Be the best, blog at DaniWeb, win BIG prizes

[happygeek]

Following on from the success of our first blogging contest here at DaniWeb, we are proud to announce the start of an all new, even better competition with some truly amazing prizes.

If you’ve got something to say about IT, say it in your DaniWeb blog during the months of December and January and you could be in with a chance of winning some fantastic prizes. The winner will be able to choose* an item from a prize pool totaling in excess of $1500 value. Maybe you fancy a 24” widescreen LCD monitor, or how about the latest multi-megapixel compact digital camera, or even an Xbox 360 games console?

Remember, all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning some great prizes is to start blogging.

The winner will be the member whose blog postings attract the most traffic during the life of the competition. There will actually be two winners, one for the blog attracting the most views and one for the blog with the most trackbacks. Each will be able to pick their booty from the grand prize pool. As a special incentive, there will also be a great bonus prize on offer if the winner exceeds 50,000 views or 10,000 trackbacks in total.

How do you get traffic to your blog? You simply ensure that your postings are timely, original, interesting and well written while at the same time promoting them through exploring syndication options, submitting them to services such as Digg, Slashdot, Reddit and others, and being creative without breaking the rules. This means no spamming, and no creating multiple accounts to increase your view count. We will be watching for people who attempt to cheat, and cheaters will be disqualified immediately. Otherwise, it is up to you how you get people to read your blog, but the more effort you put in, the more views you will get and the better your chance to win the big prize.

DaniWeb blogs are dedicated to IT, in particular IT in the news be that as straightforward news reporting, analysis or opinion. Anything that is discussed in the (non-lounge) forums is pretty much fair game as subject matter for blog postings. As long as your postings are interesting, thought provoking, well written, current and original. DaniWeb will not tolerate cut and paste blogging, and any entries found to violate copyright will be deleted and the blogger disqualified from the competition.

Remember, DaniWeb blogs are a little different to some that you might have seen: if you want an outlet to talk about politics, food, religion or whatever then this is not the place to do it. Nor are the blogs the place to ask for support or post tutorials. Entries that ignore this advice will simply be deleted.

If you want a yardstick by which to measure what a DaniWeb blog posting should be like, please see the Inside Edge blog. If you look at the trackbacks for postings here, you will also get some ideas as to where likely traffic generation can be found.

Remember to write a proper introduction to your blog rather than doing so as a blog posting, or it will quickly get lost. Also, give some thought to what you call your blog, this might impact upon the number of visitors it attracts!

THE RULES

1. The competition will start on December 1st and run until the end of January 31st.
   
2. DaniWeb administrators are not eligible for entry.
   
3. Only on-topic, IT news related postings will be counted.
   
4. If no member reaches a minimum of 10,000 views or 1000 trackbacks in total, DaniWeb reserves the right not to award any prizes.
   
5. Members can be as creative as they like in order to attract traffic to their blogs, but spamming and the creation of multiple accounts will not be tolerated. Anyone found bringing DaniWeb into disrepute will not only be disqualified but banned as well.
   
6. The decision of the site administrators will be final in respect of the winners, and a league table of the final counts will be published on DaniWeb for reference.

*These are examples only, actual prizes may vary depending upon availability.

[John A]

I'm interested... but I have a question:

If no member reaches a minimum of 10,000 views or 1000 trackbacks in total, DaniWeb reserves the right not to award any prizes.

So if this is the total amount of views or trackbacks to our blog (not a specific entry), then how can we tell how many we've hit already? And is the total number of trackbacks/views the total for our blog, ever, or is it just for the month of December?

Thanks.

[Dani]

So that everyone has an equal chance, it is only the number of trackbacks and views for blog entries posted within the months of December and January.

[happygeek]

What she said.

The idea is that during the months of December and January, the total number of views and trackbacks to your blog postings for those months only will be counted. It is up to you to promote your blogs and drive traffic to them, as per the competition rules, and the more creative and successful you are at this the better your chance of winning the big prize(s) on offer.

For the record, my blog is barred from entry in this competition.

