Win $5 just for Leaving a Comment to this Post
Contest: Leave a comment to this post and you could win $5 cash. Contest begins today and ends in 1 week on Sun April 6th 11:59PM. See rules at bottom.
Contest closed. See who won.
I’m thinking about running an online contest on this blog. What kind of contests interest you? What would be a big enough carrot to get you to participate?
Recently, I’ve been inspired by Caroline Middlebrook’s Easter egg contest where she hid 30 eggs on her site. Readers had to hop through her site, find the eggs, and then create a blog post linking back to all of the eggs.
As a prize, she offered 10 free copies of her upcoming ebook. I think she only got 21 people participating even though her blog currently has 1834 subscribers. But, as a result of her contest, she generated 400 inbound links pointing at her site. Wow!
BloggerNoob runs heaps of contests, including the occasional chance to win $5 just for reading the post and commenting. (He got 25 comments.) He runs a website vs website popularity contest with a payout out of $72. He also makes the comment that mega-contests offering thousands of dollars really have prizes that offer value-in-kind (like a 125×125 ad that “costs” $50)
Bottom Line - We’re thinking about doing a contest. But we’re also tired of bleeding advertising dollars. Would we be able to recover the costs of the contest by getting enough links to improve our page rank / traffic / affiliate sales?
Question. Sure blog-contests have been around since forever. But, so have blogs about making money online. What does it take to get you interested in a contest?
Contest: Leave a comment to this post and you could win $5 (paid through your paypal account.) Contest begins today and ends on Sun April 6th 11:59PM. Make sure you leave an email address where you can be contacted. Multiple comments are allowed as long as you have a valid idea in each comment. (No duplicate comments)
We’re also running this contest on a blogcatalog discussion. So you can leave comments here or on blogcatalog and both will count as ballots towards winning $5. Your chances of winning depend on the total number of comments received on both sites.
By the way, we have the link juice turned on in the comments. We’re comment-friendly - You give to us, we give to you. Cheap Web Hosts got 14 links back from this site just by commenting. What are you waiting for?
HINT: If you post a link to this post from your site, it’ll show up in the comments as a backlink or pingback (or whatever it’s called). Come to think of it, anyone who links to this post from their blog (with the nofollow turned off) - we’ll give you 5 contest entries. Game on.
(5 votes, Rating: 4.4 out of 5)
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March 28th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Hi Webdiggin,
I read your comment in one of my latest posts. You made mentioned of php stuff. I can send you the php code via email. What is your email add? Mine is webhostingreality[at]gmail.
By the way, the 14 backlinks post can’t be found here. There’s an error.
Today I will add webdiggin in my blogroll. This is the first blog that I will add in my Webhosting Reality experimental blog. Hope you don’t mind that this blog is still PR3. I’m working hard to attain PR4 on the next PR update of the big G.
Cheap Web Hosts’s last blog post..Web Host Suspends Fitna the Movie Site
March 28th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
We’re also running this contest on a blogcatalog discussion. So you can leave comments here or on blogcatalog and both will count as ballots towards winning $5.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/online-contests-love-em-or-hate-em#comment_292526
March 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
the idea of making contest is a great idea to help your blog be more popular and make you have more link back beside it help the one who will comment how easy to comment is and win 5$ i think it is free 5$ contest thanks
small business idea’s last blog post..Benefits of a Wordpress Blog
March 28th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
@Cheap Web Hosts - Sorry, about that. We were trying to cheat. We came up with this burning interest in contests last night, and composed this post this morning. To maximize our efforts blogging, we try to limit the number of posts to one per day. So, when we have a burning idea, we shuffle the posts around (we have about 7 or 8 posts that are auto-scheduled in case we get sick.)
Thrilled to read your comment today. More because you noticed the 14 backpost wasn’t there, although the PR3 is a nice touch as well. It’s nice to be finally read by someone other than friends and family.
Bottom Line. We tried to shuffle the 14 back links post to tomorrow, which is why the link wouldn’t work. But we’ve since republished the post today, so your link should be fine now.
Thanks for noticing.
Think contests can drive traffic? How big does the prize need to be?
(On a technical note, I think any scheduled post will only show if you are logged in as an author, or if you add a ?preview=true at the end of the url.)
March 28th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
What it takes for me to get interested in a contest:
Well, it’s the one sentence that you click to view it. Let’s take what you put out there on another blog and how I found this post. Earn $5 for a comment? Seems pretty simple to me! Making entry to contests extremely simple and pointing it out will get my attention. Everyone’s up for making easy cash! Basically giving it them in a sentence is great. An example of a very attractive sentence would be:
$20000 prizes for you to win, easy entry methods!
Best Wishes
Carl - Thatblogsite.com
Carl - Thatblogsite.com’s last blog post..Earn Money Just By Searching
March 29th, 2008 at 4:13 am
You’re right! Comment contests are very popular, especially if you have a cash prize. Problogger gave out thousands of dollars in cash in his birthday contest last year just for commenting and I think he had close to a thousand comments just for that post so that might drive you some traffic. The key is to have a nice prize and make it easy for anyone to enter.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:51 am
@Small Business Idea - I actually forgot about that, but you’re right. By having the no-follow turned off in the comments, you get the added bonus of having link juice back to your site… just for participating in the contest. This isn’t our real contest, but it’s given us things to think about.
