September 2002

Traffic Generation Technique
Contests

People love contests. My most famous one was the "Tom is Single" contest. The way it was run was that the phrase "Tom is Single" was inserted several times in my regular ezine. A person had to count how many times the phrase was there and go to my website to put in their count. The people that got the number correct won prizes.

Besides driving traffic to my website, this contest  had several different benefits.

A. People read that issue of my ezine thoroughly.

B. The contest was crazy enough that it caused viral activity, i.e., people sent it around to there friends to take a shot at winning the prizes.

C. The prizes were advertised because I had to tell the people what they would win.

Another good contest to run is a testimonial contest. You see laundry detergent companies doing this all the time . . . "In 25 words or less tell us what you like about New Improved Albino Creator and 2000 lucky Albino Creator users will receive a year's supply of Albino Creator."

Of course the fine print says they may print or use your comments just about any way they want, but people still join and the Albino company has tons of people going on record saying they loved the product.

Legal Stuff
Here's a link to a good and easily understandable articles about some legal issues both in the USA and abroad. Apparently you have to jump through hoops for the state of Rhode Island so many people exclude them from participating. I wonder what pencil pushing legislators in Rhode Island had nothing better to do than push through this legislation

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question541.htm

Contests vs Sweepstakes
A "contest" is a game of skill and a "sweepstakes" is a game of chance. It's important you know the difference and it's important that you don't cross the line accidentally and do something illegal.

I can't explain this concept any better than the people who run the sites at
http://www.contestcen.com/swcon.htm

and

http://www.arentfox.com/post/forum/csmessages/700.html

For more in depth coverage you can also visit http://www.arentfox.com and click the drop down box for "Area of Specialty" click on "contests and sweepstakes"

Don't let a few legal things stop you from this powerful form of marketing.