I was very excited about my week of contests. I had originally planned for doing 7 separate days of contests. However, only the first day got enough entries to be worthwhile (22). The other two days ended with 0 and 2.

Why My Contests Didn’t Work

Well it was obvious that this format didn’t work. Doing 7 separate days is a little difficult unless the prizes are awesome (multiple) and the entry is easy.

As I mentioned the entry to the contest has to be easy. Enough people decided to subscribe to our RSS feed for the T-shirts, but no one wanted to join Copeac for $100. Even though the prize was $100, it didn’t draw enough people to decide to enter.

The last reason has to be the time. The contest time wasn’t long enough to get sufficient entries. I did promote it, a little late, but that shouldn’t of mattered.

Contests are becoming increasingly more difficult to successfully conduct, due to the large volume of bloggers holding contests. Why join yours, when there are 100’s of others going on?

Why Your Contest Didn’t Work

Your contest probably didn’t work for any of the reasons that I wrote which are:

• Bad contest format
• Not enough prizes
• Entry wasn’t easy enough
• Too short or too long
• No promotion

When used right contests can be a great promotional tool. We are planning a big writing project for next month with great prizes to follow. It’s blog themed so there is something for everyone.

We are a little late publishing our contest round-up, but no one was here to make it go live! BAYB’s contests are over, but there are many more interesting blog contests to join.

A 4GB iPod Nano

Let’s try to win a 4GB iPod nano with EveryCall.us. Every Call is a useful website that helps you find who is calling your phone. You only have to write a blog post mentioning EveryCall.us with a link to EveryCall.us and a minimum of 150+ words. Then send an email to contest [at] everycall.us with your full name and a link to your blog post. Two winners will be randomly selected.
Ends on May 30th.

$150 Cash

Great blog contest from Wagg with a nice cash giveaway. Rules are very simple: subscribe to their RSS feed, make a post about this contest on your blog (using anchor text “Wagg.it contest”) and then leave a comment on the contest post with your URL. Winner number 1 will get $150 plus 1 month ad spot on the site. There will be a total of 20 winners and other cool prizes including entrecard credits, blog reviews and free advertising.
Ends on May 19th.

$50 Cash

Win free cash from Bali Dream Home and Bonoriau. To celebrate their 1st year of blogging they are giving away 3 prizes: $25, $15 and $10. Write a blog post about this contest (200 words minimum) including the two provided banners and you are in. It’s open worldwide, but the post must be written in English.
Ends on June 30th.

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!

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?

Ok, so your blog is coming along nicely. You have some good quality content, a fairly steady stream of visitors and you are even making a little dosh here and there. And now you’re looking to reach out to new readers and grow your audience. So you decide to purchase some advertising.

Trying to find the right advertising for your blog can be a minefield, but lucky for you I have pretty tried out the majority of common advertising concepts for you…and here they are.

Adwords – Google’s contextual advertising platform, Adwords is extremely popular and often a starting point for many new advertisers. It works great for selling stuff – but not so good for blogs. In my experience, it didn’t deliver quality click-throughs, and most of the visitors left as quickly as they came. If you are looking at this option definitely look at the site targeting feature.

Sponsored Posts – I have bought both sponsored posts directly from blog owners and with networks such as PayPerPost. Sponsored posts can often drive a lot of targeted visitors to your blog but only if you do your homework and find the right blogs. My tip, if you find a site through say PayPerPost, contact the blogger directly. They often will be happy to give you a discount if you don’t go through the network thus avoiding the large commissions PPP takes.

Text Links – Minimal traffic but could be good for SEO. But be a douche and spam the net with the same anchor text – ever wondered why John Chow doesn’t rank in Google? TextLinkAds always have discount coupons available and they shouldn’t be hard to find. Remember Text Links really isn’t all that good for traffic.

Banners – These can waste a lot of time and money! 90% of bloggers overcharge for banner advertising and from my experience (I have purchase banners on over 200 blogs), 90% aren’t worth it. My tip, try Project Wonderful, they have an automated system which is cheap! But if you have the cash, banners on the big blogs are often very well priced and deliver good click-throughs.

Traffic – no, no, no, no, no! You know the ones im talking about. The sites that sell “guaranteed” visitors, often in lots of 1000+. Even though they claim these are targeted visitors – there not! As soon as they come they go! Don’t be tempted to go the easy option. I tested it out in my early days and know just how much it can fail!

Have I missed anything? Chances are, if I have its probably obscure and not worth the time or money. What do you use?

Ok so it looks pretty bleak. All the advertising methods I have listed seem to have faults. I’m not saying they don’t work – I still spend lots on advertising, yet be careful and spend your dollars very wisely. My number referrer on my blogs is Google. I don’t use SEO tricks, I don’t place backlinks and I don’t submit my sites to directories – yet I rank in the top 10 for many popular keywords. My big tip – content!

Want more? Then follow me on Twitter and hit me up with your questions!

Hi, my name is BobbyT. I will be sharing with you on how to earn money freelance writing.