[John A]

For the record, my blog is barred from entry in this competition.

I know. If you hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have even bothered. :mrgreen:

[happygeek]

I would love someone to get a bigger viewer/trackback total than me, as I would be keen to learn what they were doing differently to promote traffic to their blog.

[iamthwee]

I would love someone to get a bigger viewer/trackback total than me, as I would be keen to learn what they were doing differently to promote traffic to their blog.

They probably don't have the luxury of advertising their blog in a PC magazine they write for?

Who knows.

[Dani]

Davey doesn't do that. Check out where he gets his trackbacks from. All of them are places you guys could get links from as well.

[iamthwee]

How do the view counts work. Is it simply the number of times someone has clicked on the article.

Or does it matter that each viewing has to be from a different IP address?

Not planning to do anything underhand. Honest :)

[happygeek]

They probably don't have the luxury of advertising their blog in a PC magazine they write for?

Who knows.

I know, and I do not advertise or plug my blog in any of the publications I write for. I wish I could, but things just don't work that way unless the blog is associated with the publication or publisher itself :)

What I do is use the syndication and seeding tools that are available for anyone to use online. I advise folk entering the competition to take a look at the trackbacks for some of my blog posts and follow the URLs back to source. Which should give an idea of some avenues to exploit when spreading the word about your own blog.

As for viewcounts, yes it is based upon the number of people who click and read postings but we will be keeping an eye for cheats, and if caught cheating it's instant disqualification.

[iamthwee]

As for viewcounts, yes it is based upon the number of people who click and read postings but we will be keeping an eye for cheats, and if caught cheating it's instant disqualification.

Do the viewing have to be from different IP addresses? I mean let's say I click on my blog 100 times from a different pc. Would that mean I have 100 viewings?

[Dani]

The competition is revolving around getting thousands of views, and so clicking a couple of times from different computers isn't necessarily going to make any impact. What we're looking for is how creative you can be getting the word out to the masses. So if we see a blog entry with 10,000 views and no trackbacks, we will just assume that you got a bot to keep refreshing the page.

[WolfPack]

trackbacks,

What exactly are trackbacks? You are speaking to an absolute idiot who only knows how to open his browser when it come to the WWW.

[Dani]

Other websites that link to the article.

[WolfPack]

How can you find if other websites link a particular page? And is it impossible to have 10000 friends?

[John A]

How can you find if other websites link a particular page?

Well of course on DaniWeb blogs a script or something does it automatically. But I believe how trackbacks work is like this: A computer first visits a site. When a computer trys to visit a site linked to by the page it was viewing, it sends the regular HTTP request, but it has something called "referrer" information. This is then gathered by a script or whatever, stored, and can be shown on a website. See this for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referrer

[Dani]

When looking at a blog entry, click the "Trackbacks" link to find all other articles that link to it.

[happygeek]

How can you find if other websites link a particular page? And is it impossible to have 10000 friends?

You don't need them. Check out my Inside Edge blog and hit the trackbacks link. Most will get around 20-30 trackbacks, but one that made the Digg front page (Spammers named and shamed - 20,000+ views) has over 300 trackbacks as the word spread.

[Dani]

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/trackbacks1056.html <= awesome!!

[John A]

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/trackbacks1056.html <= awesome!!

I know... I just looked at that the other day and was so amazed...

Although most of those trackbacks (and pretty well anybody's) are simply from Digg, as there's multiple ways of viewing an article (such as searching Digg, in which case each search that someone clicks on the article will yield a unique trackback from Digg).

[H8ed]

Does the blog have to be hosted at DaniWeb? Or can we use one of our blogs hosted somewere else because I just started a new blog about my town and I don't want to switch it over.

[happygeek]

Yes the blog needs to be hosted at DaniWeb, and the content unique to it rather than simply copying something over from another blog elsewhere.

Although if you were asking with regard to the current competition, it's a little late in the day :)

[happygeek]

Although most of those trackbacks (and pretty well anybody's) are simply from Digg, as there's multiple ways of viewing an article (such as searching Digg, in which case each search that someone clicks on the article will yield a unique trackback from Digg).

