Hello, I currently own www.visualskirmish.com and I'm looking for ways to promote my site. It is a video and photo contest website where you pay an entry fee for a chance to win a share of prize money. I have used a variety of ways to promote the site but none have been received that well. It does pretty well when we have a free contest going on but that's about the only thing that drives people to join our contests. Any ideas on how we could improve the site would be welcome as well. Here are some of the ways we advertise: 1. Google adsense 2. Blogs 3. Forums 4. Buying traffic 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. Photocontestinformation.com 8. Some email Thanks, Jim
hi, visualskirmish as per your words you are doing good when its comes to free contest , but not for Paid right , ( correct me if i am wrong ) so you need more Traffic + more conversion for Paid contest for Traffic Social media Branding and Promotion some tricky marketing at Flicker and Photo sites and video sites video SEO Blog post and you are doing some more things so i don't want to write a long list about regular seo things for conversion ( the main part ) from my point of view you have to do some more work at your website eg: ( showing some cool testimonial or winner image of the last contest with good punch line ) there are lot more cool ways to temptate a visitor to join the contest just invest some more time on it , Good luck
HHHMMM... I am not all that certain Press Releases would work for such a site. I think when it comes to contests social media sites are perhaps the best option. YouTube seems like a great alternative. However, the video must be short, entertaining and captivating, otherwise it will not give much results. Now, the one thing that I believe may be slowing down traffic is having to pay to join. A contest that requires me to spend money does not seem like much fun or interesting to me...
Yeah, I think you have to get social in order to promote your contests. Sometimes people don't know they want to participate in a contest until it's thrust in their face.
I agree have you considered developing a community. That might work really well to promote the contests.
Thanks for all the ideas. We have been promoting a bit through Facebook ads, which do not work at all. I have also been posting contests on Facebook groups that have to do with photography and video but probably not as much as we should. I have also used Orkut a little bit and Digg. I guess you have to keep promoting to expect results which we haven't put in the work lately due to time restraints. I would like to hear a little more on the video seo ideas, like what kind of video would I promote? Would it be a user's video or make my own? We have a Community section on our site where you can create groups, forums, send and receive PM's, as well as create your own channel but nobody really uses it. Not sure why.
For a photo contest, I might even try some offline advertising. It's summer--well, it is here anyway! Is it summer vacation time where you are? Do you live somewhere close to a touristy area? Everyone will have their cameras in hand. Why not print up some flyers and slap them on car windows? Or ask some touristy establishments if you could put a poster on their windows? Since the contest is online, even if you don't live somewhere where this would work right now, do you have freinds that live somewhere where it might work? Get them to do it for you. Or outsource it to people who live in a few different cities or vacation spots. Oh, and visualskirmish is a GREAT name!
try video submission. submit your videos to tube sites. i find it converting more, but of course it depends on your niche
If the free method gets you a better response then maybe you should go that way. Just collect their email addresses and make offers related to their interests. Run a "Beautiful Baby" contest for example and then make offers or refferals to an affiliate site...you may make a bigger profit. best of luck