Dec 10 2007
May I ask your opinion?
I’m a little sad. And a little disappointed. And, maybe your opinion might help me feel better.
This is my “personal” blog. The place I hang out to talk, joke and rant with sisters and friends. I also work online. So, with business hat on, I put together a Christmas Contest for Fuel My Blog. Contacted my clients and got prizes. Handbags hand-made by tsunami survivors, ethical coffee, natural candles. We had such fun with the snorgtees contest, I thought it would be fun.
The contest was simple. (Or so I thought.) Visit the top 3 sponsor sites…. write a post and link to them. Then post on the FMB blog to officially “enter” so we know who’s in. So, members get great prizes, and my clients get a little linky love for donating prizes.
The contest will be over this weekend, and we have less entries than prizes. *sigh* I’m probably going to have to tell my clients that the FMB Contest didn’t fly and their prizes aren’t needed. And that makes me sad, because I like FMB.
In your opinion, what did we do wrong?
Were the prizes lousy?
Did you not even know about the contest?
What happened?
Please be honest. Brutally so, if the truth is ugly. I’d rather know what happened than wonder forever.
Thanks in advance for your honesty.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Hi Linda
I know you must be so disappointed, you have done so much hard work.
As you know I am one of the few that have entered along with Donny (oh my heart fluttered when I saw his name …….. alas it was Donny 4 (no offence at all intended Donny 4, if you visit my blog you will know what I mean lol)
You ask why others haven’t??
One theory is that it is generally quiet on FMB just now and I know people are busy with the run up to Christmas.
Another theory is it needs more ‘push’ & reminders from FMB ….. some pretty pleases needed, some links in the forum etc
There maybe a big pre weekend rush you never know?????
If I think of anything else I will drop by later (just got in from work so thinking head is a bit battered!!)
70s x
I’m going to try and participate, I should be able to find the time. I just post on my blog and then link to it right?
I gave away $1,000 on my blog not too long ago and there were less than 100 participants! I’ve read that 1 out of every 100 readers will actually participate in a blog. I suppose you have to divide that 1 to see how many will participate in a contest. Perhaps 1 in a 1,000?
Don’t be disappointed! If I were to do it all over again on my contest I would have had more prizes, more sponsors, and the sponsors would have had to push the contest as much as me!
70s, I agree on the “needs more ‘push’ & reminders from FMB“…. I tend to be a Tigger in a China Shop, carnival barker sort of person. Like woohoo… we have handbags, coffee, blah, blah, blah, step right up, here’s how to win…. that kind of thing. lol So the “a christmas contest, click here” messages didn’t do much for me. But I wondered if that was just me.
Thanks Shane. Yes, all you do is write a post that links to Laga-Handbags.com, TheMadRoaster.com, and PeterGCandles.com — and tells why you’re writing the post and linking to them. Then post at the FMB blog to say you’re in and show us where your post is. That’s it - then you’re in.
Hey Douglas… good to see you here! (do you prefer Doug?) OUCH. Giving away a grand and getting less than 100 entries would hurt. That’s even worse that direct marketing reponse rates. lol. Guess I’m doing the same thing. Or, my clients are. $900+ in prizes, and 3 entries so far. Ouchie.
Linda,
I feel your pain, we had our 10% lunch contest shortly after we launched and got next to nothing for a response. Honestly it could be a number of things, timing, prizes or the user base.
But in this case you really need your sponsors to get the word out, there need to be posts, blogs and news releases about the contest to help build hype.
I will gladly help out and put a post about the xmas contest on our blog today.
Linda,
I didn’t enter your contest. It was not because there was anything wrong with the prizes. I thought that people like Quirky Jessie, nursemyra and OlgaTTB would jump at the chance.
It isn’t immediately clear to me how to enter the contest, though. I clicked on your link on FMB, which brought me to the Laga Handbags homepage. And then where? My attention span isn’t all that long.
Ahhhhh, Ok. I reviewed the rules again, now I remember. Similar to my last comment - the whole thing was too complex for my little four cylinder brain to wrap itself around, stealing moments away from my day job too assemble a blog post that mentioned all those sites.
