Ajeet Khurana (a freelance writer I came to know through the About.com crowd, and more later through the All Info About network and now the DigitalPoint community), has offered up some cold hard cash for the contest.
The top commenter will receive $25 cash through Paypal in addition to the rest of the prize list thanks to Ajeet’s generosity. Thanks Ajeet! :)
Obviously, this prize is only eligible to those with a Paypal account. If you’re in an ineligible country or simply don’t have an account, this prize won’t be in your package, and instead it will go to the next highest bidder that does have a Paypal account.
The prize will be distributed directly through Ajeet. He’ll be on vacation over New Year’s, so this prize will likely be distributed a little bit later than the rest.
Thanks again to Ajeet and everyone who’s donated the wonderful prizes for December. :)
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Cathy Miller
Amandah
Andrew Kardon
Amelia Ramstead
Lori
I have seen a few different blogs over the last few months doing contests, but this is by far the best one yet. I’m not that vocal on line so I’m sure I won’t win, but it will be fun to see who does. :)
What made you decide to run a contest?
This has turned into quite a package, hasn’t it? Very impressed with the generosity of the people who donated the prizes.
I am too! These are really great prizes. And it seems to be growing still. Very exciting! :)
I am so excited that this contest has grown to the proportions it has. That was a very generous prize donation on his part!
The contest is growing and growing by the day !! How exciting.
@Kathleen – I’m really not sure why I decided to run it. It was just getting a little lonely over here – getting initial commenters built up isn’t always easy, and I kept delaying on it. With the holidays coming up, it just seemed like a good time to give stuff away. :)
I think prizes may encourage us to comment more but I don’t know if they necessarily attract more people. Do you have a counter? Can you track if the number of visitors has actually increased? I’ve been reading your blog for a long time –I just didn’t comment before. It’d be interesting to know how much of an impact a contest actually has on site traffic.
Oddly enough, traffic is slightly down this month. It usually is for me in December with people thinking about holidays though, so it’s not that bad… stopped some of the drop. :) So now it’s not much in the traffic department (but I didn’t promote the contest too heavily). It did, however, bring in a few more subscribers than I usually get in a month (via email… haven’t checked normal rss subscriptions, although I’ve never had too many here).
Scratch that. Regular rss subscribers are also up. I only had like 30-something rss subscribers on this blog previously, and now it’s suddenly at 158. So still not a lot overall, but a significant increase. So I’d say the contest was certainly worth it.
And if nothing else, it’s forced me to post much more. :)
Yeah it def gets more attention to your name, business & blog. Really great marketing idea.
That’s a big jump, actually. Add to that the people who are just stopping by, rather than subscribing to feeds (I don’t personally subscribe to any feeds) and you’re probably doing pretty well.
Yeah i’m def impressed -a nd honestly since my name was mentioned on here, on the golden pencil and b/c of my article on write-from-home.com this month — my readership went 5 fold
I noticed a big jump on my blog readership too after a quick link. It would be interesting to see if the readers stay around after the “heat” dissipates or if they are just hopping around from blog to blog.
Jenn, if you plan on doing a monthly contest, you should definitively get a press release out to draw more readers. I think it could be a great opportunity for you to increase your newsletter subscribers and to maybe make a few sales. Even if that’s not the primary reason for you to do this, it’s still well-worth it.
I definitely have many more people reading my blog too – or this was an overall great idea for all.
I’ve been linking my name to my website (not a blog), so I’m not tracking visitors, although I’m sure some people have stopped by because of it. In my case, though, it’s really not that important, although you never know :)
Yes, well in a few posts I have put my blog too :) — but yes most people are going to my website as well.
Just wanted to share something interesting: I had an editor contact me last week to write an article for her e-zine. The pay was low ($40) but the article was really short (350 words) and on a topic I knew really well. I was a little weary of the whole thing, but she offered to pay me BEFORE I even wrote the article, so I agreed. What’s the interesting part? She said she found me through one of my posts here! :) She just happened to click on the link, read some of the samples in my website, realized I was a match for the topic and voice and contacted me! So :) Thanks for the extra bonus, Jenn!!