Blog Contests Are Lame…! Yeah, Some…

Image from WikipediaWhat is your opinion on blog contests? Some say they’re good for publicity and building buzz around. While others say, they’re lame and useless. My own opinion, I don’t mind blog contests I participated in. They cost me a little time and effort. And if they took more than usual, the prizes are usually rewarding and the winning probability is high.

So how do you bloggers can make your contests don’t end up being misunderstood as a shameful promotion effort?

First, if you require the entrants to subscribe their email for feeds, you should have great contents delivered otherwise the contest will look like a cheap bribe. Many subscribers will unsub as soon as the contest ends, Doesn’t care if they win or not, if your content sucks, they won’t need anything from you until you have another contest .

If one of the conditions is to sign up with a sponsor’s service, then they better have a really good service indeed. Ask the contestants to do the prerequisites because they’re worth doing, but…

…You also need to offer interesting incentives. Regardless of how great your content or how great the service is, the first thing the readers look is the prize, qualifications second. If they think the prize doesn’t worth their time, your contest could end no entries.

So it works vise versa between bloggers and readers. While readers examine the prizes first, bloggers pay more attention to anything they’re promoting with the contest to retain the contest effect after the contest, as long as possible (like a steady number of RSS subscribers after the contest). Secondly, a rewarding award for the winners. Don’t forget to provide extra prizes for runner-ups to keep the winning probability high for every entrants.

There are other factors to successfully hold a contest and my mentions above are based on my experience as an entrant. For now, I haven’t planned to hold my own contest.

Speaking of being an entrant, my participation on blog contests during March has awarded me more prizes than February. Here’s the list:

• A premium WordPress theme from General Marketing Blog
• A 125×125 adspot on Problogging
• Another 125×125 adspot from Espreson
• Yet another 125×125 adspot from Blog Badly
• A free copy of Caroline Middlebrook’s Stumble Rush
• $50 from Josh Spaulding for winning Caroline’s Stumble Rush
• 10 Wiki pages and 125 Entrecard credits from General Marketing Blog (again…!)
• Third place victory with the following prizes from The WWW Observer:
  • $10 cash via PayPal
  • 200 Entrecard credits
  • 1 link on the 2nd proxy template by PSDproxies.com
  • Free proxy on a .info domain and free hosting for a year
  • One Money Reign Shirt
  • A WPDesigner.com WordPress Themes Club Membership
• An advertising package from Carl Ocab as follows:
  • One 125 x 125 ad spot for a month worth $50 from Viral King
  • One 125 x 125 ad spot for a month worth $20 from Henry
  • One RSS Text Link for a month worth $10 from Putting Blogs First
• An Exclusive Blog Themes from Unique Blog Designs ($100 value) from Winning The Web’s Craziest Internet Marketing Contest. Just FYI: UBD’s clients include Entrecard, John Chow, Shoemoney, WhyDoWork.com and Zac Johnson! So I guess I’ll see these guys at the top …

Now, would you also like to list your victories? Find contests interesting to you and follow these steps to increase your chance winning a contest.

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