How to get Sponsors for your Contests

If you are a regular Progrecious reader you might have noticed that several contest have taken place on this blog. For the various of reasons this post will help to deal with contests and to create a contest that will bring you to the point you where planning before. The reason to launch a contest might be different like: to increase your Rss Subscribers, to grow your Technorati Faves or just to have many comments on your blog. Whatever you want to achieve your contests must be worth doing it and carefully structured to get your target. For example my last contest was giving Prices Worth $650 but all I get was 10 -11 participants while my 5000EC +review+link contest brought me multiple times more participants (of course I’ve got back-links and some new readers from the first one). You can have a look on both of them to see the difference but before here is that that does really effect your contest:

1. The name of the contest must be shouting this is what brings visitors to your contest page.
2. Simple and motivating rules – never ask for too much
3. Your contest must be known to other bloggers Promote your contest through your friend bloggers and e-mail subscribers. Use multiple social network services like Entrecard, Twitter, Stumbleupon, digg, mybloglog, etc…
4. Show up with good prices but not too much Utopian in order to do this you must have sponsors or you must buy (pay for) prices yourself – which is not very good idea when you can use those money for something better.

Now lets get to the basic sense of this article:

How to Get your Contest a Sponsor

If you have tried to make a contest you will have noticed that sponsoring your own contest is not an easy job to do. During my last contest I have got lots of e-mails where some very respective companies offered to be a sponsor for my next contests. But you’ll agree with me that this kind of offers don’t happen too often. On the other hand it means that many companies are ready to sponsor your contests one of which is MarketLeverage. Here are some tips that I used to make my first most successful contest:

1. I contacted one of the hosting companies, where I told about my plans that I want to run a contest. What they did was offered me several hosting plan prices for the winners. The e-mail goes like this:
Dear Manager (or put the Name)
My name is Luka Zet the founder of Progrecious.com blog. I’m very much interested in your company and do often recommend to use your hosting service to my partners (or put friends). This time I would like to bring more of your service to my blog readers and it goes on….

2. Contact any service provider with an official letter. Let them know that you are really interested in their service and would like to promote it in your contest, But let them now that nothing in this world is free. Let them become your Sponsors!
3. Another way to bring more sponsors is to ask your blogger friends to do this. This is what I did in my last contest. This is a good thing to do when you have no sponsors at all. But I don’t recommend doing it often, especially if they are your partner bloggers. It is not very exciting to have put somebody’s ad on your site. (blog).

4. Get Social Networks Sponsor You- in this modern Internet environment almost every big company needs an Ad. So why not ask social networks to sponsor you? I think it is a great idea when there is EntreCard already offering sponsorship base on their blog where you can get sponsors from EC members.

5. There is no five I will put your tip and a link to your site if you come up with some interesting idea on how to get sponsors. -Let your lazy brain think a little bit-

Share your own ideas on how to get Sponsors with our on growing audience