Hi all! As you might remember, I had left Indiblogger years ago. But I still keep getting mails from the site almost every other day inviting me to enter their contests. That's how I got to know about this WE CHAT contest. The prizes are good and I felt like participating, but I won't. Here's why:
1. The contest is not hosted on the Indiblogger site but on the personal website/blog of the contestant. This means that the contestant ends up being judged not just for the quality of his/her contest entry BUT also on how well maintained his/her blog site is. It is but natural that the Contest Judges' decision of choosing the winners gets heavily influenced by A) The TRAFFIC generated by the Bloggers' web page. B) The LAYOUT and LOOK of the blogger's website. So obviously, those who are not technically adept in the beautification of their blogsite stand at a huge disadvantage. I, for one, have not updated my blog site in years!
2. The Promotional Contest Blog entry may be a total mismatch with the topics the Blogger blogs about routinely, and may stand out like a sore thumb. Also, the bloggers stand to lose respect among their readers if every second day they start posting Promotional material on their sites.
Every contest run by Indiblogger.in is sponsored by a vastly different sponsor. The Sponsors and the Products they make are so diverse & varied that if a blogger starts participating in every contest, his/her blog will become a KHICHDI of sorts. And trust me, that's not nice!
So what's the solution? I suggest that Indiblogger should give the OPTION of posting Contest Entries on their OWN website rather than posting a LINK to the Blogger's blog site. This would help people like me who do not have the time to run a blog any more. I know I'm proposing a radical change in the policy of Indiblogger, but this is essential if you want to attract more people to your contests. Don't just restrict your contests to people having an active blog, butprovide your own space for people to post their contest entries. This would also mean that the judgement of winners will be based purely on their content (since the page layout will be the same for everyone) and not on how good looking or well maintained their web pages are. In my opinion, this will ensure a much fairer judgement in the contests run by Indiblogger.
Another solution would be to have more TWITTER based contests rather than based on individual blogs. If the sponsors who do their promotions here on Indiblogger do their research, they will realize that they will get much more mileage for their products via TWITTER than via Indiblogger. I know what I'm proposing would seem detrimental for Indiblogger's business, but then Indiblogger should also shift to Twitter. Learn to change with the times.
Cheers!