Posts Tagged ‘contest’

Now, I know I didn’t post yesterday, my apologies, but you know, with my therapy, shoulder, and other things, it’s tough! But rest assured, I’m here. Also, I think for the time being, while my shoulder finishes healing, I’ll be posting every other day, just until I’m back up to 100%. So bear with me.

Now, onto our topic for today.

Should I bribe my readers?

When I say this I mean, do you need to give incentives for every little thing just to get some action on your blog? Do you need to offer a prize to the comment king every month? Do you need to run a contest 6 times a year?

Now, don’t get me wrong, contests and prizes are great, and they do increase activity on blogs, which is always a good thing. But what I’m driving at is this: If you stop bribing your readers, will you have any readers?

A lot of blogs are big and popular only because the people who run them are rich and invest 1000’s a month just promoting it and giving out prizes. This is false readership, in my opinion. Why? Because try and see how many readers stay for the content, which is supposed to be the most important thing. If you run contests constantly, and award readers for everything, chances are things are going to fall apart without those “bribes”, if you will.

So that’s my challenge to you. Yes, I’m talking to all you contest crazy bloggers. Try and take one, maybe two months, and focus on producing the best contests and incentives you can. Then let three months go by with non of that, and see what happens. Then, take one month and produce the best possible content that you could write, or that money can buy, and then take three months normal with non of the fluff or contest, and see how your readership benefits much much more from  the content, than the prizes.

Now, do not take this the wrong way, I love contests, and will run one here soon. But just don’t make it a habit that the only thing you do to keep readers is run contests.

Well we’ve made it! One month old! I know that’s nothing to the three and four year old blogs, but to me, I’m happy to have made it this far.

Well, along with the one month anniversary, I’m pleased to announce the winner of the MonkeyBlogger Mini Contest!

The Winner of a one month 125×125 advertisement and a free review on MonkeyBlogger is…..

Drumroll Please!

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Nathaniel!

Congrats Nathaniel of http://www.green-flamingo.com/

As proof here’s a snapshot of the 6 people who entered and their places.

Well, Nathaniel, you have 1 week to email me or Mike from Bloggin-ads.com will get the prizes.

I’m so happy we’ve made it one month, and I can’t wait until we hit 1 year!

Hey guys, I’m just going to do some updates today. We’ll have some more content tomorrow.

First off, we are very new, so our stats are not too great yet. But let’s see what we got. I’ll be doing this every Saturday, so we can see the progress of this blog.

Stats - As of May 10th, 2008

• Technorati: 790,971 (Link)
• Alexa - 635,288 (Link)
• Posts - 24
• Comments - 164
• Average Comments Per Post - 6.83

As you can see, we’re growing very nicely. From next week on, we’ll show the previous weeks in parentheses so we can show the progress.

I think that this blog is shaping up to be something great, and I’m going to be trying my best to provide some great content for you. We’ve got a lot of great things coming up soon, so stick around.

Also, the Mini Contest is coming to a close on May 14th, or this upcoming Wednesday, so stay tuned into MonkeyBlogger.com for that.

One more thing, I am going to be making t-shirts! These will be high quality with mascots on them. I’ll be giving them out free to start, so I think you guys are gonna like that too.

Well, that’s it, tomorrow we’ll have some better content, so be ready for that.

This is a paid review, but is by no means is my opinion altered by the fact that I was paid to write it.

Boy, did I come across a foolish website.

It even knows it’s foolish, it goes by the name of The Net Fool.

But in all seriousness, Jim asked me to review his Make Money Online blog, The Net Fool.

Now, I can hear you all screaming, “There’s too many stupid “MMO” blogs out there, and we sure as heck don’t need another one!”, but bear with me. This one actually doesn’t suck.

Jim has essentially created a blog that focuses mostly on making money but at the same time, it’s not the same rehashed content, with articles like, “Use Proxies to Make Money!” or “Flipping Websites” or even “Make money doing absolutely nothing”, (I hate those ones ).

He uses a lot of methods to make money, and he talks about them at his blog.

These can include GPT websites, or Get Paid To websites. What’s great about this is that he doesn’t just have scattered posts about it. He has a whole page for GPT Reviews, and another for Trusted GPT websites.

He also talks a lot about the stock market, and he seems to really know what he’s talking about. This is cool because I can’t think of any other real good MMO blogs that talk about this. That in itself makes him stand out.

Another great thing about his blog is that he has managed to create a unique look and feel to it. He used the John Cow theme, but modified it much. It has a different color scheme, much more toned down and not as bright. He also invested in custom header graphics with a great mascot, which I presume is of him.

Personally, (And I’ll be talking about this much more) I feel that custom mascots and themes and whatnot really brand a blog, and set it apart from the other 10,000 Make Money Online blogs from the get go. This is something I feel he has really achieved.

One more great thing about his blog is the unique writing style and unique layout of his posts. I personally love images, and I’ve been using them more in my posts, and this is a skill Jim has mastered. He always seems to have some great clip art that fits his posts perfectly, and that keeps me entertained while reading his content. Also, when is comes to his writing style, he’s casually, but not too casual, he doesn’t use slang or anything of that sort, and I really like that.

Now, although he’s got a great blog, and I could go on about the Pros, I do want to give some suggestions to him, that I think will help him even more.

One thing I think he could do better for this blog is clean up the navigation. If it were me, I’d put all the GPT stuff on one page, it would organize it better. I would also not have the archives page on the navigation, but have it be accessed via the sidebar. I think it would help clean up the navigation, and produce a better user experience.

Those are really the only things I can find that I’m not totally cool with on his blog, but overall, I think it’s a great one, and you should totally check it out.

Also right now, he has a great contest going on with over $4,500 in prizes called The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest! Prizes vary from Web Hosting to Wordpress themes and even cold hard cash! It’s a great one, and you should definitely check it out.

Well, that’s pretty much it for my review of this blog. I think it’s a great one, and is growing steadily, and I think it will soon become a foolish household name.

Ok guys, this is a little contest just to foreshadow the upcoming one.

All you need to do to enter in this one is subscribe to the rss via email and comment on this post. Then all entrants will be placed in a randomizer on May 14th, (the blog’s one month anniversary) and a the winner will receive a one month 125×125 advertisement and a free review. (Total worth: $45) I know it’s a small contest, just something to foreshadow the huge one coming up, and keep my readers satisfied and rewarded for being so loyal.

In regards to that contest, we have over $4000 in sponsored prizes and growing every day.

So just comment on this post + subscribe to the feed via email and you’ll be all set.

In other news, Part Four of my series “The Freelancer’s Guide” will be out tomorrow and coming up this week we will have a very special review from a well known and respected internet entrepreneur, so stay tuned for that as well. Have a great evening my friends!