What I Learned From The Traffic Generation Blogging Contest

Traffic Generation Contest Ends

Shortly after the official announcement of the Traffic Generation blogging contest winners, I have to admit that I was not that surprised to see the list of all 15 winners. As you know, this is the first time that I have co-organized a contest, and I have to thank both Hesham of famousbloggers.net and Andy of ComLuv.com, for having iblogzone.com become a part of it.

Running a contest is not easy, specially when it is as “big” as the Traffic Generation we just held. However, I can tell you right now that it was worth every single effort put into it. From choosing the topic, to finding sponsors, to promoting the contest, to review and publish entries, to moderating comments, to answering questions from participants, to finding judges (good job Hesham), to collating all results, and more, the experience was truly remarkable and the way I see it quite successful. Hesham and Andy were active “machines”, that were hard to coupe with :).

Anyway, before I tell you what I learned from this contest, let me once again provide you with a recap of the winners. Congrats to all that participated for your efforts, as I continue to say that this contest was a win/win situation for everyone involved. The list…

Winners Of The traffic Generation Contest

1 – Brankica Underwood, for 50 Traffic Sources You Should Milk Like Crazy

2 – Ariff Shah, for How I Got 50k Pageviews For A Single Post In A Day

3 – Brian Belfitt, for How to Drive Consistent But Free Traffic To Your Blog

4 – Mavis Nong, for How to Beat the Changes to Organic Traffic Generation Rules

5- Faissal Haithami, for Facebook Advertising Killed Google Adwords

6- Stacy Claflin, for How to Generate Traffic Without Spending a Dime

7- James Johnston, for Use Facebook to Drive Traffic To Your Site

8- Khalid Hosein, for Zen and the Art of Web Traffic

9- Jane Sheeba, for Traffic Generation: Using The Old And Boring Hooks Correctly

10- Lisa, for How Bing, Softball And Yahoo Got Me Blog Traffic

11- Cheryl Ragsdale, for Vibrant Ways To Generate Traffic And Build Relationships

12- Jeevan Jacob, for How to Tweet Your Traffic

13- Varda Epstein, for Charming an Overlooked Readership

14- Cosmin Stefan, for How to Really Get Targeted Traffic to Your Site

15- Michele Welch, for The 3 Star Rating Traffic Generation Report

What do these winners have in common that made them stand out?

OK then. If you noticed, I said in the beginning that I was not that all surprised about the winners. This is by no means to undermine some contestants. Rather, and since I was totally involved with the process, I noticed a certain trend from certain participants, of which, hinted that, should they continue what they were doing, they will likely fill a spot on the winners list. That said, here is what they had in common.

First and foremost, top notch articles. I won’t name anyone, but there were some that made it look that very little effort was given when writing their articles. The objective of this contest was to provide, useful and innovative information on how to drive traffic to a website and not old “school” stuff.

They promoted their articles very well. Some used standard tactics, such as Tweeting, sharing, stumbling and all that, and others actually implemented what they wrote about. Did you get this one? They took action on what they suggested in their article for you to implement ;-). Examples are, clever use of ComLuv enabled blogs, reaching out to “tribes” and reciprocating actions in favor of another.

In summary:

• They wrote useful and very informative articles abut traffic generation. Some even optimized their content for SEO purposes.
• They promoted their articles, like crazy.
• Ask and you shall receive. They reached out for their connections.
• They (some, not all) did their daily dose of “promotion” and several times a day
• They wrote post about their entries and the contest, in their own blogs, and also promoted those like crazy.
• Some went as far as writing guest post, to gain more exposure for their articles.
• They Interacted with every single comment received.
• Cleverly used Comluv as a driving force for traffic to their entries.
• and most importantly, once again, they took action, something which sadly some participants chose to neglect, despite their articles being very good. They did not commit themselves enough and so are reflected on the final results.

What benefit did the traffic generation contest bring to everyone?

• for our sponsors – massive exposure
• for the winners – cash of course, they deserve it
• for all the participants – also exposure and most likely increased traffic, more connections (like Mavis Nong), backlinks and improved credibility.
• for the organizers – a combination of all the above, lol. It was a great experience and it provided many new opportunities for us all.

Once more, congrats to all the winners and for those who participated in this event. Now it is your turn to let us know what you learned from this contest and what you think “we” as organizers can change, for future similar events, to provide better experience.