slamboard

I think it is time to go in a completely different direction with this blog. Starting now, I am not going to talk about ANY of the topics previously covered.

This blog is henceforth going to focus on the ridicule of the fashion choices of random people that I find on the internet. Come back daily. You may see some familiar faces. This guy gets off easy because he is first. I don’t think his scarf goes well with the rest of his outfit.

I gave a brief review of the new blog ranking system from IZEARanks.com back when it was brand spanking new. Now that it is becoming widely used I am going to expend some more of my invaluable intellect on the subject. IZEA is the umbrella… ella… ella under which PAYPERPOST lounges with it’s spawn, such as the Blogger’s Choice Awards. The ranking system is being marketed beyond the tens of thousands of bloggers who use PAYPERPOST as a source of paid blogging opportunities in much the same way as the awards. Big names like Rosie O’Donnell took notice when they began receiving votes on that site. Will Wheaton was a bit perturbed and negative about his nomination.

IZEA Rank is a consensual opt in. If you don’t add a snippet of code to your template, you don’t get ranked. Will Wheaton doesn’t have any rank. He is not in the running for the $1,000 that IZEA is giving out every week this month to the top ranking blog. I have a remote chance of getting that money. Today there are only about 400 blogs standing between me and that money. Oh, I almost forgot, you have to be a US resident to be eligible for the prize. I have gotten used to that kind of thing.

Anyway, ohgizmo.com has been ranking at number one fairly consistently. I don’t think that blog is part of the PAYPERPOST community. I have read ohgizmo.com several times after noticing it at the top of this new ranking system. I had heard of the blog before and probably visited it on one or two occasions before IZEARank existed. My regular review of IZEA Rank has lead me on outgoing link journeys to a handful of interesting blogs that I had never read before.

I absolutely love the graphic design of IZEA. The colors make me happy.

When I was a kid, I think I learned more language skills from reading the contest details on cereal boxes than I did from my teachers. I used my language skills and my basic knowledge of contests on a few occasions on the blogosphere. Whenever I have had a contest on a blog, I have always written a list of rules that attempt to make things clear. With contests big and small becoming a popular way to promote blogs, I am seeing a lot of contests with incomplete rules or sometimes no rules at all.

Generally speaking, good will and very small prizes have meant that these contests come off without a hitch despite the poor planning. A big part of that is the self selecting nature of the contestants. They will almost always be people who choose to read your blog because they like it.

There was recently a blogger who held a bogus contest with a very large prize, $5,000.

When he eventually did not award the prize, as many people had predicted, there was a vengeful campaign. It basically involved highlighting his dishonesty on pages with good SEO. I couldn’t remember the bloggers name or the details, so I entered the words contest scam blog into a search and the sordid story was the number three item.

I am leaning towards not having contests, because I have not seen a good return on investment with the last few that I have conducted. It hard to measure ROI with these because adding a few readers that stay long after the contest has an immeasurable value.

My simple contest involved getting people to check my site often in the hopes of winning $10 by leaving a comment first after my ALEXA drops below 1,000,000. The details are HERE.

One commenter suggested that ALEXA updates 2 or more times per week. I was under the impression that is was closer to once a week. It has now been almost a week since I started the contest and there has been no change in my rank. Something tells me today might be the last day of the contest. I have been getting a lot of traffic from Google after my post about Evil.

My simple little contest has started to generate some interest. When it was looking like a dude a couple of days ago I had a brief thought about getting a relative to try to win the contest. We all grew up hearing the detail on radio and television that employees of such and such and there immediate family were not eligible, so I immediately decided that it was wrong. I don’t know if everyone else in the blogosphere feels the same way. I have seen a lot of situations on the Internet that a certain percentage of people will always do a thing because it is possible, seemingly without stopping to think about whether it is right or wrong.

The $10 in my contest will be leaving this household, and most likely this timezone.

I am having a contest. It is very simple. The first person to comment on the blog AFTER my Alexa drops below 1,000,000 gets $10. I have read in different places that Alexa is updated weekly but that it is not on a strict schedule.

The point of this contest is to get traffic to this blog.

Holding a contest on your blog as a way do generate traffic has a catch 22. You will not get effective word of mouth about the contest because people who find out about it do not want to dilute their own chances of winning.

About a year ago a held a contest on a humor blog that was just for fun. The prize was a mystery object to be sent by snail mail. I only got one entrant. She did get a reasonably nice prize. I enjoyed the absurdity to some extent. I wish I had gotten more interest.