I recently purchased a domain that would be perfect for running a SEO Contest(SEOContest.ca). I would like to run a SEO Contest but I am unsure on how to acquire sponsors for it. If anyone has any ideas or is interested in sponsoring it please let me know. Thanks. I believe Search Engine Optimization is the BEST section for this topic. If I am wrong please move me.
Contests are becoming dime a dozen - so you'll need to be very creative. Especially if you don't have a strong brand behind you, yourself. Frogengine has a directory competition due to start soon and that's going to be interesting because it's focussed on a particular type of performance. I haven't seen the criteria and the measurement tools yet but it promises to be more creative than just ranking first for a nonsense keyword.
Pace yourself! Why do you want it to be huge? What is your ultimate goal? Just to have a huge contest?
Yes, my ultimate goal is to have a huge contest. Maybe one every six months. I am going to start planning this and writing up a site as soon as I can.
I want to let you know that mindtools.com ran a logo deisgn contest and they paid only $150 to the winner!!!. They are big company but still they paid only that much. If you see their contest page you can see there were about 700+ logos were submitted. So you can always start a contest with any amount.
You also have to be mindful of the effort required to win. Nigritude Ultramarine and other keyword contests have seen people putting in huge amounts of time, soliciting media exposure and buying domains. The balance of risk and reward needs to be met.
Again, pace yourself. So, your goal is to have a huge contest? Regardless of expense? Then it is easy. You may want to define your goal with some constraints. For instance, one of the most recent SEO contests was $10,000 out of the pocket of the guy running it. You ready to make it that HUGE? If so, I am on board.
Same, but the winner earnt every penny. I was part of the Celiac team and huge amount of energy went into 4th place.
Yeah, I know i need to put some more planning into this one. I am definitely going to spend many hours getting everything ready. One of my goals is to have a very large amount of contestants. A contest with more contestants is more fun.
Sure, but SEO contests aren't really about fun. It strikes me they are largely about marketing, for the company that is sponsoring the contest. The Nigritude Ultramarine resulted in a lot of publicity and backlinks for the sponsors, for instance. Not all SEO contests are a success in this regard. Shoemoney's $1000 one was a negative experience, according to his report. So plan exactly what you want to get out of this before you rush in. You need to define the rules clearly, and set a budget. And don't expect anyone else to sponsor your contest. Why would they, when they could easily set up their own if they really wanted to and had the budget for it?
I just entered an seo contest. You can see my entry in my sig... I liked this one because it was an article that had to be written... And they had judges which were donating things for the winner... Also a huge contest will need huge incentive... Don't expect people to just come and throw money your way if you're not established.
I see your entry, but can't seem to find anything about the contest. Is there a thread here on DP (or can you start one) about it?
Here's the link: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/search-engine-marketing-scholarship/ You can also click on the first link in my sig, too, to read my entry
So, who is covering the flights to the conference? Seriously though, that's a great package you've put together. Well done.