Try this one instead, 432 trackbacks and more than 19,000 views. The trackbacks, although showing a lot of Slashdot activity as you would expect, are pretty well spread across some surprising sites. The AV vendors for example, a news site in the Netherlands and my own happygeeknewmedia blogspot mirror (where I place extracts that link to both my DaniWeb and IT Pro blogs to aid with publicity) as some of the news sites referencing the story pointed people there originally.

Just goes to show what can happen when a blog post breaks a fairly big story. Of course, many of the people reporting it don't mention the original source, and quickly the quoted source becomes one that quotes another that quotes us so we get lost in the mists of time. But overall, most people were doing the decent thing and at least crediting myself/DaniWeb with breaking the story even if not linking directly back to the posting.

[John A]

^_^ Wow!

I agree, that's an incredible span of links. It's amazing how much traffic one can generate if they have quality content. I'm nowhere near you in terms of writing ability, but I guess that's why you're a writer and I'm unemployed. ;)

Although if you were asking with regard to the current competition, it's a little late in the day :)

:cheesy:

I bet someone like you could win it even if you came in on the last day. Post an article, hit the frontpage of Slashdot, BOOM! 20,000 views...

[happygeek]

Don't knock yourself, your writing is actually very good. I have enjoyed reading your blog postings of late and hope that they continue.

The whole getting Dugg/Slashdotted thing is a huge can of worms and something of a lottery to be honest. There are certain stories that stand out as being likely to succeed, and the TomTom virus one is a good example - breaking a story like that is always going to be good news if you'll excuse the pun. But everyday news items are a different matter, whether well written or not. In nearly 200 blog posts here at DaniWeb I have hit the Slashdot front page twice and the Digg one once, for example.

[John A]

Don't knock yourself, your writing is actually very good. I have enjoyed reading your blog postings of late and hope that they continue.

Thanks; I always appreciate encouragement.

The whole getting Dugg/Slashdotted thing is a huge can of worms and something of a lottery to be honest. There are certain stories that stand out as being likely to succeed, and the TomTom virus one is a good example - breaking a story like that is always going to be good news if you'll excuse the pun. But everyday news items are a different matter, whether well written or not. In nearly 200 blog posts here at DaniWeb I have hit the Slashdot front page twice and the Digg one once, for example.

And when you read articles like this and this - it kind of makes me wonder whether I should be submitting my site to Digg at all, or whether I'm just going to get negative comments on it.

[happygeek]

When you expose yourself by writing a blog, you have to allow for the idiots that will pick an argument no matter what you have said. The main thing is that you have made your point, it is out there and is as valid as any other.

I have developed a fairly thick skin when it comes to criticism, you have to as a writer. If I worried about what a few people with big mouths and loud voices said about me and my output I would have packed it in a long time ago. I prefer to think that the silent majority are the ones I write for...

So keep writing, and keep digging!

[happygeek]

AND THE WINNER IS:

Congratulations to joeprogrammer and his Right On - What IT really is blog which I can announce is the winner of our end of year blogging competition.

Not only did joeprogrammer scoop the most views for his blog postings in December and January, with a total of 31,154 but he also wins the prize for the most trackbacks with 1614.

Well done that man, well deserved.

Dani will be in touch to arrange your prizes in due course!

[iamthwee]

Congrats joe you deserve it. Now the guys at daniweb will know where you live when they post your prize to you. :eek:

:cheesy:

I wish I had time to write a blog... oh well.

[John A]

Well done that man, well deserved.

YES!

Thank you very much! I owe the other people who didn't blog, because if they did, I probably wouldn't have won so easily. :cheesy:

You've just made my day!

Congrats joe you deserve it. Now the guys at daniweb will know where you live when they post your prize to you.

Dang... ;)

I wish I had time to write a blog... oh well.

Amazingly, I didn't even spend that much time blogging. I devoted about 20-30 minutes for each blog entry each day, including the time it took to submit the entry to sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and others. The views just kept coming. :)