New contest! - Royale Atmos
New contest folks, with a load of vouchers up for grabs - do let us know what you think of the topic, and as always, have fun! 
https://www.indiblogger.in/drive/royale-atmos-paint-purifies-air
Look forward to the outcome of this hopefully soon (if it doesnt come in next week, well....)
And on a different note, the judging process is something that needs quite a bit of work. But thats something there will always be differences of opinion on. In the last few contests I have always seen better entries of posts/ blogs than the winner decided by the sponsor/ judge/ indiblogger team. I am not sure if the Indirank/ stats give an undue advantage or higher weightage despite the best re-assurances of the Indib team. For e.g. I know a lot of bloggers who (or whose main friends/ readers) are not on FB for whatever reasons. They get penalised).
But even beyond that. The sheer content produced by the winner casts a doubt as to what the judges were really evaluating or if they evaluated the content at all (and saw something else/ or decided randomly). I can understand the pressures of time, but finally this is about blogging and creating content, if the judging is not reflective of a serious evaluation then contests cannot be taken seriously and some bloggers might start using spurious means too.
Perhaps I am the only one who thinks this way. But my recommendation is that for future contests (and IBA awards) this should also be worth pondering over. Also consider if some of your rules / evaluation design might be unduly influencing or being unfair to some contestants.
Good luck to the Indiblogger team & our community of bloggers
Hi everybody, we're very sorry about the long dormancy on this front, it certainly isn't fair to any of you who participated. We are looking at this as two separate issues, one being this contest, and the other being all future contests and how they will be executed. With regards to this contest, we made a significant breakthrough today, so things should get back on track soon. We'll be in a position to give you an ETA by Monday, if not sooner. With regards to future contests, every single bit of feedback you all have taken the time to give us via various forum threads and support tickets is being taken into account, and our team is giving this top priority and it is being discussed at length. We will post an update on a separate thread before the next contest is launched.
Hey Renie, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule and responding to the queries, here.
As you've mentioned, we'll be expecting something on Monday, if nothing, atleast an acknowledgement from you guys that you're working to get this resolved ASAP.
The Indiblogger team deserves a round of applause for this (and much much better sponsors too)
All I can say is that if the Indiblogger team decides to go hard on sponsors and demand a lot more professionalism from their sponsors, they have my support and surely most bloggers. They should stand up and be bold to fight for fairness.
I do hope this has been an exercise of learning and no other sponsor tries to take advantage of the innate goodness of the blogging community in future.
Monday's passed by and its Thursday already (ok, almost)
It does look like this sponsor is not being honest, not being professinal, also not being considerate to the Indiblogger team which made an announcement based on what the sponsor committed to, but backed out (for the nth time)
I do feel bad for the indiblogger team that they're being treated this way, but I definitely feel the sponsos needs to be treated very very sternly and put in their place. I think if there's no announcement by End of this week, we can be sure the sponsor will easily drag this to next diwali and make another announcement for a contest just before diwali, again.
The question is if we should continue to treat them nicely or expose their unprofessionalism - and how do we do this?
any thoughts?
Hey IB team, this has now gone way beyond anyone's understanding. We understand it's the sponsor's fault but you guys are being too unrealistic and unprofessional. This was least expected from atleast you guys. The last response from anyone on the IndiTeam was more than a month ago, and this was going to get resolved "anytime soon". Since then, people have been asking and the IB team has been a mute spectator. It somehow seems to me like you guys have lost interest in IndiBlogger as your passion, your bread and butter, and are exploring new possibilities, and that is the reason bloggers are suffering.
Hey CyberKid, I understand where you're coming from, and we have been unprofessional with regards to this contest, there's no doubt on that front. Losing interest however, is the opposite of what's happening! We've had quite a bit going on these last few months which took up a significant amount of our team's bandwidth. That is no excuse - we know we could have done a lot better, and we're sorry we've caused so much frustration and dissapointment.
I am feeling conflicted about this guys.
If a sponsor is not being professional about the contest, should we continue to be professional and abide by the rules of the contest? (and sadly the indiblogger team is not making much headway)
I mean clealy this was a business transaction (even if for most bloggers this was a product of their passion - which is not only NOT being appreciated, but being abused). But the sponsor got their end of the bargain - with so many bloggers contributing and giving the sponsor free brand mentions with a lot of positive linkages.
