The Cardinal Sin Of Blog Contests

Posted by Paul B | August 13, 2008 .

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”:-

DNXPert

ProfitBaron

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8 Comments so far

Make Money Blogging August 13, 2008 3:41 pm

Aww, don’t give them dofollow links! That just rewards the scammers for being bastards.

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Paul B August 13, 2008 3:47 pm

It’s OK I invented my very own rel property especially for them.
SEO Optimization August 14, 2008 12:49 am

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 2:32 am

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 11:10 pm

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!
Paul B August 15, 2008 8:17 am

Nice to see you back, you been busy or just taking a break? Things are still good around here, spending lots of money on this and that, trying new things. Put a pile of cash into PPC affiliate marketing and gut burnt badly again, ou know, just the usual. Oh yeah, I made the blod DoFollow as well which seemed to have had a posiotive impact on visiotr numbers and commenters!

Jeet: The worst of it was I still kept my RSS subscription to them for a month or so afterwards. I think most of these comps are a way of getting subscribers who will forget to unsubscribe.

Beth: That was the first time I’d ever won anything either, I was really excited about the $100, not like it’s a lot of money but just the actual winning of a real physical prize…..or so I thought.
Jeet August 15, 2008 8:21 am

Internet is a big place and people don’t spend time on retaining subscribers / customers. If they can generate enough marketing buzz they will get new visitors everyday.

And old internet marketers would know that old visitors become blind to ad placements and affiliate placements. It’s the new visitors who can bring in the required revenue

It’s good to see that the contest was real and they did select a winner :)) But it doesn’t matter much because they didn’t actually pay up
SEO Optimization August 16, 2008 11:29 pm

The worst is that I am not taking a break and neither am busy (that sucks I know), its just everything is disorganized where I am now (as you can see…in Macedonia). Came to see parents and relatives after 2 years, so decided to stay for a longer period so they can get fed up with me and I can expire for another 2-3 years again

I wonder if its the air over here, or just the friends that don’t respect the “I am working, can’t come out” but either way, without doing anything It seems like I am busy all the time and no work has been done the way it should.

Finally, on 19th I am going on vocation, so until then (these last few days) I have to give up my best and make sure i won’t remain without money after the vocations LoL.

Catch you back on September. Nice to hear you are doing good (well and experimenting the PPC, even tho it burns a bit).

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