There is a lot of buzz around the blogosphere again about just how great contests are for boosting your blog traffic. Besides the links you can gain by having people enter by posting there’s also a number of blogs dedicated to nothing else other than summarising blog contests. This is an easy way of gaining a few extra back links. All you really need then is a prize, or prizes and some way of drawing your winners. It’s such an easy way of gaining traffic and links but beware, it can also seriously damage your reputation.
The Cardinal Sin Of Blog Contests
Your prize? What prize? Twice in recent times I’ve won on a blog contest, one was supposed to be money, the other a review. Guess how many prizes I’ve actually received? Yep, not a bloody one! It’s REALLY easy to say you’re giving this away or that away, but if you talk the talk you’ve got to walk the walk and actually do it. What’s worst is that many bloggers think that they can use the standard “we’re not responsible for getting the prizes to you” blurb. Deal with the prize “sponsor” directly and chances are they’ll completely ignore any e-mails you send. Besides I entered a contest on YOUR blog, not the sponsors. If you don’t know the person well enough to know that they’re going to deliver on their prize then why the hell are you asking them to sponsor a prize anyway? If you don’t want the responsibility of having some involvement with actually making sure entrants are getting their prizes then don’t run a contest.
I’ve only ever ran one serious contest from this blog (I don’t really count the Entrecard contest). It was for a straight up $125 via Paypal. I actually ended up giving the winner more than that, why? Because I was brought up to believe that it is better to understate your position and be able to pleasantly surprise people rather than promise the world and deliver shit. Back when I worked in full time software development when ever the “how long” question was raised I’d always give a time 1 or 2 days longer than I thought. That way when I finished it a week early it looked great! Far better than saying I can do it in a day and it taking 3. All I’m trying to say is don’t make promises that you can’t deliver on, if that promise is prizes in a contest then when you fuck up you’re going to lose a lot of reputation.
And just for the record here are the 2 contests I’ve “won”:-
8 Responses to “The Cardinal Sin Of Blog Contests”
Make Money Blogging
August 13, 2008
Aww, don’t give them dofollow links! That just rewards the scammers for being bastards.
Make Money Blogging’s last blog post..Inspire Reader Interaction With Firef.ly
|Paul B
August 13, 2008
It’s OK I invented my very own rel property especially for them.
|SEO Optimization
August 14, 2008
Hey there Paul
Its yucky to come back here after a long time and see that you were “scammed” in some way, those b….. b….
Anyway just passed by to see how are you doing, what are you up to and how things are going. Hope everything is just fine with you.
|Jeet
August 14, 2008
For once I thought you won’t be sharing the contest URLs who refused to pay up. “Not delivering” on a promise can definitely hurt any business’s reputation and in online business reputation still goes a long way
|Beth
August 14, 2008
That’s horrible. I always wonder if the announced winners are real and if they actually receive their prizes. Unfortunately, I’m skeptical of contests because I’ve never really won any!
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