Earning Money

One of the big ways that a lot of big companies and websites get promotion for their site is that they hod a contest. I mean, look at all those big companies. Pepsi holds contests for hundreds of thousands of dollars because their intention is to bring in more money than they spent. It’s really a great way to get traffic to your site. But, there is a lot more to holding a contest than just randomly picking the item and saying, “if you post the most, you win.” There is a lot more to running a contest than just that. As much as it might seem to be easy, a lot of people can mess up on their contests. Here’s what to do.

The first thing that you need to determine is what you want to gain from the contest. If you’re running a blog contest, chances are, you’re looking to get more people to your site because the more readers is the more profit. So, you might say, “to be entered into this contest, you need to write about it on your blog.” You get link backs and people come to your site. That’s cool. But, everyone does that. So, you need to really try and determine what exactly you want to gain from your contest. If you’re looking to get a good boost in forums posts, make sure you really set that as the standard. You want to know what you are looking to achieve before starting.

The next thing that you want to do is offer something that goes along with your site. If I ran a blog about sports, I don’t want to offer makeup as a prize. If I run a forum all about video games, I don’t want to offer a gift card to a clothing store. When running a contest, the prize is what will drag people in. People are selfish (unfortunately). That means that people want to get something for doing something. If you offer a really good prize that is firm to your site, but still generic enough that a lot of people might want it, you will get a considerable number of people to participate in the contest. And the more people that participate, the better the return will be for you.

Now, my final thing to say is that I really do recommend contests as a form of promotion. They can be expensive, especially if you’re like a lot of site runners and you offer a Wii or a 360 or an iPod for the prize, but if you are willing to make an investment, you will make a return on it, I am sure. It all depends on how well you market the contest, what prize you offer, and how long you keep it going. Promotion and all of that is important. But remember one thing about contests…You are giving away something to gain something. And there are risks when running contests. But, I have found, the rewards outweigh the risks. Good luck with your contests.

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