Okay, so I don’t usually write about individual contests on the Contest Blogger Forum anymore, but I’ve been thinking about buying a Flip Video digital camcorder and this contest is offering one as a prize. So consider this post my heads up to our readers as well as Contest Blogger’s entry.
To get one entry in the contest, just leave a comment on this post over at John Chow dot com. And for five more entries, you can link back to Bic Promo Pens using the anchor text promotional pens (among other anchor texts).
I’d say good luck, but since we really want to win this thing, that would be a bit disingenuous, wouldn’t it?
Okay, so today is our favorite day of the month: it’s when Contest Blogger draws a random $100 winner in our Big Monthly Giveaway. And for the month of July, the lucky winner of a hundred smackeroos is BlogMunch. Congrats, dude!
Check this out: last month, I complained because the first couple of people I picked to win the money didn’t have links back to us anymore, so I had to choose someone else. The real bummer is that yet again, the first winner I randomly chose this month had taken down their link to Contest Blogger. By doing that, they totally lost out on a quick $100.
I say again: if you want to remain entered in the monthly contest permanently, your links have to remain up permanently. Next time around, I might randomly draw your site (there aren’t as many entrants as you think there are, and your chances of winning are really good). And if your link back to Contest Blogger aren’t still up, I’ll move on to the next name on the list.
Anyway, congrats again to BlogMunch. And if you haven’t entered our $100 giveaway yet, why not go do it now? It’s super fast, super easy, and could make you $100 richer!
For those of you who visit the Contest Blogger Forum regularly, you may have noticed that we recently launched two new independent websites as part of our network. The new sites are dedicated to Cash Sweepstakes and Vacation Sweepstakes, and it brings the number of forums in our network to ten.
The sites are so new that there are hardly any posts in the forums yet (although I notice that one eager visitor has already registered on Cash Money Sweepstakes and left a post). Over the coming weeks, we will be moving some relevant posts from the Contest Blogger Forum to the two new forums, so it should start to populate with interesting materials pretty quickly.
Of course, if you would like to be one of the first registered members of the new forums, please go check them out and take a moment to register for a free account and leave a post if you like. And don’t forget to check out our other free forums dedicated to Art Contests, Baby Contests, Canadian Contests, Automobile Sweepstakes, Photo Contests, Recipe Contests, and Writing Contests.
Also, if you are an permanently entrant in the Monthly $100 Giveaway, please keep in mind that links to the newly launched sites will give you two more permanent entries.
We hope you enjoy the new forums, and look forward to reading your contest and sweepstakes posts!
Hey Contest Blogger fans, it’s almost our favorite time of the month: and that means we’re going to give some lucky person who currently links to this site or one of our network sites 100 easy bucks! Next Tuesday, July 1, we’re going to randomly pick a name of one of the people on our growing list of linkers, and immediately PayPal them some free cash.
Have you entered our 100 Dollar Monthly Giveaway yet by tossing up a quick link? If not, you could be missing out on a nice amount of unexpected spending money to devote to the long holiday weekend. Enter our link and win contest today, then drop us a quick note and we’ll put your name on the permanent list of entrants.
We just can’t wait to pick the next winner on July 1 and wire them a cool, quick hundred smackers! :)
A Few Bad Apples Can Spoil the Blog Contest Barrel
There are many different reasons why a blogger might want to start a contest, but most of them boil down to getting links and promoting their blog. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re offering something of genuine value to the contest entrants and are running things honestly. Unfortunately, in a few rare instances, neither of those are the case . . . and when someone experiences a blog contest or sweepstakes scam firsthand, it can tend to spoil the whole barrel for them and make them unlikely to ever enter another one.
Our first hint that some bloggers might be running phony contests came when we uncovered a huge scam by a guy named Ashwin Khanna. You can read all about it in depth, but it basically boiled down to a blogger promising a ridiculously large sum of money to a random reader who linked to him, then not delivering on the prize. Although we exposed Ashwin Khanna as a fraud and helped destroy his online reputation in the process, he still got hundreds of backlinks from his scam contest and probably ended up walking away with a little extra cash in his wallet.
And yes, we still see contests that are posted on the Contest Blogger Forum and other places on the Internet that we suspect are scams. While we delete these suspected phonies from the forum, you can be sure that plenty of people are still fooled into giving out links, free publicity and even cash to blog contest and sweepstakes scammers. In hopes of preventing that from happening, we’ve decided to compile a checklist of what to look for before you enter a blog contest.
