Everyone loves a good blog contest. Not only are they a great way to generate some buzz and traffic for your blog but it is always nice to give a little something back to the community as well.
If you’ve been thinking about running your own blog contest, you may be wondering how to select the winners for your blog contest. Earlier today, I received that exact question from Matt at Goodnight Moon Futon as he was planning a futon cover contest.
While I did provide Matt with a quick answer, I thought this would be a good topic to present for all of you as a video demonstration as well.
Here is the process that I use to select random winners for my blog contests:
Hopefully that helps explain the process that I use to select my contest winners and helps you with your own blog contests.
Did you enjoy this demonstration?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
The issue with this method is that you’re opening it up to people to “game” your contest. If they submit more than one comment in that post, they are effectively getting more than one entry in the contest. That’s unfair, don’t you think?
Assuming there is the stipulation that only one entry is allowed per person, I will only count the first comment as an entry. If the random number matches one of the additional comments, I consider that to be an “invalid” entry and select a new random number.
I should have highlighted that in my discussion, thanks for pointing that out Michael.
Hey Derek, thanks for the plug and the help.
Matt
Hey this is excellent! I Was looking to do something similar(slightly different) myself. Can I ask what software you use to make the video? Would be useful for other projects as well.
No, I do not intend running a contest, but this post is good knowledge to gain and the confidence that your contests are indeed fair. Thanks.
I am currently not having a plan to hold a contest but thanks for then demonstration.
Derek,
The video isn’t available. We’re planning on running a contest soon. I always wonder about choosing a winner and letting any losers down. It would be nice to reward several contestants – maybe a nice post with all of their names and links to their sites??
Nice video and demonstration – I didn’t realise it was that easy! Although the video was clearer than your last one, it sounded as though the mike was too close to your mouth.
@Matt :: You’re welcome, thanks for inspiring the post!
@Stephen :: This video was made using Camtasia, which I just mentioned in this follow-up post.
@HRS :: Thanks, you can count on me being fair here. 🙂
@Cesar :: Not a problem, hopefully you will have a contest soon.
@Jayson :: Seems to be there now, maybe YouTube was being a pain. Not a bad idea, I usually provide a post with links for the winner but it could be a nice consolation prize for the others.
@Brewster :: Thanks, as for the audio, you can read more about that here 🙂
Thats a fair decision in choosing winners. I agree that instead of hand picking winners. An auto generated selection of winner is the best .
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