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Blog ContestsYou’re probably asking yourself, what the heck is with all the contest posts today! Well, it’s true I have been posting quite a bit about contests lately, so I figured I just had to give you a good reason…

I keep winning!

Seriously, over the past few months, I’ve won at least 4-5 contests, some worth quite a bit of money. They are generally so easy to enter, and the odds of winning are surprisingly high. I’ve won contests where there were over 1200 entrants and 3 prizes(Banners Galore Contest), to one where there were only 4 entrants and 3 prizes (March Entrecard Contest)

Read more to learn all the great benefits of running, participating, and sponsoring blog contests!

For The Participant

The odds of you winning a prize are really high. You can find lots of contests with like 1/20 chances really easy, heck even 1/100 is pretty good. Usually, you don’t even have to do that much, like entering could be as simple as subscribing to an RSS by email, which takes seconds.

The only thing you may not want to do (unless you have a contest blog) is to always enter contests that require blog posts. You really don’t want to “spam” your readers much. I generally only post about contests that can actually help my readers, like take my last two contest posts. Entrecard is a sick system, so I encourage people to sign up already, and this Entrecard contest just sweetens the deal; and the Winning the Web contest has prizes geared specifically towards affiliate marketing, which can really help you with your projects.

So pick and choose the contests you want to enter, and you’re winning/participating ratio can be huge, like mine :D

For The Contest Runner

If you can run a successful contest, you are going to see a massive jump in your blog’s traffic, popularity, authority, RSS readers, branding, and pretty much anything else you want. However, running a contest is not as easy as it looks!

You have to have a very attractive prize list. Do not expect to get many entrants if you have prizes no one really wants. This can be tough, but reach out to sponsors and see if you can get some donated prizes to really build up your prize pool. I’ve been contacted many times through the Entrecard system to sponsor prizes, so this could be a good place for you to start looking.

Of course, you can always go with the tried and tested cash prize. This works remarkably well, but I think you’ll have to put in at least $100 to get a good response.

Next, you’ll have to spread the word yourself. Don’t expect a contest to go viral if you don’t promote it on as many other blogs and sites as possible.

Last, depending on how you accept entries, it’ll be quite some work to keep track of them all. This is up to you though as far as the complexity of the entry system goes, but plan ahead and it shouldn’t be all too much of a problem.

Now if you can do all of this successfully, a big contest can really give your blog a huge boost!

For Sponsors

Here you can “piggyback” off a contest’s success, and get some nice exposure as well! If blogging about a contest to enter is a requirement, you will get plenty of sweet backlinks, upping your technorati authority. If you donate a large prize, then the blogger will surely give you some added exposure, like a review or write up.

It’s a great way to get some of the same exposure as the contest host, without having to do all the work! I’ve sponsored quite a few contests, and it’s always been worth it.

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