I thought of a cool new series to run on this blog, that I’m going to start today, and will run at least at least until the end of November, hopefully though it will be indefinitely. Because of the start of the Blogging Idol 2, lots of bloggers have been trying new ways to increase their RSS subscribers. One of the most popular ideas is by running contests. I was reading my usual group of blogs and found that a lot of them were offering some really great prizes, for their contests. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if somebody compiled al these contests, so that people could learn about them, and know whether they’re worth entering. So I’ve decided that somebody is me. I’m going to find the contests that I think are good, or just if they’re popular, and then I’m going to grade them on several different categories. For example, requirements, prizes, your chances, and then of course an overall grade.  In my last series of posts, I tried hard not to state any opinion on anything, however in these I am going to be blunt and honest. I’m not going to lie to you, if the contest is crap, I’m going to tell you that.
 

These are my final categories for judging.

Prizes

The most important thing of any contest is, what do I win? People entering it want to know what’s in it for them, why should they waste their time subscribing, or blogging about the contest, unless they can get something out of it. So, I will make sure to list all the prizes and what I think of them.

Requirements

Once you hear the prizes, typically you’ll already be getting greedy, so your next question is, what do I have to do? A popular type of contest now in days is based on points, and the winner is determined by randomizer.org, or some type of random draw. The host of the blog will award different points, for different ways that you help them out, such as subscribing, linking… I will list in this section, all the things that you need to do, to give yourself the best chance of winning.

Chances for Winning

Usually the prizes are great, and the requirements are pretty easy, so what’s the draw back? There’s 200 other people in the same contest, who are all doing the same thing, looking for the same prize. You’ve got practically no chance to win. In this section, I’m going to give the contest a grade, based on what your likely hood of winning is. 

Overall grade

This is just my final statements and opinion of it. All these grading will be based on a scale from 0-10, so I will give you a final estimate on the contest.

I’m going to start this off with showing you a contest that’s being run by Danny over at Linkersblog, and here is the link to the contest.

Prizes

·    A Copy of ‘Blog Flipping Blueprint‘ by Brian Clark – Worth $147!
·    One full license of the SuperPress Theme by Fresh Press Themes – Worth $97!
·    One Hour of Private Consultation with Jason from TUK – Worth $100!
·    Logo Design Service from Logopallet – Worth $100!
·    A Unique Video Review from IMWITHJOE.com – Worth $50!
·    A Copy of WP Auction Gold from SponsorReview.com – Worth $50!
·    Lifetime membership to OIOPublisher.com – Worth $47!
·    Entry to the Traffic Rush Course by Caroline Middlebrook – Worth $47!

The prizes total up to 638$ kind of a weird total…  But let’s delve into these things. First off a copy of Blog Flipping Blueprint… A copy of what? I’ve never even heard of it, hmm it’s worth 147 bucks… well Danny I’m taking your word on this one.

One full license of the SuperPress Theme by Fresh Press Themes, ok what does that all mean? Basically your getting a free wordpress theme. Okay I can digg that, (no pun intended) and it’s worth 100 dollars so it’s got to be pretty nice.

One hour of private consultation with Jason from The University Kid, now this sounds intriguing. I like to pretend like I know Jason pretty well, although the relationship consists of a few emails back and forth and that was all business related. His site is doing remarkably well, and so this sounds like it could be worth something. I’m a little skeptical at how much he could do in an hour, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Logo Design Service from Logopallet, this is another useful prize. It’s not incredible, but it’s a very useful tool. Everybody needs a 125×125 ad, and it’s always nice to have one that looks professional as opposed to one that you obviously created in photoshop.

A video review with I’m with Joe. This is somewhat similar to the thing with Jason. I mean they’re both very successful bloggers, but I wonder how much they can actually do. They can give you some helpful advice, but they can’t give you traffic, or links which is more important in my opinion. Now I know your going to say well your not going to get traffic and links with an ugly site, well we’ll see. I did okay with my atrocious black, silver and red. If you weren’t around when I had that, then be happy cause it was Ugly.

A copy of WP Auction Gold. This is another cool prize, another very nice template, however, I wonder what your going to do with two templates… maybe they’re assuming you have two sites. I suppose you could just sell it.

Lifetime Membership to Oiopublisher, this sounds interesting. It is a very popular site, so I’m sure they have some good advice to give.

Entry to the Traffic Rush Course by Caroline Middlebrook. From her site, it describes it has essentially a how to use stumbleupon tutorial. This could be useful, tips on traffic is speaking the bloggers language. If this is really any good, then this could be the best prize of the bunch.

Final Grade on Prizes
4/10

Probably a bit harsh but there’s nothing in there that makes you say wow! Lots of potentially useful things, but nothing incredible. 

Requirements

This is my favorite part about the contest, because I really like the requirements to join this blog. It’s nothing to difficult, and there’s tons of different ways to enter. I’ve never seen a contest with so many different ways to get points. He lists 12 different options, including an option for a special 13th one every week. Usually the bloggers have an idea in mind, to get subscribers, or get links… but I respect Danny’s pursuit to grow his blog in an all-around in this contest, and not just empathizing on one thing. Also, because of the many different ways you can enter, everybody and I do mean Everybody can enter it with no trouble at all. Here’s a screen shot of the different ways to earn points.

You can easily rack up five points with out any trouble at all. It’s nice because he includes the options of higher points for things such as linking, and referring people to him, but he also includes easier steps. I was somewhat surprised to see subscribers given such a low points amount, because he is also in the Blogging Idol 2 contest, but I guess he knows what he’s doing.

Final Grade on Requirements
8/10
He’s got a lot of different options, with many different ways of getting points. Very little requirements at all.

Chances for Winning

Now this is somewhat of a tough question to answer. Because you can with little trouble rack up anywhere from 8-12 points which would currently be the leader of the pack. However, because it’s chosen by a random chooser, you can be the leader by a lot and still not win. I find random draws somewhat frustrating but I don’t know if there’s any other way to really do it fairly. Because of that, we can draw out two things, first you should definitely enter this contest, at least by doing the easy things, because it’s possible you could win by merely stumbling the post, or adding him on twitter. However, this also discourages spending a lot of effort on advertising the post, because you don’t really gain too much, because it’s still a random decision However, you do have one major thing going in your favor. If you look at this picture, of the top rankings you can see that there are only about 30 people entered. That number could grow drastically in the next week, but right now there’s not very many. So your not going to be fighting against hundreds of other people in a random draw. So that greatly increase your chances of winning.

In case you were wondering, yes you can still enter this contest. It runs until Dec 1st. You will be a little bit behind, but if you look at that picture above again, of the top rankings, you can still easily be number one by simply blogging about the contest.

Final Grade on Chances of Winning
6/10
I am very wary of making an effort for random drawings, but the fact that it’s not very popular yet, and there are so many easy ways to join, makes it worth the effort.

Final Grade
6/10
Weak prizes, but easy requirements, and relatively low amount of competitors makes this contest one definitely worth entering, but not worth spending too much time on.

If you are running a contest feel free to comment with the link, or email me and I’ll review it. And I’ll check it out and consider whether it’s worth adding. However, I may bash it, so don’t send it unless it’s Really good.

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed for more tips on how to blog, and for information on more contest, that you won’t want to miss!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 2:12 am and is filed under Site Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.