Oh come on Rotus I am blond, British and bamboozaled by all that is the internet …. does that mean I have one more cylinder than you?? yah whoooooo!!!
Linda have you contacted FMB for them to do another push on it?? (grandmother and sucking eggs sorry if I state the obvious here)
I know Frac is busy but she is a whizz at getting the word around too
Only have a minute right now.. spent my time online to do this:
http://blog.fuelmyblog.com/2007/12/just-fraccing-around-and-wondering-who.html
Mwah!
hi there! i will be in definitely! but i am such in a horrid terrible situation right now! but no worries! i’ll be one of the contestant before the end date! no worries. i’m in. just have to collect few patches, to patch my brain in!
trust me! i’m in. even tho im not blond, im not that good either. but ill try my best okay? no worries!
love you! and others!
Rotus… lol… there’s a post on the FMB blog. I stole a sentence from it. It said:
Get lucky this year. Win a Laga Bag for your lady. Candles? Gourmet Coffee?
So there you go. Steal that. (I did) Then just start with “I want to…. ” (as in I want to get lucky and win a….. ) — then link each word to the matching site. See how easy?
I know, I know. A handbag isn’t what you consider getting lucky.
Might as well say it before you do. lol
Baby… you’ll do fine! Hope you win one, too.
Fraccy…. you are an awesome sis, as always. Thank you!
: )
Well done Frac, get that competition going gal …. but hey, whoops I am saying that but that will generate competition with me and my ‘fab’ 9 to 5 entry lol
oooo that double edged sword!!!
Getting lucky? Now we’re talking!
I’m new to FMB and barely have the time to read the blogs of the ten new FMB friends that I have now. I didn’t know about the competition. I won’t have the time to prepare anything for it and to enter. But do rest assured that I won’t be crying a river because I do not want product prizes. I guess you could say that I’m a maybe for money but not for products person competition person.
Here you go.
Vote for me LOL!
http://rotus.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/very-well-then/
Linda, how do people vote? Just by fueling a particular blog?
[…] 10, 2007 Very Well Then Posted by rotus under Uncategorized Since Linda is being so […]
Hi Linda,
In stead of being smart here, I will go back to my LL blog and try 2 spice things up 4 u!
In short the “probs”:
)
-too complicated for the “regular contest subscriber” (but I must say if that’s really the case, do we really want people saying: “give me the prize please” so they win the prize??? Personally I go for merit, that’s why I love a contest like yours)
-buzzing about the chocolates without a giving a link felt weird to me
-the “contest” was so easy that “anythings can”, and the first example we get is “superwriter fracas example”. Now that’s difficult shoes to fill…
-I never understood till now that the prizes are from your contacts, I thought it was yet another FMB contest and quite a quite one.
-I don’t understand who will win the prize, I don’t find a list of voters like with the previous FMB contest. I am not blond but I do read fast and maybe missed the details. Yet since fracas didn’t feel like winning, I joined in for the fun as well
-not understanding the contest… being too complicated… is just another way of saying that the message was not clearly communicated (yeah, blatant blaming kevin, if you don’t see me in FMB anymore, this is why
-getting ready for christmas shouldn’t be an excuse, the prizes are really useful for Xmas and the contest stops the 15th long before the Xmas.
-I love to see comments that tell you who is participating yet
=”the lazy contestant” will say: gosh another thing to fulfil, why can’t they just send me the prize
=people with bad internet connections like me prefer to comment on a fast loading comments page like yours compared to the %&$# slow error prone commenting page of blogger blogs.
-and buzzing around is not easy, as we will find out how mane or little extra contestants I can bring in… Sure need to read fracas advice first as she is my mentor
No, no… I am not a superwriter Linky, just someone who can’t shut up.
I’m not entered… so mine was for fun and to get people to go click over there.
You get votes by being creative, not by writing a novel.. I prolly wouldn’t win even if I did enter, since all I did was go on and on and on.
Silly.
I’m going to go give other ideas of what people could do.. then others can just nab an idea that fits them and go for it. I love seeing how creative people can be with an idea. I was so looking forward to reading tons of fun.