And right now it certainly looks like they over-achieved this and did this absolutely FREE. If they had gone to a social media PR agency chances are that not only would this cost them much MUCH MUCH more (yes, a lot more than all the prize money put together) - but they wouldnt have achieved even a small minor fraction of the kind of social media mentions that was achieved thanks to the bloggers participating in this contest.
There's professionalism, fairness and justice. I dont think the sponsor appreciates any of this
The question is - do we - and should we help this sponsor appreciate these concepts?
Any update??
Even if this is going nowhere, just an update will help.
Hey @Renie, it's been three months now, since this contest started. Even the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh election results are coming tomorrow. Can we please atleast know a tentative date, or a timeframe by when we could expect the results? If not that, then atleast an update on what's currently happening here, from anyone in the IndiTeam would be much appreciated.
Actually , Mr. Gandhi is the judge of this contest :) ... SO it's going to take a while ... Keep calm and continue blogging
Hey IB team - is there an update on the results? It's been so long 
Been over two weeks since my initial rant but there's been no progress. (Cashify which came later has been closed prizes announced, done with, so - welldone, team!)
Clearly the other sponsors are taking the Indiblogger team and the blogging community for a ride.
Again its not the prizes, or the delay so much but the sheer un-professionalism which is irksome. It clearly shows they do not respect or see this as worth. and IMHO there were only interested in getting social media mentions before the festive season. and thanks to this contest they got it, with great positive associations. Now they are going back on their word. (and this after they put in difficult impossible clauses like dont delete your posts for a year at least!!)
Now blogging community, should we ignore this forgive them and move on? I hope a sponsor finds out the hard way what it means to mess with the blogging community...
Well, honestly speaking. After the way they judged "my entry" for Cashify contest, I have left hopes for this one. isme bhi video banaya tha
Why just a video? Are you no longer confident about your writing skills? :)
Haha you think that videos are made on hawa with no writing involved??
You are your best judge. Do go ahead and make videos.
- Indiblogger gives last dates to submit the blogs but no punctuation on giving results.
Indi team. When are you announcing the results??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Actually, we've taken it all wrong. 185 entries in a contest, is quite a task? Do we expect these brands to have people paid simply to have the content on such contests read, analyse, compare and reward? That's an improbable situation. 185 posts are to be read, eligible ones verified, good ones sifted out, then compared on the various criterions, compared again for quality, plagiarism and such other parameters before being declared as winners. Do you really think 60-65 days are too much? Beyond that, it's almost a norm on IndiBlogger contests for completion of the entire process in 3-4 months.
I really didn't want to ever enter the debate on the results in a competition I didn't take part in, but I agree with you. As far as i remember, IB takes quite a while for the competitions. Unlike the (now oboslete) happy hours. Why is there such a crisis going on about the results? :-\
Well, all the participants are in the bandwagon and IB team is barely keeping their wrath it. Hope it doesn't expire. :)) All the best to you all. :)
the Indiblogger team needs to do some social media monitoring to see how contests like these increase the mentions of the stupid unimaginative hashtags are LIFTED because of the contest.
So do one reading of the 'brandname' and 'hashtag' just before/ during launch of contest, and then repeat this during/AFTER the contest on the last day or more. This will give you some idea of what kind of effect this contest generates... at a really low cost for the brand.
If they were to run A similar campaign with their digital/ social media outfits I think it would cost them a lot lot LOT more, and the results still would be nowhere close to what a contest like this generates.
if you take this into consideration, the sponsors are getting away with absolutely free goodies from the bloggers.
When we ask for the dates of the prizes or the announcement its only fair.
Also IMHO think its only fair that if there is no response within a reasonable time (3 months?) the participants delete the posts they so painstakingly created? (Better than it getting a bad rap from frustrated bloggers who might start posting much much much more negative reviews - now THAT would be bad)
I honestly feel bad for the Indiblogger team - they need to put their foot down with un-professional & lazy sponsors
#justmyopinion #mytwobits
It's really sad to note that while we as bloggers spend our time in writing quality blog posts to promote these brands, the existence of red-tapism just takes away all the fun of it. 2 months are gone and there's no sense of accountability from the brand to reward bloggers who researched and came up with quality blog posts - reward to be rewarded, right!
