How not to run a contest.
March 28, 2007 by Adam
Filed under Whatever Else
Well, I got some kind of hair brained idea that running a contest is easy and that if you give out money that people would automatically come. Guess what? We can all keep on dreaming that it is that easy!
After running my contest yesterday, I learned the harsh reality that it isn’t just that easy to get people to visit you site. I had about 300 more visitors than normal, but that is slim pickin’s compared to other’s who got 10,000 hits in just hours.
So what did I do wrong?
1.) NOT OFFERING A CHALLENGE
I would have to say that it is important to challenge a visitor. People like the idea of a challenge that might give them that satisfaction of earning a prize by their efforts or smarts. I failed to offer any challenge, it was more just a random drawing.
2.)NOT ALLOWING ENOUGH TIME FOR THE CONTEST TO RUN
As much as we like to think, people don’t visit our blog’s more than a couple times max per day. So by me running a contest that ran for only the late half of a day, I excluded many potential participants. It is probably better to run a week long contest.
3.)NOT HAVING ONE BIG PRIZE.
This goes back to the challenge. More people would rather shoot for a large prize and be the ultimate winner than people who just want a small prize to several winners.
4.)NOT HAVING A TRUE GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH WITH A CONTEST
At the start of the contest, I didn’t have a goal whether it was to get a lot of hits, more comments, link backs, or whatever. Having a well defined purpose and goal allows for the contest to be better designed.
I have learned a few lessons and now I am going to spend time thinking of something that will have much greater success. Hopefully I can write “How to Run a Contest” someday. 
I want to run a contest in about 2 weeks, so stay tuned.
Adam
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PixelHead on Thu, 29th Mar 2007 6:38 pm
It sounds like it was money well spent though. You seemed to have learned from it. If anything you got my attention and I am willing to venture, you got some other visitors to become return visitors.
I will be mentioning you in a post that is upcoming, I am thinking of a contest as well. Got any multiblog contest ideas?
L on Thu, 29th Mar 2007 8:27 pm
i think it was a good investment as well…it certainly drummed up some attention (i keep coming back!), you’ve learned from it, and it thankfully hasn’t dampened your motivation. i think you have great ideas, so keep at it!
Adam on Thu, 29th Mar 2007 9:21 pm
Thanks for the feedback guys, I feel a lot better about the response I have gotten from it. I am now getting about 2-3 times the traffic because of it. Very surprising, because not even that many people participated. Thanks Again
Scot on Sat, 31st Mar 2007 10:45 pm
If you’ve learned a lesson from it, you’ve gotten your money’s worth
– Scot
Best of The Best 1 | Blogger Lounge on Mon, 2nd Apr 2007 4:29 am
[...] reader of this blog, and he has also very nice posts in his own blog, one of them is “How not to run a contest“, it’s very easy for many bloggers to run a contest, but most of them will fail. Adam [...]
Maria Palma on Tue, 3rd Apr 2007 11:38 pm
I was JUST thinking about how I wanted to run a contest on one of my blogs…Thanks for sharing your experience!
Best of The Best 1 | Blogger Lounge on Fri, 6th Apr 2007 3:55 pm
[...] a frequent reader of this blog, and he has also very nice posts in his own blog, one of them is “How not to run a contest“, it’s very easy for many bloggers to run a contest, but most of them will fail. Adam explains [...]