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A contest can be a win-win, but there are factors to consider:

1. It should be easy for people to participate. Even though there is no more powerful word in advertising than “Free”, onerous rules or effort can make it free dollar-wise, but expensive time-wise and participation is inversely proportional to the effort required.

We ran a contest on YouTube over a year ago that asked people to create a video destroying a collectible stock certificate (it was more clever than it sounds) for RealStockCertificates.com.  We got some notice and the winning video was very good, but the return was not worth the effort.

Lessons I learned: 1) Despite the legendary Viral nature of YouTube, unless you get very lucky, it still takes a big budget to make a large impact there, just as with traditional advertising.  2) Asking people to create a video, even on a video-centric site, is asking for a commitment few people are willing to make.

2. The prize offered should be very appealing. The Wall Street Journal recently had an article about contests on Twitter.  One commonality of the successful ones was prizes with broad appeal, like an Ipod, or that appeal specifically to their audience (a super jacked up PC for a tech crowd).

3. Broad participation. Getting the word out to people who would be interested is a marketing challenge like any other. It is not true that if you build it, they will come.

We just started a contest. Our newest site, http://www.Buy-A-Web-Site.com, is a place for people to buy or sell full web sites or domains that are collectibles-related. The contest is using Twitter to notify Twitterers who use the key words collectible, antique and vintage that they can win a domain name of their choice (there are about 35 Domains that have those words in them) just by tweeting about a name they want and the contest.

We'll announce the winner here  and tell you how it went.

Post edited 9:40 pm - September 18, 2009 by jacks88

Here are the results of our Win A Premium Domain Name Twitter contest.

Good: we got quite a few retweets and traffic noticably increased at the Buy-A-Web-Site.com webpage. Since our follower list is increasing by a lot, there's no way to sort through and tell if any of those followers joined because of the contest.

Bad (maybe): The contest winner was ridyrosevintage, who chose the name UsedAndVintage.com. The winner was very excited.  Since sending the instructions for transfer, I have heard nothing back.

The domain is registered at GoDaddy. Every domain name is registered with a registrar somewhere, or you don't own the domain. If you want to transfer ownership between owners who both have an account at the same registrar, it is a pretty simple, quick process. However, if you want to change registrars, it is a complicated process, because you get more parties and steps involved.

My assumption is that when I Emailed a diagram of the change of registrar process steps option, the winner thought it was more trouble than it was worth. If my assumption is correct, then our contest violated, in a way, one of my posted tenets above - Make it Easy.

If anyone knows ridyrosevintage, tell him I am still holding the name and if he registers for a free account at GoDaddy, he can have the name within 48 hours.

Jack

Addendum: My fears were for naught. The winner was unexpectedly out of town and is thrilled to be geting the free domain name.