First, The University Kid started out March with what I had considered a “hall-of-fame” blog contest. His contest prizes are awesome, and really has something to offer for everyone. Just when I thought The University Kid was going to have no “contest competition” throughout the month of March, Gyutae Park stepped up to the plate. Not only did Gyutae Park step up to the plate, he swung and hit a grand-salami by offering $8,000 dollars worth of prizes.

It turns out, not only are Gyutae Park and The University Kid running great contests during March: recently, Collin from over at feedflare.ca sent me a message through my contact form saying that he is also running a contest and would appreciate it if I let others know about it. Though I hadn’t ever visited Collin’s website before, I decided to check it out and see what types of prizes were up for grabs.

The official FeedFlare prizes include:

• Mini Unix web hosting package free for 1 year - Donated by BlurFur web hosting services (value - $70.00) - random draw
• Advertising voucher with Bidvertiser worth $200.00 in free clicks (value - $200.00) - random draw
• Blog branding package which includes (Favico, header, logo, 125×125 button) design package donated by Graphic Identity (value - $200.00) - random draw
• Free advertising for one month in the form of a 125×125 button on Blogging Cents. (value - $35.00) - random draw
• Win a free advertising spot on the “You Can Learn Series” blog in the form of a 125×125 ad button (value per spot - $5.00) - random draw
• Exclusive Theme donated by Unique Blog Designs (value - $99.00) there is around 10 different themes you can chose from if you win - random draw
• Win one of 2 copies of the “Written Promptly Everyday” E-Book donated by The Prompt Writer (value per book -$5.00) random draw
• Win a copy of “How to launch a profitable free lancing business for under $50.00? donated by the “Self Made Chick” (value - $12.00) random draw
• Custom banner design and the size will be of your choice donated by Dat Money dot com (value - $50.00) random draw
• One month free 125×125 advertising on Jason Boom dot com. (value - $20.00) random draw
• Grand Prize - 25,000 Entrecard credits (one lump some, the largest amount to be given away in a contest to date) draw date is March 31st (value - not really sure but some where around $250.00 I think)
• Bonus Gifts - we have 200 pages on the “One Buck Wiki” to give away - the first two hundred contest enterer’s will be each given one page as a bonus gift just for entering our grand opening contest.You will still be able to win any of the other prizes we have as well. The current selling price for a page on the “One Buck Wiki” is $20.00 making this our largest prize package worth over $4000.00 in cash value.
• Featured grand prize = $500.00 cash payable via PayPal with the draw date being March 31st. You can thank my nice income tax return for this prize!!!

Total prize packages are worth just over $5200.00 (cash value) plus 25,000 Entrecard credits.

What promotion strategies are being utilized?

The University Kid Contest promotion:

I am not familiar with Jason, from The University Kid dot com’s promotional tactics, but I’m sure some guest posting will definitely be in order! After reading the contest over, the only promotional tactic that has been used to help increase popularity of his contest is “blogging about the contest.” Blogging about the contest is a great strategy, especially when all of his sponsors also blogged about the contest on their blogs (which adds up to a lot of promotion). There is, however, some ground that may need to be covered. With a contest this huge, he should really be taking advantage and guest posting on popular blogs, while providing links to his contest. A few guest posts on John Chow are definitely in order!

WinningTheWeb promotion:

Gyutae over at WinningTheWeb is doing a phenomenal job of promoting his contest. In fact, he is probably doing the best job promoting his contest that I’ve ever seen! He is really treating his contest like a well-thought out piece of art. It all started with planning, Gyutae took the time to set up an awesome listing of prizes that would definitely attract any blogger’s attention! First of all, Gyutae did a great job planning out his contest and contest prizes. Having a good plan always helps. A lot of Gyutae’s prizes are sponsored, which makes the contest much less of a strain on his personal bank account. Since the prizes are sponsored, most of the sponsors felt that they should share the contest with their blog readers. Gyutae has really collected some great prizes and some advertising squares on very popular blogs. Chances are good that each of those popular blogs took the time to mention Gyutae’s contest. In fact, I recently read posts on AdesBlog (w/ 900 + RSS Subscribers) and Zac Johnson’s blog that discussed Gyutae’s contest. Not only is his contest getting mentioned on blogs that sponsored prizes, it is getting mentioned in contestant’s blogs for increased chances at winning! To top it off, it appears as though Gyutae has an internet marketing tactic planned out each day for his contestants to participate in that will help increase the awareness of his blog contest! First, he had participants use StumbleUpon gain themselves more entries and help spread word of his contest. Next he had participants using Sphinn, then twitter! All of these social networking promotional tools will increase awareness and overall traffic! He has already gained over 100 RSS subscribers and it has been less than 1 week! It appears as though Gyutae has a great promotional strategy laid out for each day of the contest. Gyutae really shouldn’t be too worried about his promotional strategies!

Feedflare.ca promotion:

I am honestly unfamiliar with the Feedflare blog, but it appears to have a good contest running! I don’t know exactly what all Collin is doing to promote it, but I have figured out a couple of things: 1) Collin is sending e-mails to various blogs asking them to help by blogging about his contest. 2) He is giving more contest entries for blogging about the contest. Collin is using 2 great promotional tactics, but I hope that he’s taken the time to guest blog on a few popular blogs and really get his contest promoted so it turns out successful!

What do the 3 blogs have in common?

• They are all doing a great job of building up a community - You gain more entries in the contest by doing things like commenting more, subscribing to their feeds, and blogging about the post.

• They all are running a crazy contest. With over $5,000 dollars being given away in each of the contests, they are definitely something that will catch your attention!

• They all hope to increase RSS subscriber numbers. Not only do they hope to increase overall traffic to their website, they also hope to inrease RSS subscriber numbers. If they can get you to subscribe to their blogs and keep publishing valuable content, you really don’t have any reason to unsubscribe and will most likely keep following their blogs!

Out of the 3 contests, do I have a favorite?

I honestly think all 3 contests that I’m aware of have great prizes and are worth checking out, otherwise I wouldn’t have even mentioned them in my blog posts! However, I do have a personal preference for Gyutae’s contest mostly because I have been an active member over at WinningTheWeb for a few months now and really enjoy what Gyutae’s done with his blog. Don’t get me wrong, all the contests mentioned are offering phenomenal prizes, and have really outdone most other contests that I’ve seen! I recommend participating in them all in order to increase your chances of winning!

Why have I been blogging about contests lately?

• I like high-quality contests - I’ve seen blogging contests before, but these are really set the bar high compared to previous contests! High-quality contests do a great job at drawing attention to blogs, are great to follow, and fun to participate in. Yeah, it’s cool to win a 1,000 Entrecard credits every once and awhile, but these prizes are really on a whole new level compared to those redundant Entrecard giveaways!

• My readers like being aware of contests - If there is a worthy contest going on in the blogosphere, I want my readers to be aware of it! I’m trying to help you guys out by giving you quality information for visiting my site! I want my readers to be successful online!

• It’s fun to follow and participate in contests - Being involved in a blog contest is fun and exciting: especially when there’s some really valuable stuff being given away! When you win, you feel good and get an extra bit of motivational juice towards blogging!

Good luck to you all!

Gyutae Park (WinningTheWeb), Collin (FeedFlare), and Jason (The University Kid) I wish you all the best of luck promoting and running a successful contest! You all seem to be doing a great job so far. Just keep marketing your site relentlessly and really take full advantage of the contests while they last! By the way: I hope that I win some prizes ;)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!