Comment Friday received 23 responses, not too bad. I have already went through and joined everyones MyBlogLog community that left a comment. I also visited each blog. If I am not in your mybloglog community, leave me a comment with the link. I’d be happy to join.

We had several great comments, and most decided to stay on “topic” and talk about contests. You can’t win if you don’t enter! What’s the problem with entering easy contests, you just may win. Remember if you leave a comment at our day planner giveaway you are entered to win! How easy is that?

Now on to the winner of Comment Friday. I have chosen Jamaipanese. He has been a pretty active member of our community since he found our blog. Jamaipanese.Com is a blog updated by a Jamaican who finds Japan and the Japanese culture interesting. Talk about a very detailed niche eh? He is also proudly displaying the IReply Button.

If you want to be considered for blog of the week make sure to come by and comment on fridays!

I’m a little late on Comment Friday, but that’s okay. Last week I stumbled everyone’s blog who left a comment. This week I will go through and join everyone’s MyBlogLog if I haven’t already. *Don’t forget to join ours!*

The topic this week shouldn’t surprise many. I have been blogging about contests lately, they have been pretty popular lately. There are tons of contests going around, and for good reason. We want to know, have you ever won a contest? What have you won? This would also be an excellent time to plug your contest if you are running one.

Remember we chose several contests to blog about on the weekend, so we might just pick yours. Send your bribes to me!

You don’t have to comment about the “topic”, just let us know whats on your mind. That may just start its own discussion. Thank you for participating!

“I love getting up in the morning. I clap my hands and say, ‘This is gonna be a great day’.”

Show your enthusiasm! People want to read your posts because the words are passionate about whatever the topic of the day is. It doesn’t matter which expert you speak to ‘content is king’ and always will be. Pick topics that you are interested in, I mean come on!? If you’re not interested how can you expect your readers to be?

Look around your daily life to find inspiration, I like to carry around a notepad so when I see something that sticks out in my mind I quickly jot down the idea so it’s not lost to the ages!

“The key to this business is personal relationships.”

Without your readers your blog is nothing… well not nothing but without readers your ideas aren’t getting out there and you’ve probably got some great things to say.

When people come to your blog they want to connect with you and the best way to do so is to become part of a community. They want to let you know if they agree or disagree or know what you’re talking about! But they also want to know that you’re listening as well as talking. Answer their comments! Acknowledge what they’ve taking the time to say even if they simply say hi.

“Hey… I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success.”

Lee
Quit Your Day Job
Urban Cultivation
Pop Culture Heroines

The contests on blogs have been growing daily, and many bloggers are considering starting there own contests.

Blog about your Blog is definitely receiving some buzz, not only for the reviews we’ve purchased, but the contests we’ve hosted as well. I read every post about our site, and usually we get comments from their readers, saying they are glad they found our blog. This is just from people mentioning our contest on their blog.

Hosting contests can not only give you SEO for a key term with link back competitions, but they can also generate buzz for your website. However if you want to run a contest, you better make sure it is successful.

Have a Deadline

Make sure to have a deadline for your contest. The number one reason I will not participate in a contest, is if there isn’t a deadline. “Contest closes sometime” doesn’t work for me. I also may not participate if the contest deadline is months away. Why should I enter now… there’s months until it closes…

Make People Want to Enter

You don’t want your readers to wait, forget, and not enter your contest. Give them a reason to enter NOW. Limited time only, contest will end in 3 days! I’ll never run this again, it’s the best prize! You get the idea. If you are running the contest to generate buzz or SEO, you want it NOW not in 3 months. At least I do.

Offer a Prize

Any prize will do. If it’s free I’m there! You can never go wrong with cash. If you want to be different, being unique may also work. Have something you never used that would be great to giveaway? I have several items that are going to be “prizes” soon, still in the box. Not just the day planner, but there is also a digital picture key chain, and a nice thermos set that I will give away soon. (they were all free)

Make it Easy

If you want a big response, don’t make your contest complicated, make it fun. Leaving a comment on the contest post is the easiest contest there is. Asking for a 200 word review and 3 linkbacks to your website, is not as appealing. Why would I review your website/blog for FREE with the CHANCE to win 20$, when we charge 35$ for a review direct?

Pick What You Want to Promote

Make sure the contest has benefits for you. Whether you are trying to rank for a certain keyword in google, or get your RSS Feed Readership up, base your contest on that. You can even get that all in one. “Linkback to our website saying “Increase Website Traffic” and subscribe to our RSS feed to get extra entries!”

Publicize your Contest!

This is the most essential for a good contest. If no one knows about it, there won’t be many entries. Just for this reason there are many contest blogs that blog only about contests (too many to list here).

