We will take that discussion forward in this article, and we will talk here about 3 content-based contests that could help you skyrocket your blog’s readership.

2 content-heavy contests

Comment here contest

This is one of the best contests to host. The idea is quite simple. Ask your visitors to post a comment in the comment box to get a chance to win the prize. Also remind them that each comment will get one entry into a lucky draw, so they can enter more than one comment to get more than one entry. At this point, do not forget to tell them just one-line generic comments will either get filtered out by your spam filter, or will be weeded out by your staff. Remind them that the comment that will add to the discussion will only get accepted. Comment done just to get multiple entry and which does not take the discussion forward, even a bit, will automatically get disqualified.

Review me contest

This is another form of contest that you can run. Ask your readers to write a review for your website on their domain, in Facebook, or wherever they want, as long as it is written on the websites talking about topics like pornographic, abusive, racism, etc. make an e-mail ID, and ask them to send the URL to that mail ID. Promise the announcement of the result on your blog, and tell them that 3 best reviews will get the prize. To win the prize, it is important for them to include two links to your website in the review — one to the home page, and another to any other page. For deep lining, you can provide some options from your blog posts.

Guest post writing contest

The third form of content-heavy contest is guess post writing contest. Ask you readers to write guest posts for you. Announce that the best written guest post will get the prize, and the second and the third ranked guest post will also get prize. To motivate them to write a guest post, tell your visitors that each guest post will be published, and writer will get the byline for the guest post along with 2 links back to their website, Facebook page, twitter, etc.

Content-based contests are time consuming, so the prize should be good, otherwise people will not get motivated to spend time on your blog.

I am sure you’ve heard of de.li.cio.us. It redirects to delicious.com, but as a .us domain and social bookmarking site, I can’t help thinking that their creativity was first sparked from the lack of interesting domain names available. If you can take something short and to the point from your search on word navigator, your next step would be to check it’s availability. The following guidelines can speed up the process:

• Since there are 3,563 words that end in -us at the time of this posting, the easiest thing to do would be to copy and paste each list (by length) into a text document, which took me about 7 minutes. You probably won’t take as long, if you copy and paste only half of all the words.
• In the document, click Edit and Select All. Proceed to toggle the bullets off. Then use Ctrl+F and type us into the search box. Click on Find All. You will notice that the -us ending has been selected for all of the words. Now click on Replace All. Your document should no longer have any of the -us endings.
• If your document is 75 pages long, perhaps it would be best to weed out words before continuing. Or you can copy and paste the words in only chunks (maybe 30 words) at a time into this domain name regristration search (clicking on the us extension, while unselecting the com extension), so that your internet browser doesn’t freeze up during the process.

Of the first thirty words I submitted, 14 were available. Here is my example chunk with unavailable .us domain names crossed out:

fagaceo.us                          furacio.us
felonio.us                          furfuro.us
feracio.us                          garrulo.us
ferocio.us                          gingero.us
fervoro.us                          glaireo.us
filaceo.us                          glamoro.us
flavoro.us                          globulo.us
fractio.us                          gluteno.us
frivolo.us                          glutino.us
froufro.us                          granulo.us
fugacio.us                          gummato.us
fulgoro.us                          gumptio.us
fulguro.us                          hazardo.us
fulmino.us                          hilario.us

Honestly, if I were a business looking for an attractive and modern domain name, gumptio.us would be my first pick! If you don’t know, gumptious is an adjective that means enterprising (synonym to energetic, industrious, up-and-coming). Or how about furacio.us? Hurry up, domain names like these will soon fill up the Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0) scene! If you really don’t care what the domain name is and just want to set something up quickly, your best bet would be to submit one or two words into a domain name suggestion tool.

Everybody has a say these days which could be an advantage to most but it also carries a certain level of disadvantage. Wise albeit sarcastic people have said that everybody is an expert on the World Wide Web. But that is the beauty of it all, being given the chance to speak up and be heard. That is possible with the World Wide Web. You do not have to be a graduate of journalism in order to speak up.

If you do not have your own site yet, creating one is easy. You have to decide whether you want to avail of the free blog hosting service provided by many such as BlogSpot, wordpress and others or if you want to avail of web hosting services for a price. The cost is at a minimum. There are pros and cons to each. The most glaring advantage to the free sites is the fact that the site is free. But there are more advantages to a paid domain especially if you will venture to money making schemes such as paid advertising eventually. The advertisers look more kindly to the paid domain ones. Another advantage of paid web hosting sites is the customer service support they give to their clients 24/7. You are assured that they will get back to you as soon as they are able. Knowledge in HTML is no longer needed as web hosting services whether paid or free made sure that their features are user friendly. So even a child can make his or her own site on the web. However, it is also best to learn a little how it functions so you will know what to do when you encounter errors and you will know how to improve your site.

Those who are still undecided whether they can make money or not via the World Wide Web avail of the free blog hosting service first. They eventually convert or migrate their site to a paid one. Having your own site is not easy work. In fact, contrary to what people think, it takes a lot of patience and hard work to become successful in it. You have to build your readers, update it as frequently as you can, build your readers, improve your traffic and gain higher page rank. All these will make you money whether you are selling goods, services or both.

So what are you waiting for? It is time to join the band wagon. There is enough space for everyone.