After much procrastination, blogetition has finally launched to much fanfare. (It’ll come, honest.) Blogetition is a concept I came up with after winning $500 from Scott Wainner’s $1,000 cash giveaway for your suggestions contest. I realized that the only reason I won is because not a lot of people entered. I certainly didn’t complain about the lack of entries (my entry basically suggested he was more liberal with his use of the no follow link attribute) but it got me thinking to what a pain it is to not only hold a blog contest, but to actively promote it.
I know there are plenty of people out there that would enter more blog competitions if only they knew about them (myself included); I know that the blog owners themselves would love the additional entrants. So I decided to create this site in the hopes of connecting contest lovers and contest holders. In my eyes it’s a win-win for everybody involved.
That being said, this site will either live or die based on how you decide to use it. If everybody submits blog contests/competitions when they see them, our community will thrive. If nobody submits competitions then this site will rely totally on my own submissions, and while I like to think that I am super human, I’m not.
Matthew Walker summed it up beautifully in the fable ‘The Four Oxen and the Lion’ with the words “United we stand, divided we fall“. So I encourage all of you reading this to submit any blog contests/competitions you stumble across, tell your friends and family about the site and hopefully together we can build something which is not only functional but also fun.
To start things off, I thought what better way than to hold our very own competition. My father always used to say - a good competition is an easy competition. So I’ve tried to make this as easy as possible to follow. This is how things will work:
- For every unique competition/contest you submit to this site you’ll receive one point (only the first person to submit the competition will be credited)
- At the end of each day (AEDT, Australian eastern daylight time) I’ll tally up the points and update the leader board which can be found on the left sidebar. The top ten will be shown only, if you want to know how many points you have, please use the contact form found in the submit section.
- Each of the ten people on the leader board will get a link back to their blog/a site of their choosing with the anchor text of their choosing. (Family friendly sites only, no Viagra sites. Sorry guys.)
- At the end of February the top ten contributors will be rewarded with monetary incentive. The prizes are as follows:
- $10
- $5
- $4
- $3
- $2
- - 10. $1
- At the end of February a post will be made thanking everybody who submitted a contest/competition to blogetition.
Now that the concept is out there - we’ll move onto the rules.
- Please do not submit fake competitions, I’d hate for people to waste their precious time entering a contest that isn’t real.
- Submit contests that the majority of people can enter, for example logo designing contests are a no no, contests which require people to write a comment/subscribe to a rss feed are a yes yes, (It’s ok if it requires a little skill, just don’t over do it).
- Submit contests that you’d want to enter yourself, if the prize is $1 and they want you to write a 40,000 word essay, then you could probably do without submitting it.
- If in doubt, submit. If you’re ever unsure of whether or not to submit the contest, just submit it. I’d rather my inbox was filled with iffy contests than no contests at all.
- Have fun. Submitting contests might sound boring, but just remember that you’re helping out the community and karma has a way of helping out those that do good things by others.
I’m not to sure how this site is going to go, but life left wondering is life lost. If you have any suggestions/comments/ideas please don’t hesitate to contact me via the contact form on the submit page.
On final note, if you’re unsure how to run a successful blog competition, I highly recommend you read Darren Rowse’s guide on How to Run a Successful Competition on Your Blog.