08.15.06
$50 Contest — Was it Worth It?
Well I have taken some time to review the results of my experiment and I’ve actually had a hard time determining if it was successful or not.
My goals from this experiment were to: 1) generate organic traffic to my site, and 2) make money. Breaking down my analysis into these two goals, we get the following:
Goal #1: Generate Organic Traffic
When I was initially planning this contest, I had thought that the offer of $50 for a simple link-back to my site would bring dozens of entrants. “What’s a 30-second link for a chance at 50 bucks?”, I was thinking.
I promoted this contest on Digg, del.icio.us, numerous forums I frequent, and on CyberWyre of course. In the end, I received only six entrants, from which a winner was selected.
There will be no increased organic traffic from only six link-backs. As such, the first goal to generate traffic through increased link-backs failed.
Goal #2: Make Money
Although this experiment failed to generate sufficient traffic to make a profit from Text Link Ads referrals through link-backs, the attention that this contest received (from visitors who did not enter) brought a traffic spike to my Text Link Ads Review page, which in turn allowed me to break-even on my $50 investment.
So did this experiment make money? Nope. But it wasn’t a loss, and certainly not a failure.
Thoughts for Contest #2
I believe that if done right, a contest like this could significantly drive traffic to a site and increase page rank quite sharply with quality link-backs. Next time I will allow for a longer amount of time for users to submit their entry, provide a larger prize, and also provide some sort of incentive to encourage users to enter early.
One problem with this contest was that many users submitted their entry on the closing day. If there was an incentive for users who enter early (perhaps a slightly larger prize if they win) then it may have been more successful.
In the end, this was a good leason learned. Nothing was lost, yet nothing was gained.
I’ll try again in the future, and let you know how it goes.
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Adwords has really helped my site.
But i do need more profit though, do you know if hits via adwords increases my page rank?
because they have gone from:
Unique Visitors: 273 - 826
Page hits: 3000 - 8600
Referers: 300 - 1000
I know this is not as much as you but it is deffinately an improvement!
I used you idea to increase traffic and also to sort the slow traffic of summer.
The contest was also very simple, just put a photo in Flickr with a specific tag. I have given 3 pro accounts in flickr, and the traffic of the blog has manteined.
I’m not getting new links in Text Link Ads, or a significant increase in clicks in Adsense, but I get several new links from sites. That should help in the pagerank, alexa rank and technorati.
Maybe it’s too little for the investment of 4 pro flickr’s accounts (near $100) but I had this amount from the Text Link Ads.
Overall, I’m happy with the results. I know it can get more results, but it’s a good start with contests.
I’ll second the idea of running the contest a little longer. I was thinking of participating, but I’m lazy and slow to get around to things at times. A little more time might have prompted me to pull the trigger.
Don’t give up though, contests are fun, and definately will pay off in the long run.
I saw someone do this with an iPod. He only got 30-40 links in total.
The problem with these contests is that you have to be popular already for them to work
More Gumbo…
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I saw someone do this with an iPod. He only got 30-40 links in total.