How Having a Contest Can Help Your Blog or Website

You may have noticed I have posted about quite a few contests on this blog. Some of you are probably wondering if this is a Make Money and Save Money Online blog, why am I posting about contests?

First, I have an opportunity to win prizes, which I can turn around and sell if I don’t really want or need them myself. Second, I give you my readers an opportunity to win.

What’s important though is you should also notice that I link to each blog post of the contest, and sometimes a contest sponsors. We all know how important links back to your site are. Creating a contest for your own blog or website could generate those same types of links back to your blog or website, which can also increase traffic to your site.

You do need to offer prizes that will interest your visitors so they will want to take part in the contest. You can get prizes on your own or find sponsors to donate prizes.

You then have to give your visitors tasks to enter your contest. For most of the contests I’ve posted, you’ll notice they offer different amounts of entries for different tasks.

Some will offer 1 entry for registering for the RSS feed. This is a great way to get repeat visitors

Some will offer 1 entry for commenting on their blog. You could do this one several ways. You can only allow maximum of one comment for one entry at the contest post, or you can allow many comments for 1 entry each throughout all articles on your blog. The latter will bring visitors back often because they know they get more entries. Repeat traffic is always good right? Of course you have to set some rules to prevent useless comment spam. Perhaps a minimum 25 word comment is needed for entry and the comment has to be on topic.

Some contests offer an entry for a Twitter post about the contest. There are several other social sites that you could use as well.

The task that usually gets the most contest entries for completing it is posting a blog post about the contest (and sponsor if there is one). This will get many links back to your site and there should be an increase in traffic from it too. How many entries you offer is up to you, but the contests I’ve posted about have offered 5 entries up to 15 entries for a blog post about the contest (and sponsors if applicable).

So you can see how contests can help increase links back to your site, increase traffic and repeat visitors. If you’re planning on having a contest feel free to stop by and let me know. I’m sure I’ll post about it if I like the prizes

I will be planning a contest in the near future when I start posting on a daily basis here, so keep an eye out for that.