Hello All: Had a general question for Bloggers. I was curious how many people here have run contests on there blogs? If you have run one, have you seen much success? We are running our first o one of our blogs and was just curious about others experiences.
A contest needs to be very viral, and very real. I am going to run a contest on my blog that is giving away an iPod touch that I will buy myself from best buy. The idea is to get RSS readers and comments on my blog. I will let you know how it goes.
I have ran contests in the past and seem to get a ton of readers while the contest is going on, but none that really stick. For me they have only generated a short burst of traffic, nothing long term.
Blog contests are normally scams and most bloggers have finally started to understand this. So if you want to start a contest make sure that the results cannot be tampered with and that all aspects of the rules are well defined before starting. Think of everything before starting and make sure that the objectives of the contest can be reached. Most bloggers start ambitious contests and never reap any benefits.
I've ran a few in my time; all I ended up wasting a lot of money on, but it gives good publicity and a short burst of traffic to the site. The latest contest I ran was for $500, and I managed to get nearly 500 entries by comments and 2 websites linking to my site. As for earnings, I made around $100 since the contest was up. So you can say its around $400 loss but due to the contest, I got around another 50 or so comments on my other posts and now have around 35 - 75 extra daily visitors so I think it will pay off in the long term. But that was just an example. My advice would be, if you are going to hold a contest, don't make it too unrealistic, make it easy for the people to take part in it and make sure you give your blog a good reputation by actually giving the winner the prize.
I've added bold to the most important part like I said many bloggers are scammers trying to make a quick buck no matter what!!! Make sure the whole process is fair.
Well make sure the prize is something worthy. As stated above by Emperor, make sure that the contest should not look like a scam or bogus. The success depends upon how you market the contest.
I had a contest with $2,000 worth (in online goodies) of prizes... I drew the winners, but only a few of them actually claimed it...
Lol, if you want to give them away please be my guest.... I think it is time I write an eBook " Creating blog contests - For dummies "
I gave them away thrice, no response from the winners... I even emailed them Ah well, less work for me
Before making a contest make sure you can offer something valuable. Otherwise nobody will participate and that will hurt your reputation/brand.
I always run contests on my blog. Having blog contests or any type of giveaway will always increase your traffic and readership base. Just make sure that what you get in return will benefit you as well.
Via PM, we have gotten some really good feedback on the contest we are running, but I was still hoping to hear some more. We have this contest: http://www.selectindex.com/blog/selectindexs-first-contest-over-200-in-prizes/ And so far we have only had a few people ask about it. We get a decent amount of traffic to our site/blog so I was wondering why people here think we have not had more entrants. Are the rules too tough? Are the prizes not compelling?
I am running a contest currently. It was intended to give away $20 for subscribing to my feeds. Its doing good. If you guys like to participate here is the link to contest details http://www.cosmocentral.com/post.as...20e0f#id_c127ca10-25ab-4106-b7fe-3bdd4995ffd4