d won a Smart Car – so you can win big. If you get involved in the forums there’s a real sense of community and there are people who can actually interested in the buzz you get from receiving a WEM (Winning Entry Email) and are always willing to share you’re excitement – even for small prizes.

Beware though comping is very addictive………………….now where’s the answer to that question…………………………………..

 

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