Mujhe mil jo jaaye thoda paisa, thoda paisa, thoda paisaaaa.... magar kaise??????
Thodi si lift karade!
Paisa nahin, sirf voucher milega
Voucher se kuch lena padega!
Yeh 'no cash' ka zamana hai
Cash ki chahat se bahut dur hai.
:)
Results results results?
Dear Indiblogger team
fab job on the blogging awards, and hope to hear more soon
wrt contests however I feel you can do a lot better in negotiating with the sponsors and having a serious discussion with them. (Sorry it doesnt come off as either serious or professional which isnt fair to you or this blogger community). some observations:
- why cant prizes be more specific? vouchers for paints, or online websites or food coupons or travel? This cannot be an after thought right? why not announce this right away?
- Similarly why not commit to a timeline? Just like you adviced a closing date for entries, have one timeline (say 100 entries -3 weeks, 200 entries - 2 months etc.) It will help set expectations from the participants
- I also personally feel that your sponsors do not have the bandwidth nor the actual interest in blogging and perhaps might not be the best judges for it. I think its better at least the initial rounds of judging / shortlisting be done by you or a select panel of writers who will hopefully do a better job driven purely by merit of the written content. (Sorry, the past winners of some of your contests didnt move me at all, they were either chosen randomly or other reasons which only the sponsor arbitrarily decided. I think there were more deserving ones - but thats my opinion). I still think if sponsors dont have the bandwidth instead of postponing the results perhaps they should ask for help no? who better than the Indiblogger team?
- There is a bit of ethics involved here. Clearly the sponsor wanted a good social media cmapaign with the hashtags and brandname to be discussed in great volume. They managed to not only generate this through the blogging community, but also IMHO some great fabulous content where bloggers poured their heart into the subject and did some hard work which the usual professional socmed army fails to even come close. The point to note is that many of the indibloggers can get good money if they were to take part in social media campaigns, and some of them also do. I just feel it exploitative that this/ and other sponsors so blatantly have misused this platform to exploit the talents to only achieve a few metrics like reach, brand mentions, hashtag mentions, associations etc. without fully appreciating the actual work done here and compensating them to it.
- and this brings me to the next point. for the first time I saw rules like the blog post needs to be kept online for a year at least....??? How can you say something like that, its clear you are not familiar with blogging and the fact that bloggers put their soul and heart into words and their blogposts. I am interested in knowing how you planned to enforce this??? I think most of the blogging community is fairly professional and earnest - why would you even come out with clauses like this. The only counter-argument to this is that if the sponsor is not being professional enough they have no right to make such demands from the blogging community.
I hope the sponsors appreciate that the members of the blogging community has moved out of their comfort zone to write on an alien subject to participate in what you have promised as attractive prizes. But there is no appreciation of it, in terms of the contest rules, nor the way the results are coming out as yet.
I hope you can negotiate better and get better partners next time with a solidly defined schemee to create a win-win situation for everyone. The Indiblogger team deserves far better sponsors and so does the community.
cheers
Interesting points...
- So far as I am concerned, I love any prize whenever I happen to win. And Amazon vouchers are absolutely fine for me. I have generally liked most of the posts that have won prizes as they did have to say something more than I was able to think of... or present things in ways that I was unable to.
- Judging, I guess, must be left to the sponsors. after all, it is their money and they know best how to get the sort of traction they want out of posts. Moreover, it leaves the Indi-team free to focus on more important tasks rather than getting into the murky world of short-listing posts.
- When I write a post I never upload to delete it. My blog is like an online record of many of the writings I do. But then I'm sure there must many who might think of removing posts or tweaking them to go without a sponsor's details after a contest. So this rule is fairly valid.
- Extensions of submission dates too are absolutely fine so far as I am concerned. Even I forget to write sometimes and wish there was an extension.
#JustMyOpinion
Any update?
Sorry everyone, but the judging/results process has stalled because of some unexpected and quite frankly unnecessary red-tape. 
We're trying to sort it out with Asian Paints at the moment, and hopefully it'll get resolved any day now. However, I do have a feeling that this could take a week to ten days before we can announce the results. We'll update you as soon as we have any new information!
Pollution is more than just another buzzword now... I think each of the contestants needs to share their posts again on the social media as there will then be more readers interested in reading them.
Any update Renie? 
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