I'd completely forgetten that I'd ever written in this category, and I do hope that noone else remembers, for it was many moons ago indeed, in the times when Beenz flowed freely and "Freebie Sites" meant you could actually live for free with cans of beans and shower matts arriving on your doorstep daily.

Nowadays, of course, such luxuries are harder to come by. The occasional visit to my tried and trusted freebie sites, I can occasionally scrape up a free carpet sample, packet of sunflower seeds or the odd CD sampler. The best of these is undoubtedly www.freeukstuff.co.uk - there are others, but any good stuff they may have is buried deep within a multitude of "free bets" and lotto draws.

So, on to free prize draws we dawdle. Well there are certainly plenty of these babies to be found around the net. The big bonus with free web draws is that they are free to enter, as you can almost always use an online form or enter by email.

So, you do save on stamps and stationery. However, there are several things to take into account before you embark upon a prize draw bevy. Firstly, it is *never* as quick as typing your name and address, as it usually is with offline newspaper and promotional prize draws.

Prize draws like these often involve completing lengthy cosumer surveys, quizzes or filling in your personal details. With companies like the Lightspeed Panel it can take up to half an hour to fill in a boring survey just to be entered. I do it every time and have never won a bean.

I believe the reason for this is quite simple. There are millions of web users around the world. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to directing people to online prize draws, and possibly thousands of people worldwide who do this for a hobby. That's a lot of competition if you're hoping for Ernie to pick your name out of his electronic bowler.

Remember, entering a prize draw with your local newspaper gi
ves you a much higher chance of winning. However, there are websites which I have had surprisingly good luck with, so I'll throw it all away now and tell you the name of one of them....

Firstly, you might have heard of a site called Dooyoo. My name has been drawn out of Dooyoo's hat on six different occasions. I've won cosmetics vouchers, Dooyoo tee-shirts, Boots vouchers, a Turkish Cruise (!) and now some kind of Fishy hair product, which I am still waiting for (hint hint).

I will not give away my secrets any further, but if you want to be successful with prize draws you need to look harder than well advertised national and international websites. You don't need to look up web sites connected to your own local area, but any UK company or website dedicated to a small town or district will give much better results on the competition and prize draw front.

That's all the competition tips you're getting cos I know you'll start nippin ma heid to go and move it to "Comptition Tips".

For the record, and this is a serious warning: Myoffers will send you a plethora of mouse mats and Myoffers caps if you continue to enter their prize draws. Not even the scummiest boot sales or Kidz Books giveaways can get rid of these babies - once they're with you, they're with you for life. Even the bin man won't accept them. Beware!

So, onto the real business of assured cash. Can I make it assured cash and/or vouchers? It definitely makes my life easier in these hard perkless times.

These are websites where you are guaranteed to get something spendable at the end of the day (or month, or three years, being slightly more realistic).

Again we're at Dooyoo, where a concentrated six month spell of reading, rating, commenting, and writing can earn you anything up to £2-300 depending on how you play the game. Tips (which I don't practice, much to my purse's dismay): Write
a standard five reviews a week, no more, no less, be nice to everyone, leave personal, rather than standard comments, tell everyone you've nominated them for a crown (whether you have or not) and never, but never, take offence ay anything anyone has ever said to or about you.

Perhaps a more realistic aim for the less angelic users among us is £50 a year.

The money definiely comes, however slowly, and you can get a cheque or vouchers. But you know all this, so let's move on.

Myvoice.co.uk - a lot of noise about this site for months now, but in case you've never met a true casher-outer I can confirm that my brand spanking new tennis racket was bought with My Voice Choice vouchers, after nearly two years of telling companies that I didn't want to tell them how much I earned, and that I thought Anthea Turner was nicer than Bob Monkhouse. These are really short surveys, and come up often, so you need to keep an eye open.

Visitor Friendly is another survey site who pay real live money (I keep wanting to use expressions like "Moolah" and "Wonga" and don't really know why) straight into your bank account. Sadly, their surveys are all too few and far between. For me at least - I've only had two since I joined last year. Perhaps if I'd ticked the boxed marked One-eyed, Astronaut, and Lesbian, I'd get more opportunities, who knows?

Hmm, I suppose I'd better mention Ipoints now, even though I don't bother with them any more. I've been given a couple of free one way ferry tickets to cross the channel from Ipoints, (lucky I'm so thick skinned) so I suppose I can't say they don't pay out. However the effort to gain any number of points is so long winded (or expensive!) that IMHO it simply isn't worth it.

The ones that I am still hoping to cash out on: Yougov, although the whole process is so painfully slow and the questions so hilariously tabloid
-ly leading that it is more of a chore than anything else. Still, I'm more than half way to my £50 cash out point so I'm not giving up yet. The beauty of Yougov is that you can abstain on every question and still get paid. So basically you just have to log in and press "Submit" without even looking at the questions. Wonder if they'll ever find me out....

Lastly and leastly, Mypoints, a site that pays me a fifth of a pence to visit flowershop websites every mothers day. Hoping to reach my cash out total of £20 by the age of four hundred and twenty. I don't have to visit the site though. They kindly remind me by email to earn my fragment coppers.

Actually, I have one more suggestion - www.kidz-books.net runs heaps of competitions and no-one ever enters. I know, cos it's my website, so if you get yourself over there you've a darn good chance of winning.

Wishing you the best of luck...but not so much that I stop winning Dooyoo competitions :P