It seems to me that a new blogging contest, especially in the “make money online” niche, is popping up every day. When you think of contests, you think of free stuff. This is a good thing… right? Not so fast. I feel that the increasing frequency of such contests along with the decreasing value of prizes involved has caused an irreversible damage to the blogging world. Let me explain! :razz:

It’s been just three months since the launch of the event that I believe sparked this chain-reaction contest frenzy, of course I’m referring to the “Craziest Internet Marketing Contest” from WinningTheWeb.com. I don’t want to take away from the editor of this blog, Gyutae Park, because something this big was bound to happen regardless. By topping all other blog contests to date (by far), I believe that this contest in particular caused a virtual “shock-wave” around the blogosphere, compelling others to try to out-do the competition by making their own contests bigger and better.

Don’t get me wrong, free stuff is good. But ever since this multi-thousand dollar competition, it seems that people are simply not content with getting $100 in a random drawing anymore. We refer to this in economics as the “race to the bottom” theory. Essentially, bloggers have been artificially inflating contests with half-rate prizes that nobody really wants for the purpose of raising the so-called “cash value” of their prizes. It’s one thing to offer me a new laptop and say the contest is worth $1,500… it’s another thing to give out 750 copies of an eBook worth two dollars and say you have $1,500 in prizes.

I have seen firsthand the contests that pop up with virtually useless prizes like text-links, eBooks, consultations and EntreCard credits. The bottom line remains that this digital-download garbage isn’t worth face value, especially when given out in mass quantity. Now I don’t want to immediately turn you off of blog contests, there are many that have useful big prizes like cash, “real” (physical) goods, web hosting, etc. that are a step in the right direction.

With this in mind, the latest rush of contests has caused irreversable damage in my opinion. No longer is anyone happy with just a few prizes, we need to have dozens of sponsors that bounce the gross value up into the thousands. What’s more, if you look at a typical month of a blog authoring a contest, the majority of the posts are typically geared toward that competition! What this means is that blogs are being reduced to nothing more than places to hold contests and give away free things to its readers. Content is being killed off by the increasing lure of shiny objects like advertising space and free blog reviews.

Blog Contests That Are Worth Your Time (& More!)
Not to discount the value of every blogging contest around, I want to recommend a few contests that I feel hold real value for you to enter and win. These may be few and far between, but here are some bright spots in the month of June, 2008:

Blogs:

John Cow - Win over $27,000 in prizes in John Cow’s contest to promote the Cow v. Conn case competition. The next WinningTheWeb? I sure hope not!
Bloggin-Ads - Giving away 2 Macbook Airs and $1,000 in cash!
KeithJamesLock - Over $1,900 in prizes, including web hosting and custom web sites.
Dnxpert - Win $9,000 in quality cash and prizes, no useless garbage here!
Techsuave - Win over $1,000 in cash and prizes including WP themes and web hosting.
WP Theme Designer - 30 Premium WP themes being given away here, very cool!

Get Paid To (GPT):

SWATcash - June referral contest has $5,000 pledged in total prize money split among the top 50 members who get the most active referrals this month.
CashCrate - Win an 8GB Apple iPhone and Cash by having the most active referrals.

Blog Contests That Aren’t Worth Your Time
Here are the contests that I think offer up prizes that don’t fit the bill. These are things that are doing nothing more than diluting the value of the prize pool and making things look more exciting than they are.

Just kidding. I’m not going to name names here because I don’t want the lawsuits. :razz: However, you should keep this post in mind when you see a new blog contest come up claiming to be giving away $x,xxx in cash and prizes. A lot of times, the prizes are totally worthless and it is more of a hastle to weed through the advertisers than to actually enter the competition.

-The Net Fool

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