One of my big hobbies is to participate in contests.  Before the Internet, I'd sign up at stores that had entry boxes with stuff they were giving away.  I've never been too successful with that route.  There were contests you could mail in entries, except the postage costs would soon be way too much to justify!  I always dream of winning that big prize--money, trips, cars, electronics, etc.  Of course, little wins always brighten my day too!  Then the Internet and cell phones came along and finally made it practical for me to start doing all sorts of contests!  What type of contests do I enter?  Here's a breakdown of what all I do-

• Entering through forms on different Internet sites of Facebook.  These are usually one time entries or can be entered each day.  I have a program installed called Roboform that makes most contests easy to do!  For the dailies, I have bookmarks in my browser that I maintain to make it easy to enter each day.
• "Instant wins"--These contests tell you right away if you won or not.  Sometimes, you just fill in a form, hit Submit, and it tells you of the results.  Sometimes, there are little games you play (memory matching games are really popular for these!) 
• Twitter contests-consisting of "RT" contests (where you just ReTweet a post) or answer a question that is posted.  
• Twitter Parties-where a company either directly sets up a Twitter chat or sponsors a blogger to host.  The host(s) ask a series of questions, participants posts answers or join in discussions, then winners are drawn from the ones who joined in at the party.  
• Text contests-where you send a text out to a certain cell number.  Most times, these are daily contests.  On rare occasions, there are even instant win contests for these. 
• Pinterest contests-new for me (haven't won from one yet!)  You "Pin" a series of pictures, then winners are determined various ways. 

It can be a bit daunting and a lot of work, but I enjoy doing it and the rewards are well worth it!  I do a little E-mail newsletter of the first two types of contests listed above and would be glad to add your E-mail into it if you're interested (it's just E-mails with the different links and pertinent information for each contests).  I can also do some blogs posts with more details on how you go about doing all of these contests.  The biggest thing to know is that you have to be patient!  There's no guarantee you'll get a big win, just keep trying!