What I Think Of Blogging Idol And Its Contestants
Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock for the past couple of weeks, you definitely must have heard of “Blogging Idol”. If not, it’s this huge contest held by Daniel Scocco (author of DailyBlogTips) with a $1,500 cash prize. Ever since the contest began (July 1st), I have seen countless bloggers blog about it and share their opinion on it.
A recent post I read over at theNetFool.com really inspired me into writing my own post on what I think of this whole competition and a few of its contestants. If you check out Jim’s post, you’ll notice that he wasn’t too happy with the way the winner will be chosen and why the contest fails to measure real success.
Anyway, I decided to write this post giving my opinion on the subject.
The objective of the contest is to get the highest number of RSS subscribers within one month. Bloggers are allowed to use all methods that do not include paid promotion or blackhat methods. But if you check out the official contest homepage, you’ll notice that there are over 100 contestants! No matter how much time you have, it would be practically impossible to keep track of everything these blogs are doing to gain subscribers.
I could easily subscribe to my own feed a couple hundred times using disposable Email addresses and not caught be 
As you can see, the number of RSS subscribers is not a very good factor to use to decide the winner. I know that all contests can be cheated, but there are many different techniques that could have been used to decrease the number of cheaters.
A really good idea proposed by Germz was that Daniel insert a piece of code on all the contestants websites to keep track of their statistics using a service like Google Analytics. That made me wonder, why hadn’t Daniel thought of that? Soon I discovered that it was even worse than using the subscriber count for a number of reasons:
1. 100+ new Google accounts would need to be created
2. Some participants might face trouble inserting the code
3. If a problem occurs, it could take a while to fix
4. Imagine trying to keep track of 100+ blogs daily. Using the current method, all that is needed to be done is subtract the final count from the initial subscriber count
All right smart guy, what would you do? First of all, I would have limited the number of participants by conducting interviews, finding details about everyone willing to join, etc. Next, I would use multiple factors to choose the winner such as Alexa Rank (I know it’s useless, this is just an example), Technorati Rank, Unique Visitors, Bounce Rate, Page Views, etc.
Daniel, please don’t take this as a personal attack on yourself or anything of the sort, I know that your main intentions are too keep this contest as fun as possible! 
All I’m trying to say is that there are some areas in your contest that are flawed and was suggesting alternate ways to fix them. (I don’t even know if Daniel reads my blog 
)
Now to the contestants…
Two of the most talked about blogs in this contest are “Stock Market India” and “Rome Uy“. A couple of people have accused them of cheating and others even went to the extent of calling them a disgrace to their country. I won’t be accusing anyone of anything right now, all I will be doing is analyzing their blogs…
If you check out the feed analysis (or graph above) of the “Stock Market India” blog, you will notice that his subscriber count has been steadily increasing over the past six months. But you will also notice that the number of hits is much lower than the number of subscribers. Jason aka The University Kid has always said that if the number of subscribers is higher than the number of hits, something is going on… 
As for Rome Uy, this is where I am really suspicious. According to his feed Analysis, he will have 4,092,344,318 subscribers within 12 months! Just to let you know, that number of people do not use the internet. And if you check out the chart above, you will notice the sudden massive subscriber jump he had this month. Once again, his hits are lower than his subscriber count, which is an indicator of something going on….
By no means is Feed Analysis perfect (heck, it shows 460+ million subscribers to my blog after 12 months!) but it does give you a pretty good idea about a blog feed’s statistics.
Am I accusing anyone of anything? No. Frankly, I couldn’t care less who wins (unless it’s me, of course 
) and how they did. As long as I am having fun and trying harder because of this contest, that is all what matters to me. I actually would like to thank Daniel for this contest since it has been the huge motivation boost I recently needed, thank you
I might be publishing a post later on listing the top 10 contestants, so be sure to subscribe to my feed to stay tuned!
Good luck to all the contestants! 
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
24 Responses to “What I Think Of Blogging Idol And Its Contestants”
I wonder if I joined in with all the trickery I know and with previous hacking experience. I think your right when saying that they have a very poor manner of selecting the winner.
@Gerard, but the reality is that no type of contest is perfect
Nothing in our world is flawless, and yet we go on with our lives everyday…
I am just treating the contest as motivation. I know I wont win, but it is fun to compete because you are more likely to work harder and in then end if you have more subscribers that when you started you did win
Hey Rajaie, thanks for making little sense in this post. I more or less agree to your point that the hits should be increasing as per the subscriber count. And even I was stuck into this problem few days ago [still did not get a full solution] but in my opinion - the full post that I used to deliver through feedburner might stop the reader to visit the blog reading it. Due to the nature of subscribers [No net savvy, only finance niche and investor types] they are not much bothered about what else I have on the blog but more inclined to if they get to know what I wanted to pass on like buy calls or split, bonus issue news in stock market.
