Contests are nothing new in the online world. People have been using contests to get free web traffic for years. But how can they blog, the question is this? There is a slightly new change since the blog revolution that has made running a contest much more effective and fun for bloggers. The concept is the same, but it allows for more interaction. We can come up with a prize that would be inviting to our blog readers. The prizes will make or break our contest. If we have nothing that people want, they won’t play to win. So, it should be good enough.

Before starting thinking that this will cost us money. Of course, offering our own product or service as the prize would be preferable since it’s free and we can promote our link on our blog. If we don’t have our own products, we can easily ask around and find people who will donate prizes. Why would they donate? Because they’d include a link to them in our contest – and we already know that our contest is going to get a lot of traffic, so they’d be not able to say “no”.we can get prizes that are digital, services, or actual products (like makeup or candles). We can even offer gifts, certificates, or cash. We have many options for how to run our contest.

Here are just a few ideas:

Ask our readers to post a comment to win. All they have to do is a comment. Anything like “I want to win” to “Nice blog” could count. Some bloggers ask their readers to post why they should win and they give the prize to the best response. Asking “Tell me why you should win” can certainly get people talking, especially if we have a really good prize.
If we’re giving away money, we can ask “Tell me what we’d do with the money” and reward the person with the best answer with the cash. Ask the readers to post a story or question. we’re in charge, so have fun with it!

If we want to get to know our readers, we can ask them to complete a survey to win. Sometimes running an anonymous survey can work to our benefit in getting more honest responses from people who might not feel comfortable emailing or posting their thoughts on our blog. This idea generates a better way of communication with them. If our readers are bloggers themselves, ask them to blog about our contest there and then comment to let us know they did it. Obviously, this is highly desirable, as we’d get many links to our contest – through many other bloggers talking about us and much more exposure.

Immediately after we post our contest to our blog, send a mailing to each of our ezine lists, letting them know about the contest. we’ll certainly want our loyal readers to have the opportunity to win. Our circle of influence and let them know about our contest. Offer to do a blog post swap. If they’ll blog about our contest, we’ll take them the next time they have something they want to spread the word about.

After go and submit our contest to the contest websites. There are sites that list contests and free offers. This is obviously more effective in certain niches than in others, but it is free exposure to our contest either way. if we really want good mileage for our contest, we can also post on message boards in our niche with the signs pointing to our contest.
Blog contests are a great way to network with others and they’re a fun way to draw attention to our blog.