I reckon that these 27 page contest threads are fucking idiotic. Here is why.
 

Ok. I am honestly NOT trying to stir drama or piss people off.

However, ur gay.

Look, it's like this:

Exactly how many serious webmasters do you think are gonna camp on a thread desparately hoping to win 500 bucks for making a post like: "woo hoo 301 did I win?". You're sucking in bots and surfers man. Jesus.

It's an abysmally fucking ill conceived marketting strategy. Seriously.

...And it annoys people. It also burns capital that you should be sitting on if you have any sense.

It's easy.

Come the fuck on.


You wanna draw attention to your program? You wanna encourage WM signups?

You do? Cool. Here:

#1: Market, you lazy fuck. Sell the fucking sites. Thats the idea anyway isnt it? Spend some money on SEO. ET-fucking-Cetera.

#2: Give the fucking guy that makes the most sales in the week following your "ad campaign" a 5 or 10 grand bonus. Send him (or her) to Club Med. Whatever. Make a second prize, what the fuck ever. Just stop this fucking huge ass sig whore mating frenzy.


Build your campaign around who sells the best, and not who is lucky, or who has the best bots.






Suck me.

tbh the threads with crazy pages i dont really bother with

Juicy, if it sez "contest" or "win" or "the X poster in this thread" in the title; I don't even usually read it. That's what I'm getting at.

Yea, those threads are garbage.

Why can't people grasp the basic "target" concept?
It boggles my mind.

i am the same way...I avoid them all together...in fact, most of the time I don't even notice them anymore just because my brain has blocked them out

I think it all boils down to sheer laziness.

the recent thread where the 'x' post would get a panty worn by some model was never topped in retardness

Good post, Jim. I, too, avoid such threads.

Obviously, board advertising is valuable to a point, otherwise no one here would buy banners or bother putting anything in their sigs. While I agree that most contests here are silly and do little to promote the programs they are sponsored by, I do think that board contests can be a productive form of advertising.

But they need to be unique and creative. Your contest has to get people talking on and off the boards and making everyone want to participate in it, not necessarily because of the prize, but because there's fun and glory involved. There have been some decent contests in the past:

Miss GFY (although it was dragged out too long).

Video contests where people have to make wacky videos that are posted to GFY for our amusement.

And I don't really mind the contests that give a prize to one random person in a thread that posts their affiliate id. This is intelligent marketing since you get webmasters signed up to your program whether they intend to use it or not. Then you have their contact info/e-mail and maybe your webmaster mailings will eventually convince them to promote you. It also rewards your existing affiliates with a chance to win a prize with little effort.

The question I'm interested in answering is where to draw the line between legitimate advertising and stupid spam. That line is important.

This is not about some stupid GFY shit i.e.: "so and so inc. should be banned for spamming or because they just suck in general, etc."

This is about a WM trusting a companies strategy enough to vest time and money and traffic into promoting them. See what I mean?

If I'm gonna fucking work my ass off to send traffic to X Program, I wanna make sure they have a brain, and that there are decent, intelligent people behind the helm. That implies a decent marketing paradigm, and not (imho) just simply starting some fucking thread every on GFY everytime they launch a new Teen DP site.



Hey yeah, it's porn; but it's still business.

I stay the hell away from sponsors with contests.
good for sheep herding though

Are there any prizes in this thread?

Jim, while you have a point, I think it's only valid to a certain degree. Yes contest threads do tend to attract surfers and post bots, its not really about that. I can make a good guess at what a top banner spot for GFY runs a month, and many promotions spend far less than that having "bots and surfers" keeping thier thread bumped. It's a cheaper form of guerilla marketing.

Well...

I don't participate in any contests. Its a waste of time. But I do always notice them. Its pretty hard not to notice a thread at the top of GFY for a week straight with 10 pages worth of replies. So $500 to keep a thread bumped to the top of the busiest webmaster forum for ALL to see, while sponsors shell out a couple grand for a stupid banner that nobody notices.

Me thinks contests are a great idea.

"Guerilla" is just another word for clueless, rude and on my last nerve.

To those who have no idea how marketing works.

Then you're an exception. I notice like actually informative THREADS about a new program. I completely ignore the spammy contest ones as a rule, and banners in the header annoy me 'cuz they usually have really annoying music.

LOL, in a nutshell.

I think contests are cool too. Re-read my first post.

I thought they tried to limit the amount of them running at a time.It's the post the most that are annoying

We all agree that too many contests are annoying and fuel post whores. So:

1. No 'most posts in a thread contests'. Max 100 posts in a thread by one person.

2. No one registered in less than 60 days before can post in a contest thread.

3. Contests can't run more than 10 days. And no more than 3 contests at a time. And since only top advertisers can run contests, you need to coordinate with Eric BEFORE starting a contest.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

In all seriousness, I honestly think that even those guidelines are too liberal. Not because they interfere with the sanctity of GFY (ha ha) but just on general principal.

I read informative threads, yes of course. But how do you not notice a thread with 10 pages of replies? You look and see this thread with all of these pages and think to yourself "holy shit, what's the deal?" So you read the title and see "Pussy Cash is giving away money!" And then you see it again. And again. And again. And of course you stop reading the title, but all along you know its little goofballs going crazy over the money Pussy Cash is giving away.

I have no idea how you could possibly not notice it unless you can magically tell which threads are good and bad without even reading the title.

I have Flash turned off, which means I pretty much don't see any banners. As I mentioned, I notice the sticky threads and the long ass threads (which I would notice even if they were not contests.) I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Just ignore them. Programs wouldn't run contests if they didn't work.

shit, i was 100% sure im reading Syl not Sly

Do you see tits on this chest?!

You said it all right there.



Any thread that makes it to ten pages is either filled with posts by drama queens or filled with posts by idiots trying to win an X-Box.




Come on man, you know I have a point.

DITTO

I usually avoid those threads all together too.

When the name of a program is seen a thread nameevery time a webmaster open GFY(3 time in the front page like pussycash), that's branding...

But I agree the contests aren't aimed to real webmasters.

Some are lame ya, but some like the newest PussyCash one with the 2 hummer giveaways. I know Im going to be pushing some traffic that way. The fleshlight ones are fun to. I already won one so I dont bother with those ones anymore, but I do send them as much traffic as I can now. I wouldnt of signed up for it without those threads probably.