I haven't had many contests - actually, I've only held four, and probably won't hold too many more simply because that's not my blog's focus - but anyone who has run a contest on their blog knows: these things aren't easy. You've got to get the prizes, you've got to decide on the guidelines, you've got to make sure that people follow those guidelines. And then of course you have blogs and forums who look for blog contests, and enter them like crazy, hoping for freebies. On the one hand, it's human nature to want something for nothing - especially if it's a valuable something (like an iPod or a Clairsonic skincare tool) or a pretty something (complete sample set from a makeup collection or a complete set of nail polishes). On the other hand…blog contests should be both a publicity-tool for the blogs, and a way to say “thank you” to frequent visitors and contributors. So what kind of rules can we put in place that minimize drive-by contest entries, yet do actually allow people who visit and participate…to have a chance at winning?

There are cottage industries dedicated to entering contests, then reselling the prizes on Ebay. They usually concentrate on things like iPods (and they actually hire contest-entrants on Craigslist and pay them so much per valid contest entry), but anything that could potentially be valuable - including beauty appliances, hotly-coveted makeup items, what have you - is targeted. Big corporations may have the financial latitude to write these off as advertising; but individuals, smaller companies, and blogs most definitely feel these hits. So how do we close the doors just enough to keep these folks out, but not so much that we discourage actual followers?

Beauty blog contest rules I've seen have included:

• must be a follower, either via Google FriendConnect or Twitter or something else
• must retweet about the contest, usually for an additional "entry ticket"
• must leave a comment
• must be in X country, or cannot be in Y country (usually for postage or import/export reasons - completely understandable)

Even with those rules, though, you get plenty of instafollowers who never re-visit, plenty of temporary actives, and all sorts of stuff...like folks on the moneysavingexpert forums, who link people to contests of all kinds. (And they're hardly the only ones. I got a "follower" last year during my birthday month whose primary job was to link people to free giveaways on blogs.) So how to weed out the drive-bys and handsout folks from new followers, or genuinely infrequent followers who may nonetheless deserve a chance to win something? There are potential problems with a lot of the methods I thought up:

Require that people have left at least four comments in the past four months (or some other time period): does allow newer followers to participate, even if they only started following the day before - they'd just have to go comment on older entries. However, this would require a lot of policing on the blog-owner's part: you'd have to go check their comments, see if they were made within the time frame you had set. And a drive-by could still easily go through and make a lot of comments on older entries that were essentially "one-offs", but that fulfilled the requirements for having previously commented. This would also be a problem if you lost all your older comments - you'd have no way to check, and you would have people who'd previously visited and commented who suddenly lost their eligibility through no fault of their own.

Require substantiative comments: ...but who judges what is substantive and what isn't? I've left comments on others' blogs that are little more than "I like that color combination" or "Hey, that looks good on you!!" which are easy enough for the drive-bys to quickly throw up, but are also genuine. Any subjective rule like this one opens you to accusations of playing favorites among blog visitors.

Require that people follow using X or Y: common, but I don't like this too much. I "friend" some blogs, but I don't use Google Reader - so unless I've also linked those blogs in my sidebar, I don't ever visit those blogs again. (Why don't I use Google reader? Because I don't use many Google services, that's why. And because while it is possible for someone to follow my online activity...I don't want to make things easy for them. They want my habits, they've got to work for the information. Which is also why I loathe the Twitter interface's "follow this person" recommendations. Yay for Twitter clients!!) I also don't use Facebook at all. Requiring people to sign up for this or that third-party application, even your own blog's membership sign-in, rubs some folks the wrong way...if for no other reason, than because they have to remember umpty-bajillion usernames and passwords (and which email address they used to sign up, et cetera.) There's also the administrative factor: you'd have to go check to see if that potential winner was, indeed, a follower on whatever service you'd designated. Since plenty of people do this already, it's not necessarily a new requirement.

Require that people have been followers since mm/dd/yy: But if you coupled the above requirement with something like "must have been a follower using X or Y since dd/mm/yy", you narrow things down a little. But then you've got a bit of sleuthing to do, to make sure you knew who joined by when. And you may have effectively shut out your newest followers.

Don't have a great big run-up to your contests: contests with a lead-time of more than a month give the gameplayers time to assemble, meet requirements, and get the word out. While you do want to get more followers...are you looking strictly for numbers, or do you want actual followers who will drop by semiregularly and contribute a bit? Everyone will answer that last question differently, for different reasons. Advertisers, who are still kind of new at the blog-sponsorship game, don't have a way to empirically measure "actual contributors" versus "raw numbers" - so they look for raw numbers. If you're trying to get advertisers for your blog, you want to have raw numbers to give to them; and quality isn't necessarily as important as quantity. Thus, getting a whole lot of followers - even drivebys - isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone. Blog contests that only last a week will not draw as many new signups and followers (which is arguably part of the reason for having contests, at least for some), but short-term contests with little pre-announcement might stand a better chance at awarding those folks who at least visit regularly - even if they don't comment. Sure it does allow the game-meisters to sneak in, if they keep a sharp eye on your blog; but they'd have to keep an eye on hundreds if not thousands of blogs, which can get just a wee bit time consuming even with feed readers and everything else.

Don't give away bigger, more expensive prizes that attract freebie-hunters (and Ebay resellers): This can be problematic, especially if a company donates a contest prize. Then you're not really in charge of saying what you will and won't give away as a prize. You're kind of stuck with whatever they give you.

Have a two-tiered contest, in which several winners are randomly chosen for smaller prizes and from among those entrants, the "grand prize" winner is chosen based on less objective criteria: Could be sticky, because of accusations of favoritism and possible legal ramifications if it's conducted not according to regulations in whichever country. And what happens if your circle of first-tier winners are all drive-bys and resellers? You haven't been able to shut out the opportunists, and you're stuck choosing from among poor choices for the grand winner.

Stop caring about fairness among winners: That last isn't easy, especially if, like many bloggers, you've grown up with the idea that things should be somewhat fair, at least from time to time. Contests and giveaways, though, are inherent lotteries. It's utter chance as to who wins them. There are ways to game any system. On the flip side, if you've bought and paid for the prize out of your own money, you don't make money from your blog, or you certainly don't make enough money to keep giving Clairsonic skincare appliances to asshats who will resell them on Ebay...it's more than a little galling to suddenly be flooded with all these eager "visitors", each with their hand out hoping to make a wee tiny bit of money. I sympathize with these peoples' need to make money to pay their bills and so forth; and I understand that from their viewpoint, they're just playing the games by the rules we set up. The whole thing reminds me of Real Genius, where the ubergeek sends in millions of entries to a contest by Frito-Lay: "I should win 32.6 percent of the prizes including the car." Only blog owners aren't some megacorporation. We're individuals, often individuals who purchase the prizes partially or wholly with our own money. And we don't have a lot of that ourselves.

I'm brainstorming about having a contest later on this year, and while I've -=almost=- got the prize decided upon, I'm still mulling over potential eligibility requirements. I don't want to have a bunch of drive-bys; and while I did have some last year, I also had plenty of regular visitors (the winners were actually split evenly between the regulars, and folks I've never heard from again.)

What are your thoughts? Have you ever run a blog contest? Won one? Have you ever specifically not entered a blog contest because you felt like you hadn't visited that blog often enough? How would you feel if you were ineligible for a blog contest because you weren't visible / active enough on that blog?

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