The Different Types of Blog Contest Scams
Blog contest scams come in many different shapes and sizes, but they usually involve an effort by the scammer to get one of four things: links, publicity, subscribers or comments. These four things are the mother’s milk of the Blogosphere, and an abundance of any of them can deliver tons of traffic, search engine juice, page rank and advertising money.
Of course, legitimate blog contests also usually ask for one of those four things as an entry requirement, too, so it shouldn’t be looked at as an indicator of a scam artist. The problem comes when bloggers use deceitful methods to gain entrants in their contests, don’t deliver on their promises, or cut and run before it’s time to deliver. Generally, blog contest and sweepstakes scams take one of five forms:
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The Setup: In this blog contest scam, the scammer promises to deliver a prize to a randomly chosen entrant. And while he really does end up giving a prize to someone, it isn’t really random at all. Instead, he chooses either a friend, a family member, or a the owner of a website which he thinks will give his blog the maximum publicity if he gives them the prize. This kind of blog contest scam is extremely difficult to identify, since you can never know if someone is really choosing a random winner.
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The Fake: In The Fake, there is never really a winner at all, but the scammer pretends that someone has been awarded a prize. This is the type of blog contest scam that was run by Ashwin Khanna: he set up a phony blog himself, then claimed that it was the random winner of the huge cash prize. If the scammer is really stupid, he won’t even set up a phony site and will neglect to even name the winner.
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The Quitter: The Quitter is another popular blog contest scam, usually perpetuated by the laziest and most unoriginal scammers. In this variation, the scammer gets tons of backlinks or subscribers, then just before it’s time to chose a winner, he cancels the contest. He usually has a great excuse for cancelling, though, such as “I just didn’t get as many entrants as I thought I would.”
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The Changer: The Changer is similar to The Quitter, but instead of cancelling, the scammer will change the rules right in the middle of the contest. For instance, he might toss in a new entry requirement, such as subscribing to his blog in addition to linking back.
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The Fade Out: This form is one of the most common, and rarely goes noticed since it’s usually perpetrated by bloggers with few readers. The Fade Out happens when a blogger decides to cancel a contest he has started, but doesn’t even mention it on his blog. Truthfully, The Fade Out usually doesn’t harm many people, since there are probably no entrants to cheat in the first place.
How To Identify A Blog Contest Scam and Avoid Getting Cheated
Sure, there are lots of different types of blog contest and sweepstakes scams, but luckily there are a few simple tips you can use to identify them pretty quickly. Most of them are common sense, and it’s doubtful that many people will fall for a scam if they are even slightly savvy about how the Blogosphere works. Still, for newer bloggers, here is a checklist of five things that should set off some alarms that you might be looking at a blog contest scam:
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An Unrealisticly Large Prize: This is what tipped us off that Ashwin Khanna’s blog contest was probably a sham. He was offering a $2,500 prize, which was completely unbelievable from a blog that had just kicked off and looked so unprofessional.
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A Crappy Blog: It’s sad to say, but if someone’s blog is poorly put together and betrays no attention to detail or pride in their own work, then it is much more likely that their contest is a scam.
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A Record of Scams: This should go without saying, really. Do a Google search on the blogger, and if they have perpetuated a scam before, don’t trust them now.
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Ridiculous Entry Requirements: There’s nothing wrong with asking for a link, a feed subscription or a post comment to enter a blog contest. But if they ask for all three, they are being a little too desperate.
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Any Kind of Entry Fee: If someone asks you for bank account information or an entry fee, no matter how small, then don’t trust them. Besides, if they are charging an entry fee to take part in their contest, then that makes it an online raffle,
which is illegal.
This morning, we got to do what we love the most here at Contest Blogger: draw a random winner of our monthly $100 giveaway! It’s always a lot of fun to use random.org to generate a random number, then look on our list of entrants and see who the big winner is. This month random.org generated number 55, and that slot is held by a blog called Cuzoogle.
We sent an email to Cuzoogle notifying their webmaster of his winnings, and he will get the money sent to his PayPal account as soon as he gets back to us. Remember, if you want to get your name permanently on our $100 monthly giveaway list, all you have to do is link back to Contest Blogger! It’s that easy, dude. We will also give you additional entries for linking back to any of the other seven contest forums in our network, too.
