Contest Mondays

IF LINKY ISNT HERE, ITS DOWN AND WILL GO UP AS SOON AS LINKY GOES UP! Its been on and off lately, so we have to adjust our blog accordingly.

Before you list your contests, lets start out Contest Mondays with a thought…WHY do you run contests?

Recently I was in a conversation (that subsequently lowered my IQ by 3 points for participating) where the contest entrants were convinced that bloggers would fold without contests.  Basically….its all bloggers traffic and without them, we are, gasp, nothing. Obviously, that’s my dramatic interpretation but isn’t far from the truth, albeit the words they used were much more rude.

Let me ask you dear bloggers, WHY do you run contests and is it your only source of traffic?

On MomDot, while we absolutely love to offer products to our blog as a form of advertising for a company, our real purpose has very little to do with contests or product reviews. Our blog set up is in such a way that we try to differentiate contests from our regular content so its not as intertwined. If you must come for a contest, I hope you leave with a thought unrelated to a product.Your not going to remember me for a pair of shoes, but you may for this.

We actually host our contests with the thoughts of rewarding continuous visitors to our site; the ones invested into our community via reading, commenting, being on the forum, or Friday Night Shows.  We also hope that it helps introduce new bloggers to our site and they wonder where they have been their whole lives and come back and get involved. Our true influence lies in those people that interact with us on a daily, or weekly basis and not with someone that stopped in to leave me a comment on a product that says “thanks” and disappears off of my blog radar.

It makes me feel used. Like showing up at my house for the pre-football game cookout, drinking all my beers, and then leaving before the game starts.

With the exception of our completely amazing and awesome swingset giveaway, very little of our traffic is actually due to contests, so if for some reason they went away, the only people we would be disappointed for is our regular audience and our inability to give back in a material way to the community that supports us.

That being said, thankyou to the BLOGGERS that spend hours and hours surfing blogs, entering and hosting contests, supporting bloggers, running advertising, marketing, and social networking till thier heads have migraines and their fingers crack from tension. YOU are the leaders, your blogs are what makes the internet go round, and we apprieciate every virtual footprint you leave at our door.

~Trisha

On to your contests! Enter them with the Contest Prize name and last day to enter in (parenthesis) so everyone knows what your offering and what time they have to do that by. Remember, we do this every Monday, so feel free to come list your new contests weekly and remember to support and enter the contests all over the Blogosphere. We also welcome you to include a comment that shares your contests or talks about something special you have going on contest related.

We love when you leave a comment and dont forget to visit someone elses contest and support them!