Contest month is now over and conclusions.
ByAs of this post, the month-long contest is now officially over. I notified the last winner (eagerly awaiting his response) and have sent out all the prizes except that last one. Unfortunately, the grand prize will not be awarded because we failed to hit the 10.000 unique visitors mark. More in a bit. First some thoughts:
- The feedback I received was very positive. I want to thank all of you who support my blog and promoted it across the web.
- I was extremely surprised that so many people either didn’t receive/reply to my email telling them they won a prize. Didn’t see that one coming.
- I was even more surprised when winners said they “didn’t have time to receive the prize.” Whuh? You’re just going to receive it in the mail dude…
- The winners that did reply always seemed happy with their prize. I never got “Damn, I wanted the other book!” or anything like that as a response.
The grand prize, to be awarded if we broke 10.000 unique visitors in a month was this:
- Street Steel by Michael J. Danich.
- Slam Set Evolutions by Joseph Simonet.
- The Fighter’s Guide to Hard-Core Heavy Bag Training by yours truly.
To achieve this, I asked participants to make a link to this place on their blog, site, Facebook or Myspace page. When I looked at my Analytics results for February, there was indeed a slight increase in traffic coming in from new links. But unfortunately not all that much. Google doesn’t allow posting complete figures so I’ll just show the graph:
Because the contest ran from Feb 1 until Marc 2nd, you can add up that last column to the second one. So there is indeed an increase in traffic but not nearly enough to reach the target. Which brings me to another couple tentative conclusions:
- Maybe the prizes weren’t enough incentive for participants to make a link to the blog.
- Maybe this requirement wasn’t clear enough. I thought it was but I could be wrong.
- If you have any ideas or suggestions to increase the effectiveness of such a contest, feel free to let me know in the comments section.
What I’ll do next time is try to be even more clear. Perhaps do a short video to introduce the contest and explain it that way. We’ll see how it goes. All in all, I think the result is pretty positive and am already working on another contest…
One more important thing: If you registered for this contest, you are still eligible for all future contests. So if Lady Luck wasn’t on your side this time, she might favor you in the future…
.
Wim (209)
Danny Young (52)
shugyosha (17)
Garry Hodgins (16)
Bob Patterson (14)
Chris (13)
Jon Law (11)
Not your fault Wim, the requirement was perfectly clear. I tried to haul in some views right at the close, but it’s hard to get 10.000 people to click a link they’ve never before. I think it was simply to big a number.
As well, more prices for the next contest
In theory, the 10.000 figure wasn’t all that hard to reach. If everybody who signed up already sent a link to ten people, we would have hit it. If you look at Facebook, people having hundreds of contacts, a link there could get a lot of hits very easily. When I look at the analytics, some of the people who did make links drove a lot of traffic to the blog. So I don’t think it was impossible or even hard to get to that figure. It did, however, necessitate people taking action…
Not to worry though, then next contest is almost ready.
Can I be the default winner? LOL………………. love you bro.
LOL! Nice try!
I tried! LOL………………..:)