5 questions about running a contest
November 18th, 2007
1. Why should you run a contest?
A contest is very good to get exposure for your blog. You can get more traffic, backlinks, comments, RSS subscriptions, depending on what you want. Let’s say you have $100 to spend and you want to promote your blog. How can you do that? You can buy up to 10 backlinks for one month on blogs with PR up to 2. You can buy 10-15 reviews with backlinks on ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, PayPerPost and other. You can get about 500-1000 targeted visitors via PPC. But running a contest will get you more than this. Depending on what rules do you establish for contester to enter, for $100 you can get more than 20-30 backlinks, RSS subscribers, traffic, many comments and exposure for your blog. Well, what do you think about this?
2. What prizes could you offer?
Your offered prizes must be attractive for the competitors. Assuredly you have something to offer: not only money, but also you can offer products (books, DVD’s, cell phones, iPod’s, etc.) or services, like designing a logo, a header, a site, links in your blog, a review in your blog, free web hosting. How hard can it be to choose something?
3. What rules should you establish?
Your rules about the contest must be very clear. If competitors must review your blog, tell them how many words they must use. If they must link to your blog, tell them what anchors they should use. If they must subscribe to your RSS, provide them the link to your RSS feed. Tell competitors how they can announce you about their participation (through email, leaving a comment, trackback). Tell competitors when the contest will finish, how the winner will draw, how they will receive their prizes. Tell them who can participate, what is the minimum age. You don’t want that your contest to be a failure one, just because you don’t offer exact specifications, don’t you?
4. Where could you promote your contest?
If you want many competitors (and assuredly you want) than you must promote your contest. Of course you can promote it in forums, but not many of them allow that. So you can promote your contest in special blogs or forums, which are especially designed for contests. Here are some of them:
- Contest Beat – you can submit your contest for free, using a submit form. After the contest is reviewed, it will appear on the blog. You can find on Contest Beat 10 great tips for making your contest a successful one. You can get more exposure on Contest beat for a small fee of 25$.
- My Blog Contest – you can submit your contest for free and you can get featured for a small fee of 5$.
- Contestu.com – you can submit your contest for free. You can get featured but I don’t know how
- BloggingContest.com – you can submit your contest for free and you can get featured for a fee of $15/month, but November has a special price – $8/month.
- Blog Contests – the submission is free, and you can get featured for about $10.
- Contest Blogger – It’s a forum where you can promote you contest for free. It seems to be an unmoderated forum, since everybody can make an empty post, just to be displayed on the homepage. But it’s good
- The Prize Blog – you can submit your contest for free or you can get featured for about $20.
- MrPrizes – it’s a kind of contests directory. You don’t need to submit your contest here, since Mr. Prizes will visit every contest and will add it into this catalog.
There are some other blogs where your contest could be listed, but I list only those where you can submit your contest through a submit form.
Another important promotion you should consider is through your own blog. Let’s think: you write a post about your contest, it stays on the front page for about 3-4 days, and then, your visitors don’t see it at all. Why not to put a banner in your homepage, linking to the contest page? That way all visitors will be notified about the contest.
5. What else should you know about a contest?
The most important thing is to keep your promises: you must send the promises prize(s) to the winner in the promises day. Any delay and any excuse will cast a shadow of doubt about you and your future contests.
If you find this post interesting or if you want to add anything, please leave a comment.
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But how do contests go in the long run? Do people stay or do they just come for the prizes and leave when they dont win?
Thomas Sinfield’s last blog post..Don’t Lets Your Voice Get Drowned Out By What You Say!
Great post, good resource for those thinking about holding a contest. Thomas, depending on the subject matter, prizes offered, etc, the most traffic you will get, and therefore generally more readers. Most contests require a link back to the blog holding the contest, which is good in any case. The important thing is to give out prizes worth entering for. I see many blogs trying to hold a contest for a $10 prize or something, and they have very few entries.
BTW, getting features on Contestu.com is a secret right now
but I will put something up soon where being featured in an option when submitting a contest. I was thinking get featured for 1 week for $5, 1 month for $15, what do you think?
Sensei’s last blog post..$6,000 in Prizes from Crucial Hosting
Ah, sorry about the typos above, I wrote that pretty fast. By the way, $100 for a contest is good, and hopefully you get a lot of entries. However, a good idea is to offer multiple prizes, even two prizes is more enticing for people to enter. For example, you could offer a second place winner 2 months of free advertising on your sidebar; it doesn’t cost you anything extra, and it’s valuable.
Sensei’s last blog post..$6,000 in Prizes from Crucial Hosting
@Thomas, I think the contest is only the beginning, a way to send a buzz on the internet and to gain some RSS readers. It’s entirely up to you if you can keep your readers. I mean after the contest, some good articles on your blog are a very good thing. But if you lie down and do nothing, of course your readers are going away. So yes, if you know how to develop the results of the contest, it goes in a long run.
@Sensei, thanks for your appreciation. I have some good entries until now, and besides the big prize, I will give a link to all the competitors. Isn’t a little late to announce now that it will be a prize for the second place?
Hi Diana, this is truly a great post…I will refer to this post when I do my contest..for now, I’m going to plan what to do..but now, I’m currently fixing my blog…that is why it cannot be access…I’m contacting my server support…hopefully, it can be resolve very soon…
Thanks, nimrodjo. I’m sorry you have such problems. I have them, too
[...] 134u.com, the folks currently running the $100 Birthday Contest, wrote up a good resource for those thinking about running a blog contest. They answer why you should run one, what types of prizes to offer, how to promote the contest, what your rules should be, and other information regarding contests. If you think your blog or business might benefit from running a contest, go check out 5 questions about running a contest. [...]
Great resource list and just in time. I’m planning to run my own contest with some great prises and just needed the info in one convenient location.
You just provided it
Alex’s last blog post..To Upgrade Or Not To Upgrade, That Is The Question