Contest 101 Guide – Run your contests effectively and successfully

Running a contest is a very smart advertising technique which I have mentioned multiple times in my earlier posts. But this type of advertising only works if you can run your contest successfully. In this post I am going to share the type of contests you can run. Along with the ways to setup those contests. Also I am going to share the techniques of advertising the contest, and getting prizes for your contests. In this post, I have also added the advantages of donating prizes to the contests.

Before I go on with the post, I would like to show you some of my stats for my last contest which was Balkhis ML Contest.

Comments in a week – 900
Average Page Views – 6832 views a day
Average Unique Visitors a day – 1643
Increase in readership by 123 readers
Total of 53 fans on Technorati
Tons of Natural Backlinks

and much more….

Type of Contests

Before you start contests, you always have to plan ahead. One of the major things you want to know is how long will this contest be? Long Term, Short term, or Periodical? Because there are different ways you can go about in either ways to try and make it successful.

Long Term Contests

Long term contests are the ones that last about a month. Month is a pretty long time to be honest. I would not hold a contest for this long unless I have a big prize list. Big Prize List means good amount of cash, other gifts, and then some more. A perfect example of a big prize list was the contest at WinningtheWeb. This contest lasted from March 10th, to April 2nd. Which I believe is fairly a long time for people to still compete for their spots.

Setup of a Long term contest

In long term contests, it is a turn down for people to continue working for a whole month to win something small hence why I mentioned the big prize list. If I were to run a long term contest, I would take the top 10 biggest prizes and put them up for a fight and enjoy the comment war. Where as I would leave the other prizes to be drawn randomly at which people can gain more entries by doing tasks. I would not give out prizes just randomly in such a long contest because it gives people no motive to work alot. They will work a few days get their entries, and even then they don’t have a guaranteed chance to win. Because in the end, it is still that random generator. Therefore, I like the idea of combining randomizing and the top 10 place. Coming up with clues for a long term contest can get tough, which you want to plan ahead of times. You need to pick your clues that helps you just as much as it helps the user. Such as my clues used in Balkhis ML Contest, digging, entrecard recommendations, and more…

With a big list of prizes, and depending on users active in the contest, you might need some extra help in counting points to assure the quality. I needed extra help because we had to manaully review each comment to make sure there were only 2 per post, and they were not one words like some were.

Short Term Contests

This type of contests are the one that I just had. Usually these contest are for a week in which you are giving out a small set of prizes which your users will find useful. Your overall goal in short term contest is to increase readership because you can run these more often.

Setup for a Short Term Contest

You don’t need a whole lot of prizes, but make sure what you have is something what everyone wants. Running these contests are less stressful then the big ones, but if the users get very competitive in the comment war, then the contest requires some extra help. In small contests, it is pointless to give out prizes randomly in my opinion because you cannot maximize the results. In my past contest, I only gave out the 3 random prizes which I believe weren’t worth quiet as much as the other 4 were, but they were still demandable. I could’ve ran the contest successfully without even adding those 3 prizes. Since the contest is for a very short amount of time, you want to hold your audience and not let them go. So throw them clue after clue, so everytime they check your blog there is a new clue. If you do that in the beginning then towards the end you can slack and even then the users will visit very often because they think there will be a new clue and it increases the excitement. I had 10 clues in a week which wasn’t very bad, but I could’ve add 5 more and still make it work.

Periodical Contest

I don’t see this type of contests alot across the web, but atleast I have one at Balkhis. Yup it is Pimp my Blog. Most periodical contests doesn’t gain popularity specially if your blog is in its beginning phase like this one. But I have noticed over time, I have had alot of people subscribing via email for this contest. In this type of contest, you want to give away the same prize. A prize that is valuable to your audience. I have it for a completely unique wordpress theme because alot of my users can use it. Goal of this type of contest is to keep your readers and if there is an increase in readership that is a bonus. You want to stay consistent with such contest and the give away of prizes.

By the way you can still enter right now in this contest to win a free customized and unique wordpress theme. Just subscribed to this blog via email.

Now that I have described each type of contest and what is a general setup of it. I want to explain how you can get prizes and what is the advantage of donating prizes.

What is an advantage of donating prizes?

Simple, you will get more promotion. It is just like any other advertising form, but in this one people are forced to check out a site if they haven’t. So it even gives you better return then a banner ad in some occations. Also these links are not considered paid links because these are natural links. I donated one prize to the Winning the Web contest, and that was a paid wordpress theme by Uzzz Productions. I got a good return from that contest as I recieved 2 clients through them and both ended up getting a custom design which alone got me over $700. Also, I got alot of emails in the future, people asking me to sponsor their contest. I didn’t take on all of them because I can’t give out free themes alot, but I do this occationally. It is a good choice to donate prizes to contests occationally because it will get you promotion, and better connections with that blogger.

How to get Prizes?

Before starting a contest, you would need a good amount of prizes. Not everyone is as lucky as I found myself to be for the last contest because Market Leverage asked me to run the contest. But what you want to go about doing is contact some bigger companies, and some people which you see sponsor contests often. From the two of those, you should get a good list of prizes to get a good start. You can always add prizes later on the contest. You will or will not get the companies to donate the prizes, it all depends on how convincing you are.

Now that you know how to get prizes and what are the advantages of getting the prizes, I want to go ahead and share how to advertise a contest.

Advertising a Contest

Advertising a contest plays an important role towards the success of a contest. If you don’t advertise the contest, then you will not get the most return. First of all, I went ahead and posted on all the webmaster forums I am a member of. So you need to get your heads and do that. Then basically submit your contest to all the major social bookmark sites, and ofcourse on your blog. By having these done you should get a good start. Once you have the start, you can have the users advertise for you. Simply by digging, adding posts to your threads in forum and more through the clues. Also, you can encourage them to write a post. For Long term contests, you can run PPC campaign to gain some extra exposure.

Now these tips are good to get you a good base for your contest. Now you can try your own things in addition and see how things work out for you. If anything else work out for you, feel free to add it here.