That College Kid

Reader contests and why I love them

This post is a little off the topic of college, but since most of our readers are bloggers as well, this is still helpful. The biggest trend of Web 2.0 is the whole SEO thing. Optimizing your website for search engines and getting enough clout to have daily visitors that aren’t your best friends is tough.

One trend that I’m seeing is contests, and that is a trend that readers love. It’s great to get paid back for being a visitor and making the blogger money. It’s a reminder that bloggers aren’t just doing it for the money.

While reading through my long list of blogs, I came across a new one, Average Joe Blogger. He’s on a quest to become a problogger (who isn’t?) and is offering a sponsorship giveaway. There are different ways of entering, such as posting a summary of the sponsorship and linking back to it or posting a review of the website.

Amy of The Blog World is also thinking of creating a contest and is currently looking for ideas of what to give away. (I suggest advertising space myself.) I’m sure in the future, I’ll have a contest for readers, but until I actually have something to offer, I’m going to hold off.

Contests can also be a great way to get new visitors. If you have people link to your site to get an entry, you’ll have many new visitors and some (or most) of them will become regular readers. They also make me like the blogger so much more because they haven’t forgotten about their readers who make them all their money.

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