14_04_2009
Link Baiting Contests – Are They Worth It?
Scrawled by Ian | 7879 Designs News
As you read these words (assuming that you read them before April 30th, that is) I’m running a link baiting contest over at the Rate My Ride Blog. As, for better or worse, I’m trying to get a new site off the ground and this link baiting contest is part of the launch plan.
What’s A Link Baiting Contest?
The premise of the contest is simple – a link to your blog counts as an entry into a prize draw.
The contests are supposed to be “win-win”: they stand the chance to win a top notch prize and you win some of that oh so precious link juice flowing to your blog.
At least that’s the plan but as the contest draws on (we’re up to 4 days now) I’m starting to doubt whether I’ll really be able to consider myself a “winner” at the end of it.
But What Is Success?
That’s a good question and one that’s difficult to give a “one answer fits all response” to.
Whatever your exact motivation behind running a link baiting contest, the overall aim is simple – get more links into your blog.
But when the dust settles after the contest is over and you’ve posted the prize off to the winner (as only the most dastardly swines don’t actually send the prize) judging whether the contest was a success for you is all about balance. Balancing up the number of link back that you’ve got against the time (because it takes a lot of time and effort promoting the contest) and money (because you want a half decent prize right?) that you’ve spent running the thing.
But that’s easier said than done. If there’s a way of putting a price on each link back to your blog, I’ve not come across it. So deciding where the tipping point is on whether a link baiting contest was worth it or not is a bit of a “finger in the air” job.
Back at the Rate My Ride Blog contest the prize is an 8Gb Sony MP-4 Player. Yeah, fancy, I know. I selected this prize partly in the hope that it would be more of a carrot for potential entrants and partly because I hate iPods.
And after an hour or so with my damp finger trying to pick up any sign of a breeze, I’ve put a figure of 100 plus entries as making the contest worthwhile.
As I type this (regardless of when you read it), there are 13 entries into the contest.
Hmm, not great.
Quality > Quantity!
Of course, the number of links back is only part of the “good-SERPs” equation – it’s the quality too. And by quality that means, from reputible sitespreferable from within the same niche as your blog.
And it’s this – getting the quality of link back – that seems to be a major stumbling block so far for my contest and, I assume, just about every link baiting contest out there. As out of the 13 entries most are from hard core contest entrants – many of whom have their own dedicated contest entry blogs.
Which will all but negate the effect of the link in the first place.
Will The Rate My Ride Contest Be Worth It?
There are still 16 days until my contest closes (so if you want to stand the chance to win an 8Gb Sony MP 4 Player there’s still time!) and I select a winner, so I’ve not given up hope completely.
In fact, today has bought in the highest number of visitors to the blog since I launched the contest – it seems that the snowballing viral effect is starting to kick in – so there’s every chance that I will make it to that magical, if not slightly arbitrary, 100 entries I’m looking for.
I’ll report back to you at the end of the month with my thoughts after the contest closes.
Over to You
In the mean time, have you got any thoughts about running a similar contest then please do share them in the comments below.
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