11 Tips on How to Run a Killer Blog Contest

Blog contests are awesome, they rake in tons of inbound links, easy subscribers, and quick traffic to your blog. Not only are they beneficial to both you and your blog, but they also give your readers a chance to win some fantastic prizes and show that you care about them. However, if not done properly, blog contests can bring in equally or even worse negative results…

If your contest doesn’t spread like wildfire, current sponsors won’t bother donating any prizes for future contests and it will be extremely difficult convincing others to sponsor anything as well. That’s why it’s up to you to heavily promote the contest and make sure the sponsors get a lot of free exposure.

Or maybe you’re having trouble finding sponsors in the first place, nobody will bother entering a contest with three prizes that are pure garbage with an estimated value of $10. Ask around on forums and Email sponsors of recent contests asking them to sponsor your upcoming contest, that usually works

It’s also your job to ensure that the winners receive their prizes on time and that the sponsors don’t “forget” to provide them. Your readers don’t want to hear any excuses, all they want to see is that package in their mailbox and it’s up to YOU to make it happen.

But once again, a well planned contest with some fabulous prizes can lend a really big hand in taking your blog to the next level. The amount of low quality contests these days has seriously started to bug me, so if you’re planning on holding any contests soon, scan through my list first, you just might find out something you hadn’t thought of before

1. Contest or Competition?
The first thing you have to decide on is whether you want to have a contest or competition. Basically, the only difference is that in a contest, winners are randomly chosen, but in a competition, the winners are chosen based upon the number of points they collect. In my opinion, competitions produce much better results since people usually work harder when they know that the first place is completely up to them.

You can award points to contestants based upon specific tasks they complete, eg. posting comments on do-follow blogs with your blog URL and anchor text. You can give different tasks different points based upon the difficulty of and several other factors you choose.

2. Search For Prizes With a Minimum Value in Mind
Before you go out and start looking for sponsors (unless they already came to you), setting a minimum value for the prizes will help make your life a lot easier. Keep the minimum value reasonable, if you’re running a contest in celebration of reaching 50,000 subscribers, then I don’t believe that a text link worth three dollars is very appropriate. When you send out Emails to potential sponsors or ask for prizes on related forums, stating the minimum value of the prize will save you a lot of time and headaches.

Remember, the more valuable the prizes are, the more contestants you’ll have, but it also means more work for you in finding people willing to sponsor expensive prizes.

3. Make the Contest Easy to Join
No matter how good the prizes are, if you make it difficult for people to join, they simply won’t! The same goes for competitions, if contestants are required to create ten thousand blogs, get them indexed by Google, AND then link to your blog with a certain anchor text to obtain one point, don’t count on a large turnout.

4. Contests Are All About Having Fun!
Not only are contests a way to show appreciation toward your readers, but they are also about having fun. I have seen blog contests ranging from adding a caption to an image to producing the best Photoshopped image of John Chow. The contestants had fun, showed off their Photoshop skills and creativity, AND were given the chance to win some smashing prizes!

Most contests held on internet marketing/making money blogs nowadays are only focused on the blog, not on the contestants themselves. To gain points, contestants must subscribe to the blog via Email (regardless whether or not they are already subscribed via a feed reader), make a blog post about the contest, link to the blog with the specified anchor text, and do so many other useless boring things.

When was the last time you saw a photography magazine holding a contest requiring contestants to promote the magazine to their friends and family? The point is, keep it fun, for you and your readers!

5. Make Sure You Have the Prizes BEFORE the Contest Starts
No matter how trustworthy the sponsors are, sometimes they simply forget about you and your contest the minute they’ve gotten their share of free promotion. Maybe they really do have a bad memory, but it’s still your job to ensure that the prizes are in your possession BEFORE the contest starts, be it eBooks, Software, or tangible products.

When a winner is chosen and he doesn’t find his Nintendo Wii in his mailbox one week later as promised, he will be after you and not the sponsors! If sponsors are worried about you misusing the products or running off with them, then you’re better off dealing with people that actually do trust you!

6. Give Out All the Necessary Details
You don’t want to be bombarded with questions about the contest the minute you publish the article, nor do you want to end up with hundreds of unacceptable entries. This can all be avoided by simply giving out all the details and rules in the same post as the contest article. Even if it may seem pretty obvious to you (eg. no blackhat methods allowed), it might no occur to others might or they might use the excuse that you didn’t mention anything about no blackhat methods being involved.

7. Take it Easy
Remember, contests are all about having fun, so try to keep them as fun and simple as possible. If you know that the entries are going to take days to sort through and judge or involve some other kind of time consuming work, you’re better off using another idea for you contest. Just chill

8. Don’t Keep Track of the Entries, Let the Contestants Do That Themselves
I know this tip might seem a bit weird, but seriously, don’t keep track of all the points each contestant has, tell them to do it themselves. If they really want to win, then I’m sure they won’t have a problem keeping track of all the things they’ve done to gain points and then send them over to you when the contest ends. Just tell them to send you an Excel file with all the details one day before the contest ends so you can tally up all the points and select the winner.

9. Don’t Postpone The Contest’s End Date
Whatever happens, do NOT postpone the contest’s end date! When you tell your readers that the contest is going to end on Saturday, then you end it on Saturday!

10. Tell Them When The Contest Ends
I occasionally stumble upon contests that do not mention an end date anywhere in the post. This can either be because the blogger simply forgot to include the end date, or because he’s simply a greedy person who wants the largest amount of people to join. Either way, most people will not join if they don’t specifically know when the contest will end, so be sure to tell them if you want them to participate.

11. When Will the Results Be Published?
Now that the contest is over, everyone is waiting for something much more important… the results! Just tell your readers when you’ll be publishing the results and that will definitely make them subscribe to your blog and keep coming back to your website on the big day to see whether the results are up yet.

People don’t like feeling left out, especially if they’ve gone the extra mile in participating in the contest, don’t make them feel that way.

Bonus Tip: Do NOT Tell Them to Stumble the Contest Post
Something I have seen several bloggers do is tell their readers to Stumble the contest post. I don’t know why, but that definitely isn’t clever! You see, StumbleUpon is a network of over five million users, and getting your post Stumbled a hundred times might help the first few hours, but eventually it will be voted down and will disappear with the rest of the spammy submissions.

Sure, it might get you a few thousand visitors, but once it spreads out and more Stumblers see it, you’re doomed. Stumblers don’t like being told what to Stumble, especially if there are incentives to doing it. Of course, this is just my opinion based upon past experiences, but you might get lucky, right?

As you see, it doesn’t take thousands of dollars worth of prizes to throw a killer contest, just some basic guidelines and you’ll be alright! I don’t plan on holding a contest until I reach 500 subscribers which is a pretty important milestone in my opinion, but! When I do hold a contest, I guarantee that it will blow away every single one out there. Although, I might hold a few mini-contests every now and then, you know, the usual ad spots and reviews, something simple

What do you think are some of the key essentials to a successful blog contest? What are some of the things you dislike about all the blog contests nowadays?

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