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I had my first link exchange request for the first time in yonks yesterday. The website was a fairly small blog, but hell, we all had to start somewhere. Whilst I don’t really do link exchanges, I did check out his blog.
The blog in question was a rather boring blog, like this one. However unlike this one, this blog had hundreds of posts, each one linking to a blog competition held on another blog, so I refused his request, and gave him advice – just write something with more substance!
I can’t see the point of all these competitions. I can see why they are so popular in running them (you get hundreds of linkbacks in return), but there are three reasons why for one I never enter them.
The Prizes Are Worthless
I read a blog recently that wanted to run a competition, but didn’t bother because “sponsors” were being oh so generous with entrecard points and e-books. E-books worth $100 apparently! All because you sell something for $100 doesn’t mean it’s worth it. I bought a Sega 32X for £3 a few days ago. Is it worth the £150 it cost when it was released. No, because I paid £3. E-books are only worth what you can sell them for, and a lot of them aren’t worth the e-paper they are written on.
How Do You Decide It? Either Way, I Lose
Neither this blog nor Retro Garden have a huge readership, and as such we struggle to win “most traffic/referrals/most popular” anything, furthermore both blogs have the wrong sort of readers – I love you guys to bits, but the average casual reader doesn’t know jack about RSS and the subscription thereof. So all that leaves for me is to win “lucky” contests, which I never win anyway.
Cheating – Or Being Accused Of Cheating – Sucks
If you have a contest, you have to decide a winner. To decide a winner, you need judging criteria. If you have a judging criteria, there are open to cheating. This spoils any competition if not caught.
Likewise, if you do do well in the competition, you will be accused of fiddling the result. It’ll be damned if you do, damned if you don’t,
You’re Being Hypocritical, aren’t you?
Well, whenever I run a competition, which I have done, I try and come up with criteria that anybody can enter and you cannot swindle. And so should you.
What About You?
Have you entered a blogging competition? Did you win? How was it run?
Incidentally
I said I was being hypocritical, and I was. Unfortunately, tonights planned Mario Kart tournament has been cancelled due to the fact that Colwyn Bay are playing Tranmere Rovers tonight. Not like any of you cared!
Comments: 2 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
I entered into the ProBlogger marathon contest many moons ago [which is where I found your blog by the way] – and I won a group coaching session from a coaching guru.
Pure luck of the draw
I recently held a little contest. I was going to have 3 winners for a gift certificate each to a site that sells some digital scrapbooking stuff. I only had 5 entries, though, so everyone won!
I’ve actually won a couple of digital scrapbooking blog contests here in the last few months which is weird because I just about never win anything. I won gift certificates worth a total of something like $23.