This change has been in the pipeline for some time now as – and this is a rather embarassing confession – I’ve only been using the .com domain name because of a ridiculous button clicking error I made when originally registered the domain. Yes, when I set up 7879 Designs 3 joyous years ago and purchased my Web hosting and domain, I accidentally clicked the .com check box rather than the .co.uk (which as I am based in the UK made far more sense to be on). So thanks to some dreadful hand-eye co-ordination I’ve been running under .com ever since. There you go, I said it was embarassing.

Any way, the .com domain has served me well, and made me quite a hit in the US (in comparisson to the UK any how). But seeing as I feel that Stafford is a bit *too* far from my home in Lichfield to go for a job, let alone all the way to America, I’ve decided it’s time to make the change.

There’s now a redirect on the .com domain to the .co.uk so I shouldn’t lose too much PR and hopefully I’ll find myself doing better in the google.co.uk SERPs.

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.

Kroozr - I know, it is a horrible Web 2.0 name –  is something that I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks and, if all goes well, it should be live come the middle of May.

That’s great, but what is Kroozr?

Well, it’s a Google Maps mash-up that enables people to find modified car cruises in the UK. It’s a pretty simple application and hopefully will give something that’s of a real benefit to the modified car scene.

I’ll keep you posted with progress.

Here’s a sneak peak, for you lucky souls, at the new 7879 Media logo:

As I said, the full site will be up and running in the next few weeks and, obviously, I’ll add a note when it’s finally live.

Don’t panic though, I’ll continue to offer the same range of WordPress services through 7879 Designs that I currently do. So if you’re looking for a WordPress Professional to help you integrate a blog into your existing Web site then drop me a note and I’ll be more than happy to help.

It’s been an extremely long time since I last posted anything on 7879 Designs but not because 7879 is the latest in a long line of neglected ideas I’ve had.

In fact it’s been quite the oposite.

I’ve been pretty busy with work over the past few months so much so that I’ve only just got round to upgrading the 7879 Deisgns site to WordPress 2.5.

And as you can see, the good news is that the site is still here. The upgrade was as straight forward as ever without any errors in my pretty simple theme.

I’m slowly getting used to the new admin interface too. I’m still not convinced that all the changes are good ones – why put the Settings, Plugins and Users options all by them selves over on the right? – but I do like the redesign of the Write Post page.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get around to posting more frequently now I’ve gone to the extreme length of upgrading and keep this site a little more up to date than it has been in the past.

That’s not a promise though.