But I digress, I have not run a contest, I wasn’t aware that there were rules about keeping it contained to the United States. However, I just considered Jennifer’s idea of M&Ms and the cost of mailing a bag of them to Kuala Lumpur from the Motor City. Good advice.

p.s. Found you through a link from The Secret of Life.

cardiogirl, low tops optional

I have won quite a few blog contests… I’m addicted to the contests! I have won books and more books, MomAgenda Kitchen Folio and Daily Planner, American Idol DVD game, t-shirts, hats, One2Believe Jesus doll, $50 g.c to Olive Kids, $50 g.c to Kind Living Designs, ad space, scrapbook stuff, Starbucks g.c., vintage table cloth, dress for my littlest girl, hair bows for my two youngest girls, no purse sew kit, candy dish, a necklace, dvds, a reversible car seat cover, and the list goes on and on.

All aforementioned items were won since July of this year… started with the Dogs Days of Summer Giveaways.

I scout out the contests/giveaways daily and post a daily Edition of Contests Galore on my blog (a contest roundup with the majority of contests listed being NEW ones). My blog: Laura Williams’ Musings http://laurawilliamsmusings.blogspot.com I also post reviews, daily life snippets and more in addition to the daily contest roundups.

Right now, I am also running my own giveaway (my first ever sponsored one).. If you scrapbook you may be highly interested… if you don’t check it out to.. you still may want this item.
http://laurawilliamsmusings.blogspot.com/2007/09/review-giveaway-real-women-scrap-by.html

As for contests, as you know i ran my first just this week and it went super well. Had a ton of comments (close to 30) and my goal was additional backlinks, which i got a nice dozen or so. All in all, im glad i did it, and thanxs again for sponsoring a prize. In fact, the winner who i annouced earlier today, wants your prize, the 1 month link on BAYB. hehe.

I will definitely do another contest, and will stick with the photo-caption but with a twist.

Happy Friday!

I’m giving away a new video ipod nano and the response has been amazing. My goal was to increase site awareness and get some back links.

Goal achieved. One thing I’ve noticed that administering a contest is a little tricky. I tried to make the instructions as simple as possible. And yet I encountered some issues.

One person posted in a forum. So I had to specify the links needed to be in a blog. Also some people only gave me one link or didn’t give me a URL so I could find their contest post.

But I’ve been adding additional info and trying to let everyone know what’s required to make it as fair as possible.

The backlinks and the buzz created are well worth the cost of a nano. My contest doesn’t end until October 31st, so I’m sure entrants will continue to trickle in.

At the end it will probably take me hours to create the final list of entrants and draw the random number. Worldwide shipping will be interesting too.

I’ll definitely have another contest, my next one will probably be a little more structured and focus on increasing subscribers.

Glad your feeling better, Emma

Contests are great and promoted and marketed right can really help. After a few of our contests + comment friday we get tons of comments, it’s great. (There are currently 539 posts and 2,939 comments, contained within 21 categories.)

Chester, generally I keep my contests to US only if I’m shipping a prize. However, we have been able to run a few contests where we included Canada.