Host Your Own Contest and Gain a Few Extra Readers!
One of the best ways you cant promote your website/business is by promoting others. Who would have thought about that? Well, you should be glad I did!
Contests are an amazing tool for quick and easy visitors, they also encourage people to sign up for RSS feeds and check out the rest of the website to see what other cool things you have going on! Now, if your website is active enough with an appropriate amount of readers for the types of prizes you’re looking to get do not fret! You do NOT have to purchase the prizes. This is where the fun comes in!
Pajama Mommy does not purchase any prizes that are given away to our readers. Why should we purchase your product to promote it? Thats our theory and it works. A lot of companies have press pages where they show their PR contacts information. This is your key to the city people.
Contact those companies tell them that you would love to get the word out on their product by working with them in ways to get their product in the face of your many readers. Most people are grateful since thats one less step they have to worry about..finding new faces.
Tell them your stats and information sorta like this:
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Amanda Harris. I run and own the Pajama Mommy Community (www.pjmommy.com). The website is an online magazine dedicated the women and mothers. We do have the occasional gentleman stopping by. I would love to work with your company in getting your products into the hands of my readers not only by suggesting the products but what I have found works great in the past is product reviews and contests.
Pajama Mommy gets X uniques a day and X repeat visitors day. We have X percent from the US X percent from canada, and X percent international.
Our target market is women ages 20-34 with one or more children. However, we do have a lot of non mothers who love our content as well. We cater to almost every one. If the prize doesn’t fit a certain reader they generally know some one who would love it and sign up anyways and get them to. So its great word of mouth for your product as well as our website. So we would love to build a relationship with your company!
Again my name is Amanda Harris my contact information is : XXX-XXX-XXXX x@x.com Please feel free contact me at your convienence.
Thank you
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Now that you see how I do it..why dont you try it and tell me how it worked out for you!
Amanda,
Have you tried running contests? If so did you have good results with them?
I am going to run a blog contest eventually, just wondering if they have worked for you.
Thanks,
George
I have run several contests on the site and they all worked out well for me and the companies who’ve hosted them! So much that their pr companies come back and ask to hold several more!
I’ve been thinking about holding my own contest, but I didn’t know where to start. Thanks for the tips. I’ll try to get something started. I doubt it will happen, but eh. xD
Trust me just contacting someone giving them the specs on your site will work!
Heck! I sell out on a regular basis of my TLA ads and I never thought that would happen!
we have been trying to have a contest on our website. i have emailed people with no repsonse. thanks for the tips!
Amanda,
Thanks for the information. Glad your contests have been so successful.
Hi Amanda, Thanks for sharing the great tips about running contests. I’m definitely adding that to my “to-do” list.
how do we encourage more particpation for contests? any tips?
George
A quick update if you want to connect to PR companies for prizes they are always more than willing to give stuff away! You might want to browse the places I connect with you might find something suitable for your readers!