The eight lucky winners were selected from over 3,000 applicants who entered Samsung’s largest whitegoods promotion for 2008.

Customers were given the chance to win a Volvo V50 and $250 worth of petrol when they bought a Samsung whitegoods product between 1 November and 24 December 2008.

As well as the car prize draw, each Samsung customer was entered into a fuel prize draw. In which 432 customers won a $250 Coles Express Gift Card.

One of the lucky winner’s, Keenan Hopkins from Angaston, South Australia expressed her joy over the prize “when I bought my Samsung 8kg top load washing machine at my local Harvey Norman I never thought I would actually win the Volvo. Having the keys handed over was such a surreal experience; I still can’t believe the car is actually mine!”

Over the entire promotion Samsung has given away almost $500,000 worth of prizes.

If you find yourself answering ‘Yes’ to these questions, then getting onto a TV game show could be your ticket to winning big prizes and having a little bit of fun at the same time.  I’m sure we all dream of being the next Rob “Coach” Fulton, Australia’s first Millionaire winner of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.

As is always the case, there are some eligibility requirements you’ll need to adhere to in order to qualify to be on a game show and these requirements vary from show to show. The first step of any game show application is to gain admittance into the contestant pool and doing so is easier than you think.

Try these five tips to increase your odds of making it onto the show and into the final round:

1. Know Your Strengths

Picking the best game show for your skills goes a long way toward getting you onstage. If you can’t solve word puzzles, for example, your chances of landing on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ are slim. If you gulp when prices go up, then maybe ‘The Price is Right’ is right for you. Producers try to keep contestants from embarrassing themselves, and make the show entertaining.

Be sure to consider every angle. Even trivia buffs won’t find game shows one-size-fits-all. It would be absolutely disastrous for someone without immediate recall of facts to go on ‘Sale of the Century’, where speed is the premium. ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ would probably be a better choice because there you have unlimited time.

If your skills don’t match up with a specific show, look for one that’s more about risk-taking and luck, such as ‘Deal or No Deal’. You don’t have to know a thing — except when to quit.

2. Be Your (Super-Excited) Self

Producers look for contestants who the audience will either support or vilify. They want the audience to back you to win or despise you to lose. Standing out is also key. Consider the details that single you out as an interesting contestant, whether it’s special talents, quirky family members, an interesting occupation or life circumstances that would be aided by that prize money. It’s likely you’ll have only a minute or two with a producer during your initial audition so turn on the charm as if you were already sitting onstage.

3. Playing the Numbers

Even assuming you’re the ideal candidate for any given show, your odds of getting on vary depending on how often the show airs, its popularity and the number of contestants that appear on each show. Some shows just have a lot more slots to fill than others for example “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” needs just one contestant per show for its weekly broadcast, while “Deal or No Deal” and “Wheel of Fortune” both call in more than 10 at a time to handle a weeks’ worth of shows in a single taping session.

You’ll greatly increase your chances for success by applying for several shows that fit your talents. Getting on one show precludes you from appearing on another for a period of time, but most shows will still keep you in the pool.

4. Review, Don’t Cram

Whether you’re preparing for a contestant test, or getting ready to go on the show, brushing up on current events rather than memorizing niche trivia is a much more efficient strategy. If you feel compelled to soak up more knowledge, go for the almanac rather than the encyclopedia. The format is easier to digest, and the statistic snippets (like the number of feet in a mile) are common in quiz-format game shows.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

Knowing how the game is played, and the lingo that’s used, helps you develop a strategy that can pique producers’ interest. The last thing the producers is someone who doesn’t know the game as it’s not evenly matched. They know that audiences love to watch it come down to the very last minute, where anyone can win.

Religiously watching the show is a good start, but you’ll also need practice time away from the tube. Most shows offer an online version of the game, and often a board game as well. Use both, and encourage family and friends to critique your performance.

There are a lot of sponsors who offer competitions to win a car as the major prize. Play Limbo has some great competitions where you can win a car, right now they are giving you the chance to win a Mazda 2 Neo. In the past Play Limbo have also given away a Hyundai Getz worth $17,000 and a Holden Barina worth $13,990.  For your chance to win big, become a member of Play Limbo and you could be the next lucky player to win a car.

If you’re looking to win a premium car then why not look at entering a raffle auction? Cars for Cancer is giving you the chance to win 2 cars,  a Holden HSV Clubsport R8 or a Ford FPV GT-P. First Prize winner will choose one of these 2 cars, valued at $83,208. This competition helps raise money for Cancer research. There is only 15,000 tickets to be sold, so the chances to win are much better!

