May 9 2008

Comment Friday for May 9th

We are heading to Las Vegas! What a long week it’s been. Our contests haven’t gotten the response I was hoping for. Make sure to enter for the $100 giftcard!

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.

This week I was wondering about contests. Have you ever sponsored a contest? If so what was the end result? Good enough to do it again?

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    13 Comments on this post

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    1. Kelly @ Pass the Torch said:

      I sponsor regular contests and get great participation. I enjoy hosting the giveaways because it’s fun and a great way to bring in new people.

      May 9th, 2008 at 4:10 am
    2. Not John Chow said:

      I have sponsored a few different contests with mixed results. I find that if you do not have a high traffic site, it is much more difficult getting the attention. However, I have found that some types of contests are better than others. EntreCard lovers love to pick up EC Credits and Stumble Upon users love stumbles! If you can give a prize that will draw in a specific group it will help drive traffic.

      May 9th, 2008 at 5:38 am
    3. K-IntheHouse said:

      I am actually sponsoring a cool contest at SpicyTasty.com – Fortune Cooking Contest. Since the deadline to enter is June 1st, think the participation will start to pick up from now on. I have seen that a contest being picked up by the big contest blogs like the Contest Blogger helps spread the word and hence get more participants. Keeping it simple helps a lot more. Good luck on yours and I am entering this one. 🙂

      May 9th, 2008 at 5:52 am
    4. K-IntheHouse said:

      Oops here’s the Fortune Cooking Contest link.

      May 9th, 2008 at 5:54 am
    5. Erica said:

      I have sponsored one contest by donating EC. The end result was some new traffic (though not a lot).

      May 9th, 2008 at 6:30 am
    6. Anne-Marie said:

      The most successful contest I held was just before Christmas. A book publisher was giving me a basket full of children’s books and I think a lot of my readers saw it as a great holiday gift for their family. I had almost 80 entries into that contest. However, these days every other blogger is doing a contest, so the participation has gone down. I do find that companies that are sponsoring prizes are willing to ship the goodies out to the winners instead of you doing it. That saves a lot of postage money. However, I was recently told that I have to be careful with running contests by someone who does it on her blog and who has consulted with legal experts about doing them. You must have all that legal mumbo jumbo listed as well as make sure that the contestants are over 18, legal residents of the US, etc. Doing all that when my contests aren’t bringing in the traffic, isn’t worth it anymore. So I’ve decided to give them up.

      May 9th, 2008 at 7:06 am
    7. Linda said:

      I actually did do a contest once and the prize was a coffee mug with a design on it by my daughter from Cafe Press. The drawing was of “Death Eating a Cracker”, a saying that my old grandmother used quite frequently, and it was a great looking coffee mug but I didn’t get the participation that I would have liked. In order to enter the contest, a person simply had to write a post about a time they felt like Death eating a cracker themselves and link back to my blog. Easy enough, right? Well, either people have just never felt bad or they weren’t inspired to write about it!

      I might consider doing a contest again sometime but I’m just not sure how or for what I would do it for. I’d have to really give it some thought but contests really are fun! Good luck with this one!

      May 9th, 2008 at 8:52 am
    8. BobbyT said:

      I am currently sponsoring TheNetFool’s contest but it has not ended yet. So far I am enjoying some backlinks and has an improved Technorati rank. I am not complaining, this is the standard benefits of sponsoring a contest and my sponsor cost is below $10.

      If I am sponsoring more pricy gifts & prices though, I will expect the participants to probably subscribe to my blog or write a post about my blog.

      The result has been good, and I will definitely sponsor more contests in the near future. Until I have better content on my blog, then I will look for sponsors for my own contest, hehe!

      May 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am
    9. Dave said:

      Funny you should post this today. I just last night decided to piggy back a contest that a larger corporation is sponsoring. They are encouraging people to make youTube videos and offer a $5,000 cash prize. I decided to piggy back it and toss in an extra $100 from my PayPal account if they mention my website in their video. I’ll let you know how it goes.

      May 9th, 2008 at 10:04 am
    10. Bryan said:

      I haven’t sponsored a contest yet, but I am hoping to in the near future. First I have to find something worth offering up.

      May 9th, 2008 at 10:34 am
    11. tazdog said:

      I just started one today, mainly to try and get some traffic.. prize nothing big, but at the same time trying to promote mom’s business…

      I have had a lot of views so far but nothing else..

      I’m sure the better the prize, more entries.

      May 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
    12. Mary_Freebies said:

      I already hosted 3 contests:
      – My first contest was of a hosting package. I know from experience that non-physical prizes are not as appealing as cash. Only bloggers could enter. I had less than a dozen of entries.
      – My second contest was of a GC of $120 at a shop of personalized items. That one was a hit, because it was open to non-bloggers as well and only a comment was enough to enter. I had 300+ entries.
      – My third contest was of a board game. Open to non-bloggers. A little less than 100 people entered.
      These 2 giveaways were part of a carnival, hence their success.

      I will definitely host new contests again. After realizing that I won over $1000 worth of prizes (reviews, links and banners excluded), I decided to give back more to the community.

      May 9th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
    13. Jennifer Bogart said:

      I have had two contests, one on my own, around 22 entries, the other in conjunction with Bloggy Giveaways, a large carnival – I was late but had 50+ entries. I plan on doing more contests :).

      May 9th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

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