How not to run a contest.

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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Easiest $5 every hour for 8 hours.

8 HOUR’s GONE – 8 WINNER’s $5 RICHER
This was not as successful as I hoped, but I learn from my experiences. I really jumped into it too fast. Wait for another much better thought out contest in the next couple weeks. We do have winners though because I keep my promises.


Bob from BobMeetsWorld.com – $5

Iker from Thethinkingblog.com – $5

PixelHead from PixelHeadOnline.com – $5

Serafina – $5

WebGirlsonline from Zigzo Zlinks – $5

Jeff Munro from JeffreyMunro.com – $5

SnoAngel02 – $10


Here is a little experiment that is thought up from theBobMeetsworld.com contest.
This one is different though, because it doesn’t require any effort or knowledge, just a few seconds every hour or so.
Comment on one of my many topics, check out
40 Creative Date Ideas,
Hopeless Romantic,
Fly an airplane today – GWS slowstick,
Make a thousand dollars with your credit,
Hiking the Lost Coast Trail.

RULES:

-Comment on any post with more than 10 words and you are entered into the drawing to win $5 for that hour.
-Enter up to 1 time every half hour. That means you can get 2 chances to win per hour for 8 hours.
-The time will be completely random. I might pick the winner at 31 minutes or 48 minutes or 59 minutes, but probably after the half hour so that people can get two entries in.
- The winners will be determined as fast a possible, but the money and the winners list will be distributed tomorrow morning, so keep trying hard, because you just may win multiple times. Wouldn’t that be a great surprise to wake up $5-$40(you would have to luck for $40) richer.

-IF YOU ARE A WINNER, I WOULD APPRECIATE A QUICK NOTE ON YOUR BLOG, IF YOU HAVE ONE, TO TELL PEOPLE HOW YOU WON.

So here we go. The contest starts at 3:45 PM PST, so that is when I will start watching comments. Enjoy and Good Luck!

THE CONTEST WILL BE FROM 4PM PST to 12PM PST. So you have 8 hours. Enter every hour for another chance.

Contest

What is a Hopeless Romantic

Many people may wonder what a hopeless romantic is, but for the ones who are a hopeless romantic, it is all too obvious.  So I am going to try and break it down.

There are more examples of a hopeless romantic than I can name and most of them are from movies.  So in that sense, a hopeless romantic dreams of the fantasy’s that are played out perfect in a movie.  Rational people would say that movies are fake and that no one really has a relationship like “The Notebook“, “A Walk to Remember“, “Titanic “, etc.  But to a hopeless romantic it is perfectly logical that a movie scenario could happen in real life, because it is physically possible maybe not plausible though. 

I believe that in reality if a hopeless romantic played things out like a movie does, then it would be very likely that both people in the relationship would enjoy the scenario. 

People are skeptical of the idea of movie style love, because it is too good to be true and it takes way to much work to have the world turn like a movie.  I totally disagree with the sceptics, because hopeless romantics thrive on the challenge to make a relationship magical.

Hopeless Romantics are great at imagining the perfect scenario’s, but often fail at executing the scenario because of the magic that needs to be present.  So much of a hopeless romantics vision is being with the perfect person in the perfect situation.  So a hopeless romantic may go unrecognized because the situation or person is not perfect.  A Hopeless romantic is continuously striving to find their night in shining armor or princess to carry off to the beach to cuddle under a moon lit sky. 

A Hopeless romantic get’s excited by the fact that they have so much energy to love the perfect person.  It would be safe to say that a hopeless romantic greatly values completely giving themselves up to the one that they love.  When that perfect person comes the energy will flow like water down a waterfall with the only incentive being to make their partner feel overjoyed with excitement.  It is really the art of romancing that they love.

Being a hopeless romantic may lead to unnecessary agony while trying to find that perfect person, but the dream of having a “Happily every after” life is so great that any heartache is small compared to the joy one gets from the adventure of being a hopeless romantic.

Hopeless Romantic’s will love my list of 40 creative things to do on a date.  This is what hopeless romantics do.  They dream up sceneries and in my case I write down scenarios so I don’t forget them.

If you like this story, send it to people, share it and link to it, because I believe so strongly is the idea of being a hopeless romantic, that I am setting a goal to be #1 on Google under “Hopeless Romantic”, just for S*its and giggles.

Bookmark this page for updates to “Hopeless romantic” examples from movies and for further information on how to be a better hopeless romantic.

Date, Dating, hopeless, Hopeless Romantic, Notebook, relationship, romantic

David Copperfield Flying Revealed

I was just browsing through videos last night and after seeing a magic show a couple weeks ago I decided to search for videos. This one I came across shows how David Copperfield’s Flying act is done. It is pretty amazing to watch the flying act after you know how it is done.

Here is the video of the actual act:

David Copperfield, flying, Magic

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