TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Sponsor a Contest

Blog contests seem to be all the rave these days with some of the top Internet marketers like John Chow and Shoemoney holding contests to increase their exposure and gain new readership. Even Tyler himself is holding a contest for his Publisher Forums and this is a great way to promote new sites and rev up old ones. Contests work extremely well and this presents a great opportunity for everyone else. Sponsor a prize in these contests and you can reap a lot of benefits. Below are the top 5 reasons why you should sponsor a prize in a contest in your niche.

1. Links to your sites from the blog or website – great SEO value
In most cases, the site holding the contest will add a link to your site in exchange for sponsoring a prize. Not only will this bring you more visitors because people are intrigued by your prize, but it also holds a lot of SEO value as search engines factor in inbound links when rankings sites for keywords. People spend thousands of dollars buying links or building their link profile. By sponsoring a prize, you get a quality link for cheap.

2. Building relationships
By offering a prize in a contest, you essentially build a relationship with the contest host. Because you are helping them out with their project, they are more likely to pay attention to you, recommend you to others, link to you, help you out in the future, or heck – maybe even become your friend. It’s a give and take world people – give a little and get some back. That’s how relationships are built.

3. Branding to a bigger audience
If you have a small site with a limited audience, sponsoring a prize for a contest at a large site is a great way to gain more exposure. You are leveraging the audience of a bigger site to build you own – interested users may not have known about your site until they saw your contest sponsorship. If you need more people and traffic to your site, leverage the user base of another.

4. People will get to try your product – the viral word-of-mouth effect
Do you have a quality product or service? Offer it for free in a contest prize sponsorship. The winners will be able to experience what you have – something that probably would not have happened if they were asked to pay for it. If your product fills a need or is of high quality, the word will get out and people will come buying and linking. You may be hesitant to offer something for free but the rewards are great. Aaron Wall of SEO Book is a great example of this. He consistently offers his ebook for free in many Internet marketing contests. Since his book is one of the industry’s best, the winners will tell others, write reviews, and promote the book on their own accord. Pretty good return on investment if you ask me.

5. Everyone wins – contest host, prize sponsors, contest winners
In a contest, everyone involved wins. The contest host wins by getting more exposure to their site because of the buzz generated by the contest. The prize sponsors win by receiving all of the 4 benefits mentioned above. The contest winner wins well, because they won the free prize. What perfect harmony. Could you ask for anything more?

Now that you know all of the benefits of sponsoring a contest, you really cannot afford to miss out on these golden opportunities to promote yourself. Make sure you keep up with other Internet marketers and get involved with their contests and promotions. If you missed out on sponsoring Tyler’s Publisher Forums contest, check out Winning the Web and make sure you sponsor a prize in the upcoming blog contest.

This post was guest blogged by Gyutae Park, an Internet entrepreneur and SEO. Visit his blog on Internet marketing strategies and making money online at Winning the Web.