Will you fix your contest for me to win?
A blogging friend of mine received this email today:
hi, i was wondering if u coud possibly think about making me win the (editor removed) giveaway, i could send u half the retail in exchange! all u have to do iss keep hittin the random.org button till my number comes up. let me know. i really want it. ty
I know bloggers get a lot of heat for “unethical” behavior, fixed contests, blah, blah, but it was shocking to see someone REQUEST a fixed contest and give instructions on how to set it up.
Wow.
Just…wow.
First time ever I am speechless.
~Trisha
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78 Comments
i once worked for a company full of mom bloggers awhile back, they were actually taking the giveaway items. when the giveaway ended, they would just e-mail the company participating in the giveaway and use a fake name with their real address to send prizes too. it’s ridiculous.
I was part of another website and one of the other bloggers would do that on our site and on another site. I couldn’t stand it..so I left. She would also email companies once she found out what they were sending each of us 4 mommies to review and ask them to send her the most expensive item. SHAMEFUL! I am glad there are honest bloggers out there. Shanda
Gosh. You have a bit of a family crisis and miss so much! Some people just LOVE the drama. *rolls eyes*.
but trisha isn’t your PEN NAME Catherine?
lol
and that was a joke everyone, since you can’t seem to get the facts straight to begin with I felt i needed to point out the obvious!
@ karissa:
ah! Well, i didnt write that article…do people not realize that momdot is actually a COMMUNITY contributed website by LOTS of submitting bloggers? I dont write the articles there… (as it does say CATHERINE on the author..)
Regardless, I dont see 2 people a day as “traffic”. LOL!
I think the @firefly was regarding contest sluts.
LOL.
@ Christy:
I think she @firefly on it? But it was kinda confusing cause it was so long.
@ Christine Hoogwerf:
Do you bother READING anything before you jump to conclusions? In YOUR quote it says the post you’re talking about was “Written by Catherine on Tuesday, 07 July 2009 02:36″, yet you’re saying Trisha said she didn’t give a crap about OLS. Um… hello READ what you wrote!
@ Christine Hoogwerf:
I know your not directing that at me, since I didnt write that article. We publish 100s of articles written around the web by other bloggers.
And i haven’t called anyone a “contest slut”, lol!
The majority of our traffic is not actually contest traffic, as we don’t really run that many as it is, nor are we (as in alicia, bridgette, kim and I collectively) review bloggers.
When we ran contests, we maybe received 20-30 a day on average from contest sites, but since we see over 3000 people a day on our site, as you can tell, its not mainly from contests, its due to content and SEO.
We actually recently moved all contests over to the forums so only active members can win, which works better for our site.
I am not speaking for any other blogger that submits content and am not speaking for any other blogger.
Sincerely,
~Trisha
PS 134 entries in 9 weeks isnt a lot of traffic, thats TWO people a day…just saying.
@ Firefly:
Kinda funny you are on OLS bashing us as contest sluts and you don’t need our traffic….as stated in these posts you left on OLS.
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=139
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=141
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=147
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=151
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=154
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=156
http://forums.online-sweepstakes.com…&postcount=174
but then you tell other bloggers where they can post their contests to get the most traffic and OLS is the top listed place where you got most of your entries.
——————————-
From MomDot:
http://www.momdot.com/resources/17-b…your-giveaways
Best Places to Promote your Giveaways
Written by Catherine on Tuesday, 07 July 2009 02:36
The majority of my giveaway entries come from being promoted on Twitter, my loyal followers or from my Facebook Frugal Freebies fan page. (Thanks!)But I also have been posting the giveaways on other sites that offer to help promote giveaways. I decided to create a Giveaway spreadsheet [click picture to enlarge], to get an idea where most of my giveaway entries were coming from – since there are so-o many places you could promote a giveaway, and only so much time in a day!
