tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post693253945731400971..comments2024-03-28T07:00:06.844+00:00Comments on Now Appearing: Do competitions get your site new readers?Brian Clegghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12723555872580740773noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post-12544575531795082832009-06-26T14:17:08.513+01:002009-06-26T14:17:08.513+01:00Thanks, Maxine (and thanks for the offer, but I te...Thanks, Maxine (and thanks for the offer, but I tend to be overwhelmed with books to read).<br /><br />I tend only to feature competitions on the Popular Science site rather than my blog, and then only if a publisher (or in this case the Royal Society) is prepared to do the donkey work - it certainly doesn't do any harm, and in this case draws attention to their Science Books prize.<br /><br />I think, on the whole, it is worth doing, but it just amazes me how the people do flood in if and when it gets listed on a competitions site. I would never do this myself - but someone always seems to spot them and list them.Brian Clegghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12723555872580740773noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post-33414151013083179282009-06-26T08:31:55.051+01:002009-06-26T08:31:55.051+01:00Yes, you could track the people, etc, but not wort...Yes, you could track the people, etc, but not worth the time or effort in my case. What I do now is to send a round-robin email to our online "loose federation" of people who read similar types of book when I have accumluated enough books to want to give away. (Let me know if you want to be included, Brian!) Of course, that doesn't bring any traffic to my blog so I suppose, from the point of view of your post, Brian, I'm pretty hopeless! Just as well I don't blog for the traffic!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post-53078957405631100172009-06-25T19:48:04.417+01:002009-06-25T19:48:04.417+01:00statcounter allows you to label ip addresses so yo...statcounter allows you to label ip addresses so you can (theoretically - doesn't work for some ISPs and doesn't work on Wordpress blogs) flag up those people who came in for the comp and see how many of them stick around.townmousehttp://cityexile.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post-13731393378693799412009-06-25T16:05:47.507+01:002009-06-25T16:05:47.507+01:00You're right, of course, Maxine, there were pr...You're right, of course, Maxine, there were professional competition enterers, and hobbyists before the web, but websites that list competitions make it much quicker to enter a lot of them.<br /><br />My impression is the typical amateur who enters 20-30 a day only wins around 1 to 2 a year - I don't know if that counts as quite often.<br /><br />I suspect they do sell on unwanted prizes, but I get the impression there are broadly two kinds of people, those who just aim for high value prizes (which makes sense) and those who just enter anything. Sadly, I suspect the 'enter anything' people are less likely to value a prize like this - which for a reader of popular science books I think is quite impressive.Brian Clegghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12723555872580740773noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4455700514377143758.post-17797299643083404642009-06-25T14:12:30.072+01:002009-06-25T14:12:30.072+01:00Professional competition-doers existed before the ...Professional competition-doers existed before the web, of course, but I wonder in the cases you mention, why they are doing it, when (presumably) the prizes are books? The speed you outline and the number of competitions being done means that the people would never have time to read their prizes - I assume that the law of averages dicate that they win quite often! This raises the spectre of whether they only enter the comps to sell-on the prizes (eg on Ebay, to someone who might then feature them on their blog as a prize....).<br /><br />I don't do competitions on my blog and I don't have many readers. Occasionally I offer to give away unwanted and unsolicited publishers' review copies of books that I receive. Come to think of it, when I do that, I do get people asking for the books whose names I have never seen in the comments- but they usually claim to be "lurkers" on the blog. I don't do these offers very often because as a private individual I can't afford the postage, often more than the book itself cost (even though I didn't pay for it) if the "winner" is from some distant land.<br /><br />I took a huge pile to Crimefest, a book festival, earlier this year, and put them on the swaps table. They vanished instantly, but nobody put any swaps of their own in return. Never mind, I was quite relieved as the aim was to get rid of books, not to acquire more (and in fact I did, of course, acquire more during the meeting....)Maxine Clarkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06628509319992204770noreply@blogger.com