GD02: Contest 01:
Woot, time for the sweet prizes! You can win two 20-inch FlatronWide L206WU USB-based monitors, and all you have to do is write up a post about the contests (link the main contest page), and then comment over here with the URL of your post and a certain word. Considering I already wrote the post, this one was really easy to enter! This contest runs until Friday morning.
GD02: Contest 02:
Finally, the first contest that will help your site out and give you a chance to put your writing skills to use! You have till noon (EST) on Thursday to write up a list of blogging tips relevant to your normal audience. Then go to the contest page I just linked, and comment with the link to your article and your choice of prize (should you win). I like this contest better than the starter contests because you can get real readers for your blog just by entering, and you have a chance to win some neat prizes. The prize list for this contest includes some consultations, logo and theme designs, and multimedia creation. There are 24 prizes available, some of which will really be of interest to anime bloggers (especially those just starting out).
Here are anime blog related links that have been entered:
10 Comments
Yeah, easy too since I had already written about it. One person was complaining about this one contest being “underhanded” since people were “spamming the internet” with links to the contest, and I guess I see their point, but they seem to be about the only one who seems to care (or at least who is writing about caring).
It was easy for me too cause I had already written up a post. Maybe they should have said “If you’ve ALREADY written a post, put the link up to it” lol
LOL, that comment was silly. As Darren mentioned, if you are that upset about it, just use nofollow tags. Jeez, what is the point about being stingy with links? I think it is a brilliant idea, and a win-win. There is no reason the person organizing the contest shouldn’t benefit while trying to get word out.
This is also one of the easier contests, but with a sweet prize!
I don’t think the comment is silly at all. Actually, I find this campaign quite odd so far and I dislike how it addresses one of the lower instincts “Dance for me and get something for free!1″. Do you remember the “free apple’s willy!1″ (or similar) campaign and how many fell for that? It was nothing but a scam to collect personal data. I’m not trying to accuse the guys here of anything but they certainly desensitize people with this kind of contests.
Now I’m not sure whether they are just naive or just lacking creativity. Can’t they come up with some contests that require a bit of intelligence or actually generate some readable content e.g, write a short story, tell us some anecdote, write a review, tell us a joke, fix all typos in wikipedia article xyz, etc.? I kind of bought that “ILUVSEO” isn’t supposed to be a google bomb, google spam or the like but this contest goes even further in that direction. It’s a thin red line between SEO and spamming, so I’m quite sceptical of such stuff anyway.
Well, maybe this contest is just an academic study verifying how easily are people to manipulate/motivate or maybe I’m just too paranoid.
The later contests are actually supposed to highlight writings. The reason there are all these silly giveaway contests is that when Darren requested prizes, he got way more than he expected. I think the pool of prizes in the last contest was under $5,000.
Because of the huge 10x increase in prizes to give out, he had to rework his idea at the last minute in order to let all the sponsors participate and give out more prizes to the readers. Actually a lot of sponsors got turned away.
To get more people to participate, I think most of the smaller prizes will be given out in the days leading up to the big contest days, to generate buzz. That is why the first contests are silly (e.g. leave a comment with this phrase).
I do agree with you Chris in that if you don’t know the backstory, this series of contests does seem a little odd. The first few giveaways are more of door prizes, and the prizes for actual content should come later in the week. Yeah, the criteria is not very original, but there are only so many original contest ideas you can come up with in a week, when your prize list is so long.
Oh, I should mention that I bet that the reason they are asking for a specific text phrase in the comment (which is case sensitive) is because they want to just do a simple query of the comments table in their database, and then run a random number test on the entries that fulfill the query. This way it is easier to tell who won without having to wade through comments that are not actually entries in the contest.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a Google bomb or anything, since pasting the same phrase over and over again the comments doesn’t really make Google rank a page higher. While perhaps these justifications could be made more apparent, I honestly believe it is more a result of trying to get everything done quickly and not scheming for some sinister purpose.
BTW, when I run a contest, I’m going to have participants comment simply with their credit card numbers and security code to enter =D.
I’ve used spoiler tags because I really don’t want to ruin the fun. I’d just like to further comment because I don’t find your answer technically satisfying.
Sorry, but I don’t buy this explanation. The comments are public. Every web browser can search for phrases, also case-sensitively. I don’t understand why they have too little time. I came up with this short list in 30 seconds and it’s not like you can multiple contests which are almost identical. Do they have some deadline before the prizes expire? Otherwise, they have additional 24 hours between each daily contest to come up with next idea with a one week advantage I don’t see the problem. Extending the contest over a longer period would gain a larger audience too.
Nah, it’s ok Chris, there is nothing wrong with disagreeing, especially since you are being civil. Don’t worry about spoiler tags. You bring up real concerns, and they are relevant to online giveaways. Plus they’re giving me ideas about what to do should we ever hold a contest. (Oh BTW, your spoiler tags didn’t show up because we are now only using forum-syntax for spoiler tags, i.e. spoiler enclosed in square brackets).
Anyway, regarding your concern about the Find function in the browser, this is true, but if you consider that the first entry had 764 comments in 7 hours, it is not feasible to scan through the comments by hand. And that was only the first of three contests on the first day of 7 days of contests. I do feel that using a distinct phrase that no one would normally type is a reasonable solution.
Also, it looks like most of the future contests will not have such weird commenting requirements. The one that just went up asks for real content tailored to your audience, and just requires you to link the article on their site. That seems very reasonable, and is a great way for participants to get publicity.
I don’t think they’d do that either, but I am a tiny bit scared, since I’ve won the Mederma Scar cream. I’m glad you pointed this possibility though. I doubt its a scam, but I’ll have to be more careful with these type of contests (I usually only enter contests officially from Nintendo. I can trust them for life! :D)(but never win anything -_-)
Since Kabitzin entered his prize in this contest, I sort of felt safe entering. Lets just hope Kabi’s not one of those scammers! right?
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Also, none of these prizes are actually flowing through ProBlogger. I submitted a prize, and here’s how it works. ProBlogger runs the contest and picks the winners. Then it provides a way for the sponsors and the winners to exchange the prizes. Our prize hasn’t been put up yet, so I’m not sure how it works exactly, but that is what we’ve been told.
Chris, just found out that the weird words that you have to put in your comments have a purpose. It’s to make sure that they can easily find your improperly eaten comments and retrieve them from Akismet.
They probably should have made that clear from the start, though.