Welcome! Looking for help or an answer to a specific question? This is a comprehensive guide to Competition Hunter presented in a Frequently Asked Questions format. We aim to provide a complete range of answers to all major questions relating to the site and how it runs. Have we missed something out? Contact us.

Click on the links to jump to the relevant section.

What is Competition Hunter?
What can I do with it?
How do I submit competitions?
Do you have any tips for making a good submission?
Why does it say that the URL has already been submitted?
Can competition providers (sites/brand/agencies) submit their own competitions?
How do I vote?
Why should I vote?
What is Karma, and how do I earn it?
What rewards can I exchange my Karma for?
How do I refer a new user to the site and earn Karma for it?
How do I report spam?
What are Awards?
What happens if I forget my password?
Do all the competitions that get published feed through to Twitter and Facebook?
Can I track what I've entered?
What are Vote Buttons?
Where can I find news and announcements?
What is your Competition Widget?
Where else can I find you online?
How do I get in contact?



What is Competition Hunter?

Competitionhunter.com is a UK competition sharing community that is a place for users to find and share online competitions they find. These competition submissions contain external links to the competition pages themselves, and the site is constantly updated with users submitting new competitions they find. We've made a community that is fun, rewarding (literally) and as quick and simple to use as possible.

The actions you perform on Competition Hunter, like submitting competitions (earns you lots!), voting and commenting earn you Karma points. These Karma points can be exchanged for real-life rewards like Amazon, iTunes or Asos vouchers!

What can I do with it?

To take advantage of the features Competition Hunter has, you need to log in or register. Registration is completely painless and as quick as possible: our record is about 6 seconds. Once logged in, you are able to submit competitions to the site, vote those competitions up or down, comment and discuss competitions, email and share via social networks directly from the site, make friends, send messages, earn awards, and earn Karma; a points system that you can exchange for real-life rewards like Amazon and iTunes vouchers.

How do I submit competitions?

Submitting competitions to the site is as quick and simple as physically possible. Clicking the submit button brings you to the first stage where you put in your web address. Paste in the web address and proceed, and Competition Hunter will often fetch things like title information for you directly from the target site, making things even easier. Fill in the title, descriptive text, and add tags so users can find similar competitions easily. When submitting the second stage, you'll be able to review your submission and either modify it if you want to make changes, or submit.

99% of all submissions will appear on the site straight away. This will be instant. In a very small number of cases, your submission may be picked up by one of our many spam filters and be held for moderation. If this happens (and it's rare), don't panic! Make a cup of tea and a slice of toast, and it should be manually approved and appear by the time you get back. Most held submissions will be approved within 2 hours.

Submissions appear in the Upcoming section initially. In order to reach the Published section (i.e. the front page), your submission requires 3 votes in a 24hr period. This is intended to improve the quality of submissions, make your vote count, and make the best and most popular competitions more readily available.

Do you have any tips for making a good submission?

Yes we do!

- Make sure the competition is relevant. What do we mean by this? Well, Is it a UK competition? Is it open? Is the site you're submitting legitimate?

- Link directly to the source. Save people time by linking directly to the original competition page.

- Include an end date. Possibly the most important piece of information behind what one can win is when the competition closes. You could include this info in the title or main body of the text, but either way: it's crucial.

- Make sure you include all other information that you feel might help users, like the nature of the competition - whether it's simply entering details, based on Twitter/Facebook or something creative.

- If there's an answer you want to include, go ahead. If you'd rather not give an answer, that's good too. Some people do, some people don't, and that's ok with us.

- Add tags. Tags help users find related competitions quickly. They're words and phrases separated by commas. For example, some reasonable examples of tags for an iPad competition might be: Apple, iPad, computer.

- Whilst it goes without saying, please don't spam us. We're a target for spam because of our traffic and outbound clicks from competition-hungry visitors. Don't exploit the trust of our users by submitting links that are clearly not competitions and not of use to our community. We have a number of anti-spam systems, blockers and blacklists. Thank you.

- Try and avoid if possible including URLs with tracking codes (source="email"/source="twitter" etc) and complex dynamic addresses. If you're unsure of what this means, don't worry, it's not crucial, it just helps our system sort information better. If you can see a competition page with the address you have, that's totally fine to submit to us.