Some of the Dodge is one of the latest offering four ways to enter a contest to win one of three, new Dodge models. You can enter by filling out a survey, playing the daily match game, registering with the company or relaying your favorite feature of a particular vehicle. However you opt to play the game, you have an equal chance to win.

EmailCash is a rewards website that gives its members the opportunity to win a car just by entering their free auction.   Right now EmailCash members have the chance to win up to 12 brand new cars including the Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Mitsubushi Lancer and Peugeot 207.  If you want to win a car then EmailCash is the website for you.

If you’re looking for more than just competitions to win a car then why not check our competitions from sponsors such as Valvoline, where you can win $1,000 cash each week or the $20,000major prize. The NRMA is also giving you the chance to win a $10,000 dream holiday, this competitions are easy to enter and give you the chance to win big every day!

The opportunity to win the car of your dreams is just a mouse click away.

Our latest free online games include:

Coffee Shop - How much cash can you make in 14 days!

Kinetikz - Can you bounce the puck into the target?

Shift - Not your ordinary platform puzzler

AquaRotation - Guide the submarine and plug the hole

Premier League Foosball - Table Soccer on your Desktop

It is this experimentation which allows people to find a game that they really enjoy. The huge variety of online games, combined with the fact that there is no financial or large time investment means that there really is an enjoyable experience to be found for everybody, and more importantly, that people are inclined to find this enjoyable experience.

For more free online games visit the Win Big Australia Online Competition Club, join for free and you could also enter and win competitions and surveys.

For tips on how to win lotto or become a competition winner visit the Win Big Happy News blog.

We don’t promote ‘Money Wheels’ or ‘Secret Number Selection’ methods. We offer commonsense advice and handy tips that will change the way you thing about selecting the numbers that you play and in turn greatly increasing your chances of winning lotto.

To prepare for what is possible in terms of winning lotto prizes, you will need to let go of a few precious, possibly long-held notions. These notions are mostly sentimental and will truly hold you back from extraordinary results.

Some popular sentimental ‘winning lotto’ theories include:

• there is a pattern or some kind of magic which determines what
  numbers are drawn each week;
• playing the same numbers every week will bring you luck.;
• winning a couple of prizes a year is motivating you to chase the big
  one;
• it’s all about picking the six winning numbers.

We all know that it’s not fun to keep paying out week after week on lotto and not win a prize. The fact of the matter is that, no one plays lotto to win the smaller prizes. If you truly want to be motivated to win lotto and then you must adopt a strategy that sets you up to win lotto prizes frequently along the way.

Here are some simple tips that are designed to show you how to win the lottery more often.  Once you have read these tips you can test them with 2 free lotto games from www.OzLotteries.com, a fully accredited retailer of popular Australian lotteries including Powerball and Saturday Lotto.

Tip 1 - When you select your Lotto numbers, try to have a relatively even mix of odd and even numbers.

Tip 2 - Tracking and studying Number Groups can help you decide which group to omit and which group to give extra heavy play.

Tip 3 - In Powerball, on average, one number will repeat from the last drawing every other drawing or 40 percent of the time.

Tip 4 - Sharing the ticket cost with others stretches your Lotto budget. By playing with a group, you can afford to buy more lottery tickets.

Tip 5 - When you form a Lotto syndicate select your partners carefully. Avoid negative people. Not only are they unlucky, but they dampen enthusiasm and drain energy from others.

Tip 6 - Many players like to bet the numbers that have won someone else a big jackpot, and by doing so, they are almost guaranteed NOT to win one themselves.

Tip 7 - Avoid betting five consecutive numbers, even four consecutive numbers is a very rare occurrence that, in most Lotto games, has never happened once.

Tip 8 -The majority of Lotto players like to play the calendar numbers, such as birth dates and anniversaries—and their children’s ages. This means that the most heavily played numbers are 1 through 31. If you win, chances are you will be sharing with thousands of others.

Tip 9 - Never choose all five numbers from one number group, such as all single digits, or all teens, or all 20’s, etc.

Tip 10 - The shortest, easiest way to search for Lotto numbers that have the greatest probability of winning is to track the trends.

Thanks to OZ Lotteries, a fully accredited retailer of popular Australian lotteries via its website www.OzLotteries.com. You can now try these lotto winning tips for free! If you join Oz Lotteries today, they’ll give you 2 free games to test your lotto winning tips.  The 2 free games include OzLotto, Powerball, Saturday Lotto and Daily Keno, so join today and you could be the next big lotto winner!!

Have you got a lotto tip that has helped you Win Big? If so, share that winning feeling and let us know and we’ll post it with our other winning tips.

If competitions, games, surveys and free offers and more your thing, join the Win Big Australia Online Competition Club today for more chances to WIN BIG!!

