How A Free Contest On Your Blog Will Increase Readership

115Shares
Free Contest On Your Blog to Increase Readership
  • Save

Contests and giveaways are great techniques used to drive more traffic to a blog.

For the past several months, I have been noticing that many blogs are running contests with tags like:

  • “Comment and win $100!”
  • “Free $60 cash giveaway!”
  • “Like, share, WIN!” 

And I am always running contests here on SML…

In the case of a new blog, contests can be very helpful in attracting new readers. All a blogger needs to do is choose the right product and market the contest well.

The idea is that these contests will help get free backlinks, free advertising, and ultimately bring in new subscribers. In my experience, the “contest strategy” always works and is very beneficial to blog owners.

Direct Benefits Of Running Contests On Your Blog:

1. Free Backlinks

Free Backlinks
  • Save

When you run any contest, whether the prize is free advertising, free software, free ebooks, or free cash, you will attract many other bloggers who will refer your contest to their readers (giving you a backlink).

By providing you with a backlink, these other bloggers are not only directly helping your blog get more traffic, they’re also building up your authority. This will help you get even more traffic in the long run.

Likewise, if you see a contest, and you know the blog is trustworthy and legitimate, don’t hesitate to share that info with your readers. This will increase your value, credibility, and authority.

Read:

2. Free Social Traffic

Free Social Traffic
  • Save

Apart from the traffic coming from backlinks, contests help promote your blog to various people who will share your blog with their friends.

You can simply add a viral condition to each entry. For instance: “To participate in the contest, share this post on Facebook.”

This method, when employed correctly, can achieve huge spikes in traffic.

And because this traffic comes directly from social media, it’s more likely to be highly targeted. This has all kinds of benefits, not the least of which is social proof.

Read:

3. Free Advertising

In addition to the free backlinks and free traffic, a contest also gives you the benefits of free advertising.

Your blog will be exposed to a whole new set of blogs and you’ll be able to appeal directly to those other blogs’ readers. This kind of promotion and advertising is hard to achieve otherwise.

You will likely generate new blog subscribers (for free!) with your contest or giveaway, and a whole new set of readers will begin to follow your blog.

And finally, running a successful contest will expose your brand to new advertisers, who may just want to sponsor your next blog contest!

Blog contest
  • Save

Read:

Have you ever run a contest or giveaway on your blog? We would love to hear your story. Tell us about it in the comments section below.

For running contest on your blog you can use this amazing free tool call Gleam.

  • Save

If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

For more on giveaways, check out:

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!
  • Save
115Shares
Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

27 thoughts on “How A Free Contest On Your Blog Will Increase Readership”

  1. Muffin

    This has been on my to do list forever! Thank you for the motivation to move it up the list haha. There is so much that goes into a blog that it’s easy to have things fall through the cracks. Shoutmeloud.com is always a great reminder of what I should prioritize. Thanks for all the effort that goes into the post! They are SO helpful.

  2. Bhavna

    Inspired by your post I just started a giveaway on my blog THANKS a TON.
    I am so happy I came across this post.
    Lets see what happens. I am so excited.

  3. Harpreet Kumar

    you are right sir. i have been running a comment contest on my blog n i saw traffic improvements in my site. i got aspirations from u sir.. thanks a lot.. 🙂

  4. zeniwo

    Free traffic , Free backlinks and free advertising are 3 major things which every site or blog needs ,specially in the beginning .
    But it is not easy to design a campaign which can get targeted audience for the blog . Also, it can be challenging to do a contest without harming the credibility of website .
    But a great idea for someone , who is ready to put in some effort with lot of care and attention.

  5. Sagar Desai

    I just came across this post thru internal linking and while reading comments, I came to know that this very old post. But I am really surprised that still it has evergreen and relevent contents.

  6. Harmeen

    Mainly we get traffic and promotion of our blog by running free blog contest. Am i right?

  7. jaganmangat

    that is a nice way of getting traffic……….!!!!!!,i will go for it when i start getting money from my blog.

  8. Sagar

    Hey Harsh, this is quite true. I have participated in a few contests last year and have seen that I DO GET some traffic by doing this. I don’t know how much value it gets in Google PR, but yes, traffic increases!

  9. Consolata

    Can you have a contest free give a way on ablog that has maybe a 100-200 visitors monthly?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Consolata its a good idea to run contest on a blog which is not very popular, because that will help you to create backlinks and traffic. Since every one love free giveaway.. The only thing you need to do it , you need to find the best way to promote your contest.

  10. Manoj Varghese Mathew

    me having yet started using these strategies in my blog since i’m a beginner… hoping to do such thing in future!!

  11. Steve Yu

    I am thinking of running one in the future. It will be my first contest. But how do I find sponsors to sponsor the prizes? How do I approach them?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Steve thats a good thing if you planning to run a contest. Well depend on your niche you can contact the advertisers. Suppose you write about wordpress, you can contact some premium theme clubs and ask them to sponsor your contest. This can be in the form of free premium themes giveaway…

      Though if you have good reader base and good PR , getting sponsor will not be an issue. 🙂

  12. Hardik Shah

    This indeed a good idea harsh, I was planning to get on something to make linkedtraffic popular, This will come handy… Infact i actually have done this for some other blogs that i own, I was giving away a free rapidshare account. Now this deal seems good…

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Best of luck hardik for nest contest. And do let me know when you launch it :). I will never mind some free gifts 🙂

  13. India 365

    Yap!! This practice does help, in fact mutual coordination. But, how many of them are genuine in paying the winners of the contest!!

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Mansi I wonder if there is any blogger who tempers with such contest. I guess no or if there are any , probably they are never a successful blogger. To show the transparency, people show how they pick the winner. Either it can be a point system or picked by set of Judges.

  14. Vikash Dhankar

    Thanks for the information.
    In future I may also thinking of contest on my blog. But right now i m not in position. You all great bloggers are our inspiration.
    Thanks

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thanks for your comment Vikash. Well you can always get free sponsors for your blog. Just check with your niche and contact the right person. It can be a free software license giveaway or can be a free domain giveaway which are pretty cheap but no one will mind freebies. 🙂

  15. Rahul

    Running contest will give sharp boost in visitors and later in search engine rankings. Whatever the case, expert who already well established runs the contest. Not every noob can do this.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Rahul I dont know what do you mean by noob, and in blogging there is no term as noob (Slang). Anyhow..Its always first time for every one..and one fail contest does not mean next will be the same… So its always like you keep trying.. Always start from a small investment and if things work out, then go for big investments.

  16. Raju

    Very true. Also it is very necessary as to what the contest is. People have to be very careful on the contest format. Basically they need to know WHAT they want from the contest.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thats true Raju. Any blog contest needs proper planning in the form of stages of promotions and also make sure one get the targeted traffic.

  17. Surender Sharma

    Harsh I am agree with your points because in previous contest on my blog I received many back links because my friend bloggers published on their blog post about the contest.This way my blog reach on the upper stairs in search engine ranking as well as Technorati ranking.
    Secondly I increased subscription of the email readers.
    But I would like to say that contest is not everything,The best thing is content.Contest is the way to attract to the readers but if content is not good,they would not stay for longer.
    I’m really thankful to you for publishing the information about contest on SML.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Surender thats the main benefit of running a blog contest . Free advertising, free backlinks and for sure good no. of traffic.. 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed it and thanks for your insight on this topic.

  18. TechZoomIn

    Thanks a lot for the Shout Harsh. Hope your visitors will participate and best of luck to them 🙂

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      You welcome Lax. Since your contest is good and helpful for readers I’m sure every one will love to participate in it. 🙂

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top
115 Shares