April 17th, 2011

Recently we’ve made some recent changes to the way blog contests are handled here at www.contestcanada.net, so I wanted to write quick explanation of the changes and the motivation behind them.

Previously, blog contests were mixed in with the regular contests. We normally focus on the larger contests, so generally we weren’t including a lot of the smaller blog contests. As you probably know, blog contests usually have smaller prizes and you usually have to tweet, “like” a page, or comment on the blog in order to get an entry. They also normally have much better odds of winning.

Over the past few months, a lot more of these blog contests have been submitted to us on a daily basis. It seems to be a growing trend, and since there are genuine prizes to be won, we’ve included more and more of them. Personally, I like the idea of having a 1-in-300 or 1-in-500 chance of winning, even if the prize is smaller.

Not everyone feels this way though, and we’ve received a number of complaints. Some people don’t like to bother with the smaller prizes, and some people don’t like the “work” of having to tweet a message or leave a comment. Fair enough.

So, the changes are as follows:

  • Blog contests will no longer appear on the front page. We’ve moved them to a separate page: https://www.contestcanada.net/category/blog-contests/
  • You can access this page any time by clicking the “Blog Contests” link in the black bar near the top of the page.
  • Blog contests will still be included in the daily email
  • We will be increasing the number of blog contests that are published each day

If you’re a fan of blog contests or you’re a blog owner who runs contests, I hope you’ll be happy to hear that we’re going to be including more of them. If you don’t like them, I hope you’ll be happy to hear that you won’t have to sort through them to find the regular contests that you’re looking for.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are welcome.

 

14 Responses to Blog Contests

  1. Miranda says:

    Thank you! I, personally, am not a fan of blog contests! This is wonderful that they are still available, but not mixed in with the larger commercial contests! 🙂

  2. Maggie says:

    As someone who enters both larger “mainstream” contests as well as blog contests, I appreciate both! Whereas I’ll be lucky to win a few larger contests a year, I can win a number of small blog contests every week. The odds are tremendously better and I only enter for the things I want to win!

  3. Lexy says:

    Since i have yet to win anything(Ive been doing this for over a year) I want every last damn contest i can get my fingers on. My boyfriend keeps telling me i will never win anything. Knowing that there is a much better chance of winning those blog contests i will check out the seperate webpage. I need to win something to rub in his face:)!

  4. motty says:

    don’t despair Lexy! the contest win you seek is out there & will find you,for sure.you never know when it will be,but you never forget that rush the first time you win!happy contesting & best of luck!

  5. motty says:

    can anyone please help me by recommending a good UPC masterlist to buy?i’m stumped,and getting pretty pooped running back & forth to the grocery store:) thx

  6. Angela says:

    This is great news! Thanks so much! As the owner of One Smiley Monkey http://www.onesmileymonkey.com, a parenting blog that has tons of baby-mommy product giveaways I am always looking for places to promote them and I love your page! I also love that you have a section for them now!

    Thanks again!
    Angela

  7. Debbie H. says:

    I would like to comment on these changes and the wording of this. The larger contests, and the organizations who give them away,are, by Canadian law, obligated to give away what they are advertising – the giveaways ARE to be genuine prizes NOT SUPPOSED TO BE genuine prizes. This applies to contests where the odds of winning may be low.

  8. Mike says:

    @motty – I don’t think there is such a thing as a master list of UPC codes. Or at least not one that would be affordable to an individual. I think UpcMachine.com is about as good as we’re going to get.

  9. Mike says:

    @lexy – hang in there! your win is coming.

  10. spamgirl says:

    Thanks Mike! I just recently was ripped off on a blog contest for a $250 Visa GC… I’m more than happy never to see another blog contest again!

  11. Jennifer says:

    Thanks! I hate getting excited for a contest until I click on it realize it’s a blog contest (yuck!). I just don’t have the time to facebook this and tweet that and like this or like that, especially when you can do it daily. Awesome idea!

  12. lowrenzo says:

    Thanks for providing us with a daily dose of contestes! I usually just enter contests directly from your daily email and I don’t often enter blog contests. Since you will be including more of them in the daily email, would you kindly separate them from the regualar contests – i.e. under a separate heading for “blog contests”. I am sure many people would appreciate knowing in advance what type of contest is listed.

    Thanks

  13. Mike says:

    @lowrenzo – that’s a good idea; thanks for the suggestion. We use Google Feedburner to generate the emails, so I don’t have a lot of control over what shows up. I’ll try to take a look at it sometime in the next couple of days to see what I can do.

  14. motty says:

    thank you again for taking the time to let me know about the sought-after code situation-always a great help.