The Games have been widely praised for their organisation and the huge crowds that turned out to watch the competition, particularly the athletics and swimming events.

“These are the greatest Paralympic Games ever, Mr Craven said. “It’s all about spirit. The Paralympic spirit that’s ever bright in out movement found here in China a kindred spirit.”

“It reached out to you, you embraced it and it is now cherished in your hearts.”

A packed Bird’s Nest stadium celebrated the end of the Games, widely hailed as a huge success. Fireworks lit up the night sky as the closing ceremony got under way for the 13th Paralympics. The theme of the ceremony was the future and the ideal is that the world’s Paralympians return to their countries and pass on the feeling of hope.

Some 90,000 spectators have been asked to write on closing ceremony postcards to be delivered wherever they choose.

Australia took fifth place on the table with 23 gold medals and 79 overall.

THE stars of Australia’s fine-dining firmament were out and shining on Tuesday night to hear Peter Gilmore’s Quay named Restaurant of the Year at the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2009 Restaurant Guide Awards.

Three-star chefs Neil Perry, Tetsuya Wakuda and Guillaume Brahimi - not to mention Sydneysider Gilmore himself - were among those who swapped aprons for finer threads and made their way to Sydney’s Wharf Restaurant for one of the hospitality industry’s biggest nights.

The awards are Australia’s only national competition, a fact reflected by the geographic spread of the winners.

The Royal Mail Hotel in Victoria’s Dunkeld was named Regional Restaurant of the Year. Executive chef Dan Hunter took over last year and has made the eatery a site of pilgrimage for gastronomes everywhere.

Also in Victoria, Brahimi’s Bistro Guillaume was named Best New Restaurant, marking the second time in as many years that a Sydneysider has won the award for a Melbourne restaurant.

The awards are likely to stoke the fierce rivalry between the Sydney and Melbourne restaurant scenes. While nine Sydney restaurants received a three-star rating in the guide - Rockpool, Tetsuya’s and last year’s winner, Pier, among them - Melbourne’s only three-star venue remains Shannon Bennett’s gastro-temple Vue de monde.

You can read the full article here.

Entering competitions is much easier than you would expect and if you are a member of a Competition Club then you give yourself an even greater chance of winning big.  The Win Big Australia Competition Club promotes a wide range of competitions including quizzes, games, skill testers, click to win, subscription, 25 words or less and many more.
“Comping” is a wonderful, profitable and even educational hobby; somebody has to win these prizes, why not you?

To help you WIN BIG and join a growing list of Winners, we have put our top tips to help you get that winning feeling.

While there is no guarantee to winning, there are always a few tricks and strategies you can do to increase your number of prize wins.Enter more competitions for more chances to Win Big.  The more entries you have spread around the greater your chance of picking up a prize.

Refer a friend for extra entries. Quite often competitions allow you to refer the promotion to your friends via email. This usually requires entering the email address of friends and family and in return recieving an extra entry into the draw. This extra entry is normally only credited once the person enters, but it can give you multiple chances of winning. This is a great tip if the competition only allows one entry per user but multiple entries via referrals.

Keep a diary of the competitions that you have entered.  There’s nothing worse than entering a competition and then forgetting, only to come across it again a few weeks later just before it closes and realise you aren’t sure of whether you entered or not so it does pay to stay organised with your entering.

Work smarter. If you have limited time, don’t waste it searching for competitions to enter. Join a competition club, there are a lot out there so join the club that suits your style of play. The Win Big Australia Online Competition Club is free to join and lists hundreds of competitions and promotions at anyone time.  Join in and share that winning feeling with the community forum or blog.

There are lots more ways to increase your chances of winning and I look forward to writing about them soon.

Now you know our Top Tips why don’t you try your luck with our free online competitions or enter our weekly competitions.

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join this forum and meet other like-minded compers to share stories, tips and advice.

You can find the new forum at http://www.winbig.com.au/forum/

We look forward to chatting with you soon.

Mike@WinBig

Watch as Rob “Coach” Fulton becomes Australia’s first “Millionaire” winner.

The $1,000,000 question was, “Which of these popular 60’s television shows premiered first? A:Bewitched, B: Get Smart, C: Hogan’s Heroes, D: I Dream of Jeannie.” With the correct answer being ‘Bewitched. ‘

Only nine contestants have previously reached the million-dollar question but none had decided to answer it – all settling for the $500,00 second prize.

Until his unprecedented win Australia was the only one of the 106 countries screening the quiz not to have had a contestant take the major prize.

Have you been on a quiz show or won money in a spectacular fashion?  If so we want to know about it so drop us a line and share that winning feeling