@Carl - On some of the blogs that I left messages on, I said something like “You could win $5 by leaving a comment.” On other blogs, I said, “win $5 for a comment” Do you think it’s misleading to say win $5 for a comment? I mean, it’s not like a sponsored post where you get paid $5 everytime you write. Think people will get cheesed off?
@Brenda - Yeah. I wish I had Problogger’s cashflow to give out thousands of dollars in cash. So, maybe a better question is what kind of prize would it take to get you to write a post with a link to this site? Caroline Middlebrook’s Easter egg hunt was awesome because she had people linking to her site from her blog. Mind you, she had an ebook to give away. I would only have cash. So… what kind of money would it take to get you to blog about us?
Don’t forget - each time you comment is another chance to win. So, feel free to respond multiple times. It’s $5 for a moment of your time!
Hint: We just realized that if you post a link to this post from your site, it’ll show up in the comments as a backlink or pingback (or whatever it’s called). Come to think of it, anyone who links to this post from their blog (with the nofollow turned off) - we’ll give you 5 contest entries. Game on.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:12 am
[…] Contests Win $5 Just for Leaving a Comment: in 8 days, 22 hours, 46 minutesYou have a 1 in 9 chance of winning with each comment you leave on […]
March 30th, 2008 at 3:23 am
That’s hard to say since different people have different thresholds. But from what I’ve seen, $25 and above seems to be the magical number that many contest holders choose. Of course, if you can offer $500, you can expect much more interest!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I participated in Caroline´s contest because it was fun and actually added some value to my blog because the posts I had to link to were great reads.
I think the important thing for a contest to really work is to make sure the prize is worth winning for the action they have to perform. Keeping in mind that blogosphere is overfloaded with all these different contests and people can only blog about so many contest in their own blog without boring their readers, you must consider that when thinking about having to blog about the contest for entries.
Just my 2 cents
Mirjam’s last blog post..Are A-List Bloggers Really all That Great?
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 am
Yeah, Caroline’s easter egg hunt was a brilliant idea.
I’m not sure whether I want to focus on getting in-bound links, or increasing readership. Originally, I had thought about running a contest with a similar theme to Caroline’s… you know, like looking for easter eggs on a DVD.
But, after trying this mini-experiment, I think I need to boost readership before trying another contest.
We’ve made about $75 from sponsored posts. I could run a $25 contest for the next 3 months. Maybe sign up for the RSS feed and get a chance to win $25.
I like the comment contest idea, but I feel limiting it to this post is artificial. Quite frankly, I’d love for people to leave comments anywhere they want. Maybe I offer another ballot for leaving a comment that month…
What do you think?
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:36 am
well, if it is comments you are after, offering $25 to a months top commentator seems to work at times… (make sure you put the mentioning of that contest right beneath your entrecard
)
I thought of running a contest on my blog as well, but in the end have decided against it, not wanting to get into the contestfrenzy and quite frankly, offering money to sign up for the rss, … after the contest is gone, how many will really stick around if they only signed up in order to win a prize? atleast the comment contest will make people go through your blog, the archive to find posts to comment on and maybe in the process while thinking about what to comment, they will grow to like your blog, offer you valuable feedback and stick around for the long run
ps… this comment box is really annoying the crap out of me! it is too wide for the middlecolumn on my screen and it makes me scrolling horizontally!
Mirjam’s last blog post..Are A-List Bloggers Really all That Great?
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Hey, thanks for the feedback about the comment box. I haven’t had a chance to hink about how the theme looks on other browsers. Maybe that’s why everyone has that 3 column look with the two sidebars on the right handside… like your blog
Do people really read their RSS feeds? I’ve signed up for a few feeds, and maybe check through once a month. For the most part, I have an email rule that just chucks them in the corner until I have time… Ah, time. What a luxury.
The blogs I read, I tend to open up in my browser and then see what posts are around. But, that’s just me.
What do other bloggers do?
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I am always intrigued by contests but often fail to enter because I forget.
I guess I need to be instantly turned on by the prize. $5 for commenting…. well that’s an instant turn on. Very little effort and nice little prize.
Forest Parks’s last blog post..In the frame
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:40 am
FIY about the comment box, I am using a mozilla browser but it does the same in firefox as well.
I know I hardly read the RSS feeds, almost never, so I try to sign up for the email option always. When receiving updates from blogs in the mail, I put them aside untill I have time to shift through them, when they start of as interesting, I will normally go to the site to comment. Many times though they all end up in the trash, since more than anything they serve as a reminder of a blog I liked, and I visit them occasionally anyways.
Mirjam’s last blog post..Lessons to Learn from Reality TV
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
thanks for the mention, and i see that you’re getting a lot of comments by putting up five bucks as bait. it works!
bloggernoob’s last blog post..Make Money Blog Honeymoon
April 5th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
[…] Contests Win $5 Just for Leaving a Comment: in 1 day, 16 hours, 25 minutesYou have a 1 in 14 chance of winning with each comment you leave on […]