A Quick Word of Warning!
Hey dude, check it out: it’s sad to say, but the first two random winners we pulled today did not have links back to Contest Blogger on their blogs when we checked them. That means that they lost $100 cash because they erased the backlink after they entered our drawing. We’re not going to name them, but I’m sure they both would have loved to get the extra cash this month!
Just remember: your name will remain on our monthly $100 drawing list permanently, but you are disqualified from winning if you remove the link. We do check to make sure the link is there every time we draw a winner, so make sure it stays if you want to keep your name on the list!
Wow, is it really time to draw another $100 Monthly Drawing winner on Contest Blogger? Time has really flown this month, which is a good thing I guess. We really do enjoy giving away a hundred bucks to lucky winners who link back to us!
We will be drawing our next winner on Sunday, and there’s still time to toss your name in the hat if you haven’t yet. All you have to do is link back to the Contest Blogger homepage, and you’ll remain entered in the monthly $100 drawing forever. Pretty easy, huh?
Anyway, we’ll announce the June winner next week right here on the Contest Blogger Blog, and it could easily be you if you enter today. Good luck! 
Contest Blogger is excited to announce that we’re currently in the process of expanding our network of contest forum sites to include stand-alone domains that will be completely dedicated to specific types of contests. The Contest Blogger Forum was getting pretty cluttered with groups for different kinds of contests, and we decided to give some of these niches their own webpage on separate domains in order to make contest searches easier for our users. The Contest Blogger network now includes domains dedicated to the following:
Art Contests
Automobile Sweepstakes
Baby Contests
Canadian Contests
Photo Contests
Recipe Contests
Writing Contests
Of course, the new sites are still being developed, and there is lots of maintenance to do before they are in the kind of shape we want them to be. But you can register for a free forum account on each site and start listing your contests and sweepstakes right away. We’ve already taken much of the relevant posts from the Contest Blogger Forum and transferred them to the new sites, but there is still plenty of work to be done.
If you’ve already linked to the Contest Blogger Forum from your site, it would be great if you gave your readers a shout-out about our new dedicated domains or gave a backlink or two to any of the new forums that might interest you.
Oh, and don’t forget that Contest Blogger is drawing its next $100 monthly winner on June 1. We will count any links to our new domains as extra entries in the drawing!
I was very excited today to receive a copy of a great new book by the Contest Queen herself, Carolyn Wilman, called “You Can’t Win if you Don’t Enter.” The book is a super resource full of ways to win cash and prizes both online and offline. It’s a substantial read, too, with more than two hundred pages of well-written tips about where to find great sweepstakes and contests, increasing your chances of winning, and even government regulations and tax implications.
Carolyn Wilman is the perfect person to write a book like this, having won tens of thousands of dollars in annual winnings from hundreds of sweepstakes and contests. She has won everything from trips around the world, free products, tickets, cash, and meetings with celebrities. “You Can’t Win if you Don’t Enter” is the best resource I’ve ever seen for people interested in contests and sweepstakes, and gives you a great overview of the methods Carolyn has used to win so many prizes.
Of course, we’re also very happy to see that Carolyn has included Contest Blogger in the book as an online resource for people looking for contests and sweepstakes. It’s great to get a mention from such a top-notch publication, and we hope that Contest Blogger fans take the time to order the book and take advantage of the many tips it offers for winning lots of cash and prizes!
Hey, Contest Blogger is drawing its next $100 monthly winner soon . . . have you entered our monthly giveaway yet? It’s quick and easy!
Hey Contest Blogger fans, first of all a big apology for not drawing our monthly $100 winner on the first of the month as we usually do. For those of you who don’t know, this site’s administrator is a proud member of the U.S. Army National Guard, and he was in the field all week . . . not a great place to find a wireless Internet connection!
It may be a few days late, but we’ve drawn this month’s $100 winner, and we’re happy to congratulate HomeBiz Resource on winning the cash. We will be sending hundred bucks to him as soon as he emails us back for verification.
If you haven’t entered your name in the monthly $100 giveaway here on Contest Blogger, you really need to do it! It’s super easy (all you have to do is post one link back to our homepage on your website or blog), and once your name is in the drawing it will stay there forever. For one little link, you’ll have a chance to win a hundred bucks every month!
Congrats again to this month’s winner, and stay subscribed to Contest Blogger to keep updated on our upcoming winners!