Why does it say that the URL has already been submitted?

Competition Hunter operates a "no-duplicate" policy. This means users can't submit a particular URL more than once. The reason for this is to diminish repeat submissions so every competition is unique, to prevent users entering multiple times (which competition providers don't like), and to prevent spam and users submitting material simply to earn Karma.

Unfortunately some websites have a dedicated competition page which never changes URL - e.g. www.site.com/competitions. Under this rule this URL can only be submitted once, but if you have good intentions and know it's a new competition you're submitting, you can sometimes squeeze two submissions by cheating our system - removing or adding "/" is a good way of doing this...

Can competition providers (sites/brand/agencies) submit their own competitions?

Yes, they absolutely can. We actively encourage this.

We look forward to generating significant traffic and direct entries to your page and competition. We also give you a Google "follow" link! All we would ask in return is that you give us a reciprocal link from your site.

How do I vote?

The numbers in the green bursts are the number of votes that a competition has received. Next to that number are an up arrow and a down arrow. If you upvote a competition by clicking the up arrow, you'll add 1 vote to the tally. If you downvote a competition by clicking the down arrow, you'll minus 1 vote from the tally. All competitions start with 1 vote from the user submitting by default and there is no limit to the number of votes a competition can receive. Each user can cast 1 vote per competition, but as many votes as they like in total. With vast numbers of competitions being added constantly, there will be no shortage of things to vote on!

Once you've voted, the vote will tally instantly. The arrows will change colour with the voting choice highlighted (either up or down) and the other voting option greyed out. The system will remember that you've voted, and will not allow you to vote again on that same competition.

Why should I vote?

Here are five good reasons:

1. Voting demonstrates what you think of a competition. Is the competition relevant? Running? Vote it up. Is the competition shady looking or spam? Vote it down. Voting is a way for the community to moderate (very gently) the content as a democracy. Because the site is populated by compers and a few brands, all parties are interested in improving the experience for each other. So vote!

2. Voting earns you Karma. Don’t forget, lots of activities on the site earn you Karma (which you can exchange for rewards like vouchers), like submitting competitions, and commenting. So does voting!

3. Voting dictates where competitions appear. All competitions submitted go through to the Upcoming section initially. To reach the Published section (i.e. the front page), a submission requires 3 votes in a 24hr period. This is intended to further improve the overall quality, by showing only the best competitions on the front page.

4. Voting can stop spam. Possibly the most important reason we implemented a voting system is that you, the user, can kill spam. If an entry gets 5 downvotes, it is marked as spam and removed from the system. This means spam, if it’s lucky enough to cheat its way through, can be killed right there and then, without needing to flag for a moderator. So, if you see spam, downvote it!

5. Have you ever wondered how you can track or mark which competitions you’ve entered from those that you haven’t? Well, there’s a super simple way of doing this with voting.

Our system is designed to allow only one vote on each competition for each user. Thus if you vote a competition up, you can only do that once. The colours of the arrows change to grey to denote the fact that you’ve already voted, and if you try, you won’t be able to vote again on that particular competition. Given that the system remembers what you’ve voted on (so you don’t have to), your vote on a competition could be used to tell the system and thus remind you that you’ve entered. If you vote as you enter, you’ll have a permanent reminder! So if you see unvoted competitions, you’ll know you won’t have entered yet.

What is Karma, and how do I earn it?

The concept of karma, in both religious and popular modern versions can be interpreted in many different ways. What we mean by it is “be good, and good things will come to you”, which, to most people, should sound familiar. The way we’ve materialised this idea is in a points system that you can earn from your actions on the site. The action that earns you the most Karma is by submitting a competition. It’s really easy, and if you’re submitting multiple competitions you soon see the Karma rack up! If your submissions reach the Published section (after receiving 3 votes in 24hrs), you get even more Karma! Don’t fancy submitting but still want to earn some Karma? Many actions will earn you Karma, like voting, commenting, and even just being on the site.

