Over the last few months, we have run several competitions giving away prizes to our readers. In the upcoming weeks, we have lots of new and exciting competitions and prizes to give away. In addition, the 2007 BigPoll is open and already looks set to break all previous records for participation. Make sure the BigPoll remains the most accurate predictive poll on the internet and make your predictions now! We are also making another plea for donations in order to raise money for new servers to meet the explosion in demand for the website.

MORE COMPETITIONS
Tomorrow we will be launching an exclusive competition to win a rare copy of the Making Your Mind Up CD – featuring all six British 2007 finalists. Also coming up in the next few days, we'll be launching competitions to give away the first of this year's Eurovision Song Contest press packs. Already pledged, we have press packs for Scooch (United Kingdom) and Guri Schanke (Norway) so stay tuned to esctoday.com for all the competitions and chances to win prizes before, during and beyondHelsinki.

We have already had over 5000 competition responses this year, and whilst all competition winners are selected at random, we simply do not have time to contact everyone that entered. Please be assured that all prizes are sent out and if you do not hear from us regarding an entry, it means that on this occasion, you have not been one of the lucky winners. Keep entering and you're time will come!

MORE POLLS
The new and improved 2007 BigPoll is live and already attracting a phenomenal response. Don't forget to register your predictions by clicking on the link from the homepage. You can update your predictions as many times as you want until the poll closes on May 10th. We would like to thank everyone that has posted reactions or emailed us with suggestions and comments. We do read them all and we try to incorporate suggestions when we can.

With the success of the BigPoll, we are going to be launching some new polls to keep readers activeover the next few weeks.

• The BigOne 2007 – Vote for the one song you think will win the Eurovision Song Contest
• The Big12Points 2007 – Predict how your own country will vote in 2007
• YourOne 2007 – Vote for your favourite song

In addition to these, we'll be running lots of interesting snap polls in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned to esctoday.com and make sure your predictions and opinions count!

SUPPORT ESCTODAY.COM
Once again, we thank everyone for their donations and contributions to esctoday.com. We are trying to increase capacity in order to ensure that the site can cope with demand throughout the Eurovision Song Contest season. And the 405 euros donated since Athens has helped greatly. We still need to raise much more in order to purchase additional servers to keep the site from crashing due to high demand at peak times.

To give you an idea of how hard this is, we are averaging the same level of traffic now that we had in the first week of rehearsals for the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. According to traffic patterns over the last five years, we need to ensure that we can handle three times this much traffic by May. We are incredibly thankful to be in this position, but it does mean a lot of pressure to ensure that we can continue to provide all the functions on the site.

Because we are a neutral site, we refuse to accept payments from broadcasters or participating acts. We rely entirely on a small revenue through advertising and purchases made with partner sites via links from our esctoday.com. Our only other income source is reader donations and financial support from the team that runs esctoday.com. Any donations received are invested in the running of the site, and put to use in bringing our readers all the news from the world of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Donations can be made using paypal via the button near the top of our homepage. Whilst we don't like asking for payments, and we will always ensure that the website remains free to use and free to all, we do need to ensure that we can keep the site online throughout the Eurovision season and all help is thoroughly appreciated.

Also, we are still searching for site sponsors, so if any readers feel that they own or work for a company that would be interested in sponsoring the site or placing suitable advertising here, please email [email protected]

Thanks again for your support

The esctoday.com team