Linkbait idea.

Comments?

[wheel]

Comments on this idea?

I'm thinking of approaching bloggers in my niche. They post a 'contest'. Visitors post a comment on that blog as their entry to win a small cash prize. The blogger picks the winner for their blog, from the comments on their blog. I pay the prize money.

Then I pick an overall winner from the comments, and pay another 'grand prize' which again would be enough to feed a small family at McDonalds.

I'm thinking that from the blogger's perspective this gets their visitors in a posting frenzy, and maybe some more traffic. And they can share traffic amongst their blogs. And I expect I get some links as a result of being the sponsor.

Any thoughts on the potential success of this?

[9tail]

It sounds like it could work.

[wheel]

I passed this buy one of the bloggers. He liked the idea. So I just emailed about 8 bloggers the concept.

As always, I told them why it's good for them. I gave them lots of leeway on the subject of the post, they only have to ask a question that invites postings and discussion. Visitors only have to post their answer to enter. The blogger then picks their entirely subjective winner, and I pay up.

I've also suggested that the bloggers tell all their visitors to email the contest to their friends.

And I've suggested that the bloggers link to each other's contest threads, to share the traffic.

In the end, they should get more traffic and a lot of interesting posts.

I may get some links. But I didn't actually ask for any, they just know my website and I'm the sponsor - so I'd be surprised if I didn't get a 'natural' link as part of the contest. Either way I'm OK with/without the link from any specific blog - overall it'll be good.

[wheel]

3 came on board. Didn't hear from the others. So, that gives me 3 unpaid (heh) links from the top bloggers in my niche.

You can say that's a <50% success rate. I prefer to view it as 3 more links that my competitors look at and think WTH? How does he get links from those bloggers, they won't give us a link!

FWIW, these folks are from a list of 'top 10 bloggers' posted in a national newspaper last year. So pretty good authority sites. I've been picking at them bit by bit since then, looking for ways to keep the communications open on links that are beneficial to both of us (and by beneficial to both of us, I of course mean a one way link to my site :) ).

[nealrodriguez]

oh, ok; you control the amount of links you get from bloggers who will hold the contest on their comments; thus you control the cost.

my 1st thought was you allowed ANY blogger to hold the contest - brain fart - sounds like a plan; please post your results.

[wheel]

lol. I don't want to bleed money that badly. No, this is only for the top tier bloggers in my niche, by invitation only.

[nealrodriguez]

fyi: i helped my friend, a blogger, to which this type of campaign was directed; she also allowed people to make an entry by tweeting or posting a blog post linking back to her post.

she got 182 links to the blog post according to yahoo; i can't say what the sponsor got, for she linked to their homepages.

[nealrodriguez]

as an addendum, i don't know what caliber results your bloggers will get, for she hustled the sh-t out that campaign for over 1,000 comments.

[wheel]

It's going well so far. One decided the winner would be the post with the most votes. Which means you have to get all your friends over to register and vote on the site. And they allow pingbacks (links) as entries as well - very sharp idea on their part.

[nealrodriguez]

i like the voting part; it's less involved; thus it will be easier to get your friends to just click a button to vote than comment. @ least on the part of the blogger.

the sponsor was requiring over a 1k comments for my friends participation in their contest.

[wheel]

I didn't require a link, or a minimum requirement. These are hardcore grassroots bloggers, my placing restrictions on them would elicit the response of 'shove off' :).

OTOH, these are some awesome links. I've had to really answer the question 'why would they link to me' to have any chance of success. And they are links that I believe are both important, and real tough for my competitors to get.

If the situation where reversed - I was a brand name and the bloggers weren't I could likely do that. But the bloggers have a bigger brand name than I do!

[wheel]

The contest is over. Four bloggers took me up on it. Some of the bloggers saw roughly 100 comments on it, so that's pretty good considering most of their posts get a few to a few dozen comments. The bloggers were pleased with it anyway

The other interesting thing is that not only did they all link to me in the initial contest thread, they linked back to me a second time when they announced the winner.

Total cost was <$500.

I've been sitting at #2 for most of my main terms since end of last year. I'm seeing some push back to #1 again on at least one term. Of course I don't know if it's related to this or not.

[nealrodriguez]

can you share how much traffic you got on average from those links?

[wheel]

About 100 visitors total from all of them - the majority of those from one blog. And probably a bunch of those were from my competitors who read that blog :).

So I didn't do this for referrals or even branding. Straight up link development.

[nealrodriguez]

i feel ya'. i guess people would rather click to citations that augment content on the post rather than sponsors. sort of like the ad blind majority.