Increasing Your Subscriber Numbers With Blog Contests
I’ve noticed a growing trend lately of blog contests in the make money online blogosphere. The most common one i’m seeing is basically where in return for performing some action (ie. subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed, blogging about the contest, signing up to a partner site etc.) readers are given a number of entries into the contest to win various prizes.
Here are a couple of examples of contests going on at the moment:
- Enkay Blog
This contest (as some others that i’ve seen are) is sponsored by Market Leverage. This one is giving away a great first prize, an Asus EEE PC Ultra Portable Laptop. The runner up prizes aren’t too bad either, a $50 AMEX Rewards card and three 2GB USB Pens. The contest ends on August 4th.This one has caught my interest a little bit because it just so happens that i’ve developed somewhat of an obsession with getting myself one of these ultra portable laptops
- Zak Show
Although Zak isn’t giving away an EEE PC, he does still have some very worthwhile prizes on offer. First prize is $50 cash and 2000 EntreCard Credits, so that kind of thing could be extremely useful to someone like me who is still trying to get a foothold in this community. Runner up prizes are $30 cash + 1200 EC, $20 + 800 EC, and finally a free professional logo design. The contest ends on August 15th.
From what I can see, these blog contests can definitely benefit everyone involved. The blog running the contest gets some new readers/subscribers, some link love (from posts about their contest - such as this one I guess…) and general exposure, as well as generating some activity from readers and hopefully going some way to building more of an interactive community.
The sponsor (in Enkay Blog’s example, Market Leverage) gets some new business through the incentivised signups and more links back to them. Not exactly free advertising as they’re stumping up the cash for the prizes, but probably more effective than just buying an ad space on someone’s side bar.
Finally, the readers who take part in the contest obviously give themselves a chance of winning some great prizes, but also I think it’s quite fun to join in with and may draw them into reading more of the blog, and visiting regularly, and joining in with the conversations, giving them a sense that they are part of the community.
So there you have it, I definitely think that blog contests are a potentially powerful thing to run for blog owners, and also a bit of fun for readers. I’d definitely consider running a similar contest here at some point… but i’ll maybe wait until i’ve been around here for a bit longer and have built my traffic up a bit more
Tags: Contests, prizes Posted in
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