A tale of two blogging contests
I had a couple of interesting experiences with contests recently. One, was a success while the other was mildly disappointing.
Why have a contest?
Contests are a great way to create a buzz and send traffic to your blog. They’re great linkbait too. I dabbled a bit with contests a year or so ago, but it’s only recently that I achieved some success. While all experiences are different, it’s my experience that blogs without a lot of existing traffic don’t do well with contests. If your blog is popular, the results can be huge.
My comments contest
A couple of months ago I noticed the community at Freelance Writing Jobs was growing by leaps and bounds, especially the amount of comments. The comments on the bottom of each post were not only the usual “I agree” type, but lots of helpful and thoughtful advice. I didn’t even need to be there! Many of my visitors were talking among themselves. In fact, I was receiving email from some of my regulars telling me how they couldn’t wait for my topic of the day so they could discuss it with others. This inspired me to host a comments contest. The top commenter on October 1st received a $50 Amazon gift certificate.
The contest was a huge success. Not only because of all the comments, but because my traffic rose – and didn’t decrease when the contest was over. People stayed and continued commenting. The amount of comments went down, but not by much. I decided to continue the momentum by offering a monthly prize to the person who comments the most. The members of my community appear to be up to the challenge.
Donating a prize for someone else’s contest
My second experience with a contest wasn’t what I expected. When I learned Darren Rowse was celebrating ProBlogger’s anniversary with a huge giveway and that he put out the word for prize donations, I offered a $25 Amazon gift certificate on behalf of Freelance Writing Jobs. I thought I might benefit from some of Darren’s traffic, but that wasn’t to be. I only received a few new visitors as a result and didn’t come close to recouping my investment.
This could be because my donation wasn’t huge, or it could be because Darren’s audience isn’t interested in a blog for freelance writers. It might even be because my link was lost in a sea of giveaways. While I’m a little disappointed at the result on my end, Darren offered his own thoughts regarding the event, and it was a success for him. I have no regrets and chalk it up to a learning experience.
Contests work
Contests do work. If your blog has the traffic and the community, contests can provide great lasting results. Keep in mind that the results might not be what you expected, but if you look at it as a lesson learned, you’ll see it’s all good.
Travis | October 14th, 2007 at 10:15 am #
I’d imagine your contribution just got lost in the sea of giveaways - I doubt even the big contributors got very much traffic from that contest, there were just too many prizes!
Rhys | October 14th, 2007 at 10:23 am #
Yeah, I’ve just ran my own contest and it achieved what I wanted - a few link backs and an increase in traffic. It just depends on who you target and how successful it becomes. I suspect like what Travis said, it got lost amongst the prizes.
Courtney TURTLE | October 14th, 2007 at 10:39 am #
You mentioned blogs without alot of traffic don’t do well with contests. You don’t think a contest would help to increase traffic on a low traffic blog?
Deborah Ng (Post Author) | October 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am #
@Courtney - It might help increase traffic, but my experiences show it doesn’t do much. People would talk about the contest and link to me, but then only two people would enter and it was pretty laughable. It didn’t work for me when I had low traffic, but your experience may be different? I hope so!