I started blogging this year on February 2008 on the Blogger free blogging service. Yes, you can definitely start blogging without investing any money at all. However, money can be handy if you intend to improve the look of your blog and its ranking as well as market it better.

There are indeed many ways to earn money online, some require initial money investment, while others do not. I don’t have initial money to spend, so I decided to earn money from one of my better skills: writing.

Starting up is one of the most difficult phase of any endeavors. I think if I were to offer my writing services in the commercial world, I will be ignored till today. Instead, through the wonders of Internet, I am immediately hired for several projects and have so far made about $60 after freelance writing for 1 month.

How did I advertise my service?
The internet is not a miracle marketplace. An excellent product or service will still be ignored if it is not advertised at the right place. As for my writing service, I decided to advertise it on bloggers and webmasters’ forums. I even left note about my service in the signature of my profiles. The response has been good and I usually conduct business through PM or I might give out my email to trusted customers.

Was it really that easy to get started as a freelance writer?
Yes and no. It all depends on your final aim. If your aim is to be a full time freelance writer, I will say that you are looking at a hard long road ahead of you. Unless you already have an excellent portfolio as a writer, you cannot expect to earn good money starting as a freelance writer. As for me, my initial aim offering writing services in forums is to establish myself as a competent writer in the market and create exposure to my service. Therefore, the strategies I employed is offering cheap but quality articles and also discounts for customers who are willing to give testimonials to the quality of my work. If you are willing to set your initial targets and rates lower, there will be no shortage of interested customers. I personally think that if you want to start freelance writing and charge high rates, you will face a lot more difficulties.

How to be successful at freelancing?
First you need good communication and networking skills. Negotiation is key to conducting successful business transactions. You also need to have adaptability. Initially I only plan to write about blogging topics, later on I began to write about other topics such as beauty care, technology reviews, celebrities, etc. You can of course insist on being the expert of specific niches, usually experts can charge more steep prices, that is if they managed to set sail at the beginning. I took the easier way out, by being a jack of all trades. Finally you need to have a business mind: think like your customers, what are their needs and expectations, try to fulfill them, make an offer that they can hardly resist.

What are my future plans?
I currently charge about $0.005 per word. I intend to increase the rate after I am more established, somewhere around $0.02 per word (finally I hope to achieve a rate of $0.1 per word, which is standard for a professional writer). I am also planning to set up a professional site soon to promote my writing services and showcase my portfolio. If all those turn out well, I will probably look at the possibility of expanding my role from a writer into a content provider, which means accepting projects from customers and delegating the work to some writers that I hire. A fair percentage of revenue earned shall be shared between me and my writers.

Have you considered a career in freelancing? How did you start freelance? Do you have tips to share to ensure freelance success?

Two days into our contest and we are doing pretty good. I am still trying to get some great prizes from sponsors. Luckily I found a great one that is willing to put up a nice prize for one lucky winner.

$100 American Express Gift Card

Just as good as cash, we have a $100 American Express gift card. This prize is from Copeac which is a great affiliate program that has lots of offers.

Copeac Mini Review

Copeac has all types of campaigns you can run from email, search and incentivized campaigns. They send out emails about their top offers that you can promote.

The service has been great, I frequently talk to my affiliate manager about different campaigns. There is big money in making loads of money (bonuses) as well as for referring people. You make 2% per affiliate you refer.

Contest Details

The contest is simple, all you have to do is register to Copeac. After you register leave me a comment here stating that you joined. If you have already joined just leave me a comment here with the name of your affiliate manager.

One random person will be chosen as the winner and sent the $100 gift card from Copeac.

You have until Tuesday May 13th 11:59PM PST to register for the contest.

One thing I hate on blogs is clutter. And yes i’m talking about those super long sidebars, flashing widgets and popup ads. And this clutter could be killing your blog with, longer page loads and the ability to distract your readers away from the content.

So here are my quick tips on how to take your blog to clutter free heaven:

1) Remove Directory Buttons – “but Anthony, the directories I submit my blog to require me to include these buttons” I here you say. Really? Are those directories driving you any traffic? There are plenty of quality that don’t require you to clutter you blog – use em!

2) Prettify Your Ads – Give your advertisers value for money by carefully placing your ads. Make sure they are clearly defined, centered in the sidebar or make sure they fit in with your design. If you don’t want flashing ads – ask advertisers only to provide static banners. In my experience it hasn’t had a major effect on income.

3) Remove Unnecessary Widgets – On wordpress blogs, you don’t need to have the archives or calendar widgets on your sidebar. Calendar is pretty much useless and just create an entire archives page.

4) Small and Sweet – Some blogs have the most ridiculous blogrolls that span pages. I like to have a max of 10 links in my blogroll, and these are just my favorite blogs. All the rest get put on a dedicated “links” page. You can also use a rotating blogroll!

5) Trim the Categories List – You definitely don’t need a category for every single post and I wouldn’t say 10 general categories is enough. To be more specific use the built in Tags (in WordPress blogs). Surprisingly, having less categories creates a more user-friendly blog.

Do you have any tips on how to cut down on blog clutter?

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