Then I made one of the ways to enter – to tell me where they heard about the giveaway. After nine weeks of keeping score, here are the top twelve best places to promote your giveaway:
#1 – 134 entries from Online Sweepstakes
#2 – 44 entries from Contest Girl
#3 – 40 entries from Prizey.net
#4 – 25 entries from Sweepstakes Advantage
#5 – 20 entries from Mom Giveaways
#6 – 15 entries from Ultimate Blog Carnival
#7 – 14 entries from Sweetie’s Sweeps
#8 – 15 entries from Big List of Giveaways
#9 – 13 entries from Mom Advice/Mother Load
#10 – 10 entries from Deal Seeking Mom
#11 – 10 entries from PRIZE-A-TRON
#12 – 8 entries from Cancontests
Ironic you say in your ols posts that ‘contesters’ aren’t your main traffic, yet most of the places on this list ARE contest pages. So you USED ols to promote your blog, then get pissed when people enter.
that makes NO sense. You are TWO FACED go ahead and blacklist me.
I will NOT enter contests when you basically USE us and we don’t even have a chance to win (again as stated in YOUR posts on OLS)
So let me get this straight, the site is good enough to garner traffic to your site, but JUST that, you don’t really want ‘contest sluts’ entering.
TWO FACED
@ Sandy:
Sandy wrote:
LOL
Seriously, I think I am changing my name
@ mamabearmills:
That is sad to see bloggers rig contests.
First, please stop the back and forth accusations. This is an interesting topic and I dont want to close it. I am sorry I missed it and it got out of control last night. Cant a girl watch So you think you can Dance and Toddles and Tiaras without worrying about her blog? LOL
I did want to correct one thing on the IP. One computer has nothing to do with one or more than one IP address. IP addresses are served by your provider and unique to you. You can have a static or dynamic IP address. So one computer can have more than one IP address and its very common, more common than a static actually.
Every blog, website, forum records a “thumbprint” of the visiting person. So lets say that you used the name Jane one day and Bob the next, chances are, if someone went to look, they would know it was the same person utilizing that computer to leave the message. Every wordpress blog (and i imagine all blogs) internally hold the IP address of a commenter, which is visible to the administrator. This is the same for forum administrator platforms.
The blogger that posted the original email request DID remove the email address and name of the person that sent it to her before sharing it.
The blogger did share the IP address of the offending person in order for us to run our own systems and block that person should we choose. The only people that would know what matched up would be ones w/ that person having commented on their blogs before.
I only wanted to talk about the topic, not out the specific person.
It was me that removed the giveaway to protect the blogger when I put it here. (with permission) As much as (some) people would like to think this is ‘made up’, unfortunately it isn’t.
Life is just so interesting on its own that I don’t have to make things up..i just wait for them to show up.
But please do not shoot the messenger on the topic post. It wasn’t me, or “momdot” that created the situation. It was the person that sent off the email in the first place. And yes, as that person has posted here before, it was easily traceable on our own blog and I am well aware of who it is. I just don’t feel the need to out that person publicly by name.
I just hope that posting the email prevents not only that person from doing it again, but others from attempting it.
Live and learn, right?
I did a couple videos about mommy blogs and that was before I found out about the cheating going on!
http://revver.com/video/1824726/mommy-saver-blogs-are-so-phony/
@ Shan @Last Shreds Of Sanity:
she sent me a letter as soon as this went up and then someone forwarded me the ols post link. Go read her crap on ols calling me a cheater-
@ Shan @Last Shreds Of Sanity:
she said it in a post on ols- and also said that I had multiple ips in an email to me saying she knew I did this wtf is wrong I have one computer and only use it one place so I only have one ip. Nope it is not me- but hated the fact she sent me an email saying she was blacklisting me for something I did not do and accusing me of doing something I suppossedly did when I did not do it. I do not know how people hack, or forge or whatever they do- but it is not a message from me.
@ Spoodles:
Yes spoodles, I know of one blogger FOR SURE who rigs her contests. It’s foolish and downright LAMO. What the hell is the fun in anything like that?!?!?