[…] With lots of Linky Love back to Linda […]
@fracas
You are as modest as you are a superwriter
Anyways, lets have a contest who can bring in the most participants to Linda’s contest
Nope Linky… no contest. The idea to add links to other bloggers is yours… so you win right off the bat.
I’ll add some links to mine, but not to try win, but to try get more entries for Linda and FMB.
Oh my… we’re all being so warm and fuzzy I’m starting to feel sick. I think I might need to go post something naughty now.
Done
http://fracas.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/want-to-get-lucky-this-christmas/
Good Idea Linky! You should get some extra points for that.
[…] With lots of Linky Love back to Linda […]
@fracas
If you guys are stuck in the snow till April, we better send all the warmth we can
Great red pic fracas, hot enough I guess
Ok Linda, is your server overloaded already?
Here you go I’ll take Ze mittens
http://shanesaww.blogspot.com/2007/12/ho-ho-ho-handbag-hustle.html
I did enter the contest, but was worried that my entry wouldnt work because I cant get the fricken links to work on my MAC. But I did have a great time posting and entering. So please dont return the prizes to your sponsors, rather give them to the participants, if you have more than you need… I am open to all of them
Linda, it seems there are entries that haven’t tagged their posts right, and haven’t gone back to post a comment saying they’re in. Kevin did a search and found entries he wasn’t aware of. LOL. I posted at fuel that it’s kind of like cutting an entry for a shopping spree off a box of cereal, filling it out and then carrying it around in your purse just hoping the cereal sponsor will know you meant to enter.
So, he’s out there tracking down the people who’ve entered by writing something on their blog, but not finished entering properly by creating a proper link back to the fuelmyblog post or leaving a comment.
That Kevin. He’s such a good egg!
And now since I’ve said that, I need to create a link so he finds this and gets a warm fuzzy!
[…] hard work and looking at the bragging me and Fracas did in response to Linda’s request, we did manage to convert a few of our visitors in participating to her contest (which is […]
Hi Guys,
Firstly, the competition was great and big thanks to all involved.
Why was it not as much of a success?
Well I have broken it down in two parts:-
Should we (FMB) have been more active promoting it?
Well, firstly, including the great post by Fracas, there were 4 or 5 posts on our blog, we also emailed the entire fuelmyblog subscriber base of over 8,000 to inform them of the competition, only once mind you as we don’t like to keep doing as is a bit spammy! I also spent a day scouring the internet plucking out entries as people didn’t all leave comments! I suspect I missed quite a few. So I wrote a post about linking to help people! And another about leaving comments in votes to get more votes. I went on twitter and told my 300′ish followers to take a look, stumbled upon it and dugg it. We also left comments in our votes but in fairness we have to got to look a tad less pushy!
Why the lack of entries? (how I see it and only my initial off the top of my head thoughts!)
1. Too close to Christmas, too many people are still emailing me to say they had no time to enter. Maybe in hindsight a New Year comp would have been better?
2. We should have been clearer about how to get votes and how long it lasted however the dates were all stated on the competition page maybe we needed to highlight that part further?
3. Too complicated? Maybe trying to weave in all of the sponsors was overkill, I think writing about the prize you want to win would be simpler for the future?
4. Sponsors maybe should have left comments thanking the entries, something I will insist in the future, I think it shows they are real.
5. Less prizes? Maybe one prize per week would work better?
6. Everyone hates us? Could be that you know
At the end of the day, there were entries and all really great, I don’t know what else we could have done apart from talk in the forum.
We just tried to give away $300 of Microsoft software and had 5 entries that we can find…again, not really a good time of the year, the site is as busy as ever in terms of hits but people are blogging less right now as it is the most offline month of the year.
Our biggest ever comp response was when we did a survey that took over 10 mins to complete and the prize was an ipod Nano, we had over 450 responses and the sponsor got absolutely nothing but information out of it, no links nor coverage!
If I had the answers I’d be rich!
Back to cleaning the chimneys this winter for me!
UPDATE!!
I just got an email from a large website, they have over 750,000 users..they emailed a competition last week to all of their users to share their experiences and they had…less than 24 entries. It seems December is not the month to run competitions..