Here is the breakdown of actions that earn you Karma:

- Submitting competitions
- Getting your submissions promoted to the Published section
- Voting on competitions
- Commenting on competitions
- Voting on competitions
- Logging in every day
- Referring new users and being referred

Karma tells the community how helpful and active you are. You can see on our Top Users page that users are ranked in a table by their Karma score.

Not only will Karma demonstrate to users how active and helpful you are to the community, it is an actual reward also. Karma points can be exchanged for real-life rewards like Amazon or iTunes vouchers in our Karma Reward Store. Cool huh?

What rewards can I exchange my Karma for?

The Karma Reward Store is where you can cash in your Karma points for real-life rewards. Currently you can exchange your Karma points for Amazon, iTunes and ASOS vouchers. When you order, we send you an e-voucher (via email - no need to wait for the post!) that you can redeem at these stores for credit! Very cool.

How do I refer a new user to the site and earn Karma for it?

Referring new users can earn you lots of Karma points very quickly. All you need to do when you recommend Competition Hunter to someone is to tell them to include your username when they register. They put your username in the field "User who referred you:" and when they sign up both you and your referred user will earn a Karma bonus.

How do I report spam?

We have a number of powerful anti-spam measures on the site, so thankfully, instances of spam hitting the front page are very rare. However, if they do, the easiest and quickest way to kill spam is for it to receive 5 downvotes. Thus, if you see spam, downvote it and encourage others to do the same. When 5 votes are tallied on a competition, it is marked as spam and disappears from the site! We have moderators too, so they'll often catch spam within minutes of it going live. If there's spam that hasn't moved or is being sneaky, do contact us and we'll nuke it.

What are Awards?

Well, awards are pretty much what they say on the tin. Little virtual rosettes for being brilliant; whether that’s by submitting, voting, commenting or even logging in, we want to instantly say “well done”. Some are obvious awards, from level 1 to “god”, and others are more obscure, but they all relate to your activity on the site. We’re adding new awards all the time.

Where can you see them? Well, we’ve given you a virtual trophy cabinet on your profile page and you can check your progress at any time as the awards are updated in real-time. Keep track often and see what awards you rack up! Why not check right now – you might be surprised!

What happens if I forget my password?

No problem, just click the Forgot Password link and enter your email address and a new password will be emailed to you.

Do all the competitions that get published feed through to Twitter and Facebook?

No, not all competitions go through to Twitter and Facebook, the reason being that we feel it'd be a bit overwhelming if every single competition was fed through and it might turn a few people off. Thus, the place to catch every competition submitted is at competitionhunter.com!

Can I track what I've entered?

Yes you can, with a simple tip. See point 5 of Why should I vote?.

What are Vote Buttons?

Competition submissions now automatically generate vote buttons that you can embed directly into any part of your site, unique to a submission. They are freely and readily available at any point from the article itself in the menu section. Clicking "buttons" brings up codes for a small and large button which site owners and promoters can copy and paste into their site, which will allow their visitors to vote remotely from the competition page. If you are familiar with "Tweet", "Like", "Pin", or "+1" buttons commonly used, these are exactly the same. We're very happy show you how these work or initially help set these up.

Where can I find news and announcements?

We have blog which we update regularly with news, giveaways, new features, and many, many pictures of cats. Check it out here.

What is your Competition Widget?

We were asked a while back how a blogger could show current competitions or updates on his site, and inspired us to bring out our Competition Widget. It’s a quick, super-simple, and totally automatic way of showing the 5 most recent submissions to Competition Hunter on your blog. If you’ve ever wanted a way to show your visitors new competitions – this dynamically updates in real-time, so it takes all the fuss out and needs no updating or fiddling, ever. It fits snuggly in the sidebar of a blog, and once it’s in, you never need to think about it again. Best of all, it’s really easy to pop onto your site or blog. Nothing to install, nothing to maintain, and the widget will adapt to the style of your blog (i.e. it’ll assume your colours, fonts and sizes). You just need to copy a tiny bit of code and paste it into your sidebar code, and that’s it! To read more and get that code - click here.

Where else can I find you online?

You can find us on Twitter here and Facebook here. Come say hi, we're very friendly!

How do I get in contact?

Send all questions, problems and declarations of love to contact[@]competitionhunter[.]com