Last Updated on April 20, 2020
Do you remember my invitation for you to discover how hard it is to earn $100 by making a WordPress plugin? I know some you do, and I also know that you are curious to meet the winners.
Before disclosing the results, I want to mention that I advertised my contest on ContestBeat, a professional site dedicated to announcing blog contests. They were kind enough to write an article about my contest, and all I had to do was to send them a request for inclusion, in which I described my contest.
And the winners are …. (drums…)
Well, for the first time in the history of blogging, I awarded the $100 prize to myself, for the following achievements:
- None of my other readers was willing to give it a try. I would have given the prize to anyone who would have been willing to step out of the comfort zone and send me some plugin (even if it were not useful, I’d have tried to give it a creative use)
- I discovered that the AdSense Deluxe WordPress plugin can be used to put any kind of ads on your blog: instead of inserting the AdSense code in the respective box, I inserted an affiliate banner code from NeverblueAds, and it worked: the post where I included that block displayed the respective banner.
So, I can define ad blocks for all affiliate programs I’m interested to promote, I give them different names, and every time I write, let’s say, about making money online, I choose to insert the ad block which displays the Beach Bum guy who makes money while laying on the beach, while others buy his book.
For this new original way of using an old WordPress plugin, I proudly awarded myself $100.
(applause)
These being said, look what I’ve just got myself with the money I earned by winning my own contest (please ignore the cat, she’s just jealous because she cannot type, so all blog contests are forbidden to her):
Conclusions:
- If you want people to participate in your contests, don’t ask them to do something, and more important, don’t ask them to think. Life is already tough, so why make it even tougher? Give them instructions that are so precise, that all they have to do is copy-paste.
- People won’t participate in any contest simply for the monetary prizes, especially if the entry barrier is not very low. There is something more sought after, which only a small number of blogs can offer, and this is fame. Do you remember the poetry challenge in the Problogger anniversary contest? Even those who totally sucked at poetry gave their poem (it was really a great laughter for me, I’ll remember it for a long time). I wonder if Darren asked them to write a WordPress plugin, how many would have sent him their trials?
How was your experience with hosting contests on your blog? Can you tell us some of your learnings?
you know, I had the post bookmarked, and even went back to it a couple of times but never got the time to sit down and work on it!!
even though I am happy you won the contest, and i congratulate you Simonne, I am going to try it just for the heck of it, although i am not good with programming – i completely suck at it! but I was thinking of using that site link you gave! someday
but i was thinking, could the holidays be a reason for people not wanting to do anything thats hard work?
Congratulations!
I really wanted to participate, but I don’t know php, so nothing came out.
Thanks for the tip for adsense deluxe and never blue ads. Learning PHP is on my list of things to do. I have noticed that the most popular contests are the ones that require the least amount of work. By the way the boots are pretty cool as well. 🙂
It’s a shame no one joined in, I thought you would get some interesting ones for sure.
Hey, Pearl, you don’t have to feel bad about that.
I don’t think it is related to holidays. It is just they are probably tired after working all day long, so when it comes to blogging and online interaction, they just want to feel good.
Andrew, I’m sorry I didn’t get any “clients”, but I still think your site is cool, and I hope at least some of my readers tried your tool.
And my new boots look very nice 🙂
Diana, no problem, thank you for the intention 😉
I knew you don’t know php. I expected some lurkers to show up with this occasion, but it seems they continue to be quiet.
Thank you, Emma, I’m glad you liked my tip (and my boots 😆 )
Hi,
The best way that if people will really participate is test some group writing project or come up with some idea where you can involve people to see if they really respond.
I tried doing it sometimes and as usual no body responded. I guessed i still don’t have that kind of readers who are willing to.
Thus decided not to start any thing like this.
I am not a php coder or wordpress thing else would have surely involved.
Hi Ashish, thank you for your input. My guess is the same as yours: my readers aren’t motivated to get involved. This is not a bad thing, or something I will want to correct, it’s just, as you said, I will avoid organizing such things in the future.
No problem, you don’t have to feel bad for not participating, I’m proud that you are one of my readers, and I’m happy you found time to comment here.