Forums are also a great way to promote your contest. Don’t underestimate the power of posties at PayPerPost. Try other forums as well, like bloggerforum and Wahm Forum. Not only did I use forums to promote our day planner contest, I also posted about the contest on other blogs I contribute to.

The perfect blog contest is pretty easy, you just have to determine what you want. Make sure to have a deadline. Offer a prize, any prize! Publicize, promote, promote, promote. And last but not least, be sure of what you want. Don’t start the contest and figure it out as you go. Set the rules, prize, and deadline from the beginning.

Yesterday I blogged about ReviewMe announcing their Advertorials. I even wrote the post up about it before they sent out the email to the publishers and advertisers. I was pretty quick to post about it, but I jumped the gun a little bit. After reading the email sent, I wanted to post about it again. This is what the email stated

For Advertisers:

You control the message. Enter up to 250 words including links back to your website and also an image of your choice.

You can login and get full impression and click tracking on your campaign.

You choose which top blogs to place your Advertorial.

For Publishers:

Less work. Simply cut and paste our code into your blog.

All advertorials are by default marked as a “SPONSOR POST:” so the disclosure is done for you.

You retain full control. Accept or reject any Advertorials purchased.

Basically, the advertiser is writing their own review, all the blogger has to do is accept it, and post it. There are some positives and negatives to Advertorials that I see already.

Since the advertiser is writing the post, it is not truly reflecting what the blogger thinks about the website. This may not sit well with some bloggers.

There is also the chance that an advertiser will post the same advertorial on several blogs. Therefore the same exact content would be published. I like all of our reviews to be unique.

With that said, I would consider posting advertorials on this blog, for the same price as our regular ReviewMe listing (60$).

The email went on to read

We think our RM Advertorial will revolutionize the paid blogging world by giving advertisers complete control over their messaging, along with a branding opportunity and the reporting metrics they have come to expect with traditional online media buys. Bloggers will also benefit from an additional revenue source to supplement ReviewMe’s suite of offerings.

Did everyone else catch that too? I highly doubt advertorials will revolutionize paid blogging. I will go on to say that ReviewMe’s Advertorials will have little to no affect on paid blogging. Blog networks are already doing what ReviewMe is, twice as “effective”. I could buy a sponsored review, written by me, to go on 20-100 blogs for what it would cost for one advertorial.

I don’t think this is the big hit ReviewMe is looking for.

I logged into ReviewMe to update our rankings since we have seen a surge of links to our site, dropping nearly 1,000 spots on technorati.

I then noticed a new feature on ReviewMe called Advertorials. At first I thought it was something to compete with Text-Link-Ads , but after research I found out that was incorrect.

What it is, is what many blogging networks do. Have the advertiser write the post, and then put it on your blog. Instead of having the blogger write the post, now the advertiser has the chance to put exactly what they want written about their site.

There is definitely good and bad with this. The bad obviously is the same advert going out to several blogs. Also, it will not reflect the opinion of the blogger, so it may just be the advertiser praising their own site. However, I would consider posting them on this blog, the price is the same as writing the review myself.

Should ReviewMe have released this new feature? I can think of several different things they could have gone with. Not sure that this is the best idea. What do you think?

Sometimes your content may not be enough to continue to draw visitors as much as you would like. To keep them constantly coming back for more. Or maybe you just need to offer them incentive. We have received a huge response by just giving away a day planner that I got for free.

I have been writing about how important offering incentive to your readers is. Blog incentive is what I like to call it. I mention incentive most recently on my post about Three Steps to Keeping Your RSS Feed Readers. Incentive is important not only for keeping your readers, but getting new ones.

I received a great comment on that post asking about what incentive they should give for their blog.

Sheila said “I’m drawing a blank on how I might use an incentive. I really don’t know how many of my RSS readers are bloggers, so I’m not sure offering a link is valuable incentive that my readers would appreciate. I’d be grateful for any ideas you might have regarding incentives I could offer.”

Incentive can really be anything and sometimes it might depend on your niche. You basically just want to offer your subscribers something special, maybe a limited offer, cash, prizes, or exclusive content perhaps.

We recently gave away a mini fridge to one of our RSS Feed Readers, and that increased our subscriber count by nearly 100! It was a unique prize and received some buzz.

If your readers may not be bloggers thats ok. Obviously offering free links wouldn’t work here, but other things might. Open up discussion on how you can give back to your readers. Many people do fund raisers  or sell things, you may be able to help that way.

Incentive can also be something simple like a T-Shirt giveaway. Post a contest and select a random comment to win. Take Zac Johnson for example. He attended Ultimate Affiliate Summit and left with tons of free stuff. Now he is turning around to give it away to his readers. The only thing that will essentially cost him is small shipping fees.

If you really want to host a contest and still aren’t sure what to give please contact us and I sure can help. I am also willing to sponsor a contest on your blog!