What I did recently as an experiment is - stopped delivering full post in the feedburner feed, let’s see if it works. But I am not sure whether it would work - do you think so?
@Tom, looks like we both have the same viewpoints
@Stock Market Informer, in my opinion, your readers will be disappointed and unsubscribe from your feed if you do not use full posts in the feed, but I guess that it ultimately depends on the type of readers you have.
It looks like a lot of work for a $1500 prize
And yet another flawed contest, they just don’t work over the internet. It’s way too easy to cheat your way up with chances being low of being caught. Heck you wouldn’t even need to create 100 gmail accounts to subscribe with yourself, you should just write a little program for you which can go on repeating that like 5000 times a day and within a month you’d have 1.5 million subs if not more (depending on comp speed and how many you let run doing it).
@Steve Mills, for some people, $1,500 is a lot of money
@Slevi, but I’m sure that all contests are flawed, it’s just how much
rajaie i agree with you how come subscribers count is factor , there are MANY ways to cheat and get MORE subscribers
anyway my blog is still new and ill launch it next week may be i can join after all:D
I also like jim’s post except the fact that he called the competition a scam, in which for me isn’t fair… Btw, w/regards to email subscriptions it doesn’t really work that way… Why? Because feed fluctuates… and based on experience feed subscribers decrease when one of the subscribers doesn’t read his feed reader and/or not opened a link on the mail about the subscribed website…
Feedburner explained it this way “We can only track the subscriber we see in a given day. If someone doesn’t open their feedreader or live bookmarks than we can’t count them that day and won’t count them on your stats.”
u picked a real good point rajaie
I think a simple java script can easily do this
just it needes to put mailx@somemail.com
with x as a variable having position between 1 - 30 for a day
The contest title itself in not appropriate.
thats really a hontest post!
I think daniel posted in a reply to Jim’s post that certain blogs are being watched. Daniel is an experienced blogger and I am sure he has noticed all of these things as well.
The fact is in a contest with over 100 entries, it will always be difficult to manage.
I think the contest was meant as a way of motivating people! If people want to cheat, then they are only cheating themselves!
I have kept clean and seen a steady rise in my RSS count and have done no real promotion yet this month, just useful content that my readers are enjoying!
@Rajaie, i hope they would not. Let’s see.
Very good post. As one of the contestants who just started blogging about 1 week before the competition started, and had just 1 subscriber at T0, I would have liked to see some type of factoring for brand new blogs and bloggers, as opposed to the older ones with so much more experience.
But even without that, the whole idea is really fun, and I’m learning a lot from the other competitors, which for me, was the point.
So, well done Daniel, for the idea.
And since I have a captive audience here, please check out my “SEO Give-Away” competition at http://debizqablog.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/seo-give-away-competition/
Cool post! I appreciate the link back to my rant post, but you really did a great job analyzing things without offending either party. Good honest and factual analysis… thanks!
Not knowing much about this blogging craft and how to excel at it, I joined as I figured participating and analyzing over 100 bloggers trying to excel would lead me to the answers of how to do so. The cheating part….I think it would be very abnormal to have over 100 contestants competing for a significant cash prize and not have at least a few cheaters. So I imagine there musy be a few. It’d be interesting to see if anyone was in fact DQ’ed from cheating and what basis was made for the conclusion.
I’d almost think that a real effort to increase subscribers permanently would lead to a sustained cash flow from advertising that would far exceed the cash prize gained by winning from subscribers that were illegitimate or just temporary.
@Jim, I don’t think you can join since the contest has already started
Anyway, good luck with the launch of your blog 
@Melvin, but I think that Email subscribers are always counted when subscribed, I should test it out and let you know
@siddharth, but you would also need valid Email accounts to verify the subscription
@Pweng Bee, I wouldn’t really say that, but if you were comparing it to “American Idol” then I guess so.
@narendra.s.v, thank you
@David Shaw, I guess that is how it is with all contests, if you want to cheat, go ahead, but you’ll only be cheating yourself
@Stock Market Informer, be sure to let me know
@Debi_zyx, I am also having a lot of fun competing in this contest and learning some new tricks from other competitors
@Jim - TheNetFool, sure thing
I’m glad you enjoyed my post 
@Duane Brown, and if you cheat right now, you will eventually fail in the long run
I have been following a Blogging Idol since it had started and I have got many great blogs(including yours:D)For me you have to be honest when you do something and I hope everyone is doing just that.We might never no who is cheating and who is not but it is important to stay honest.I wish all the best to you and all the bloggers is Blogging Idol.By the way this is a great post
@Jagdesh, thank you
I’m sure that most internet users are not dumb enough to not notice someone faking his statistics, and I’m sure that when they do find out, poof! They all go bye-bye 
What's Your Take?