May 8 Mother's Day Contest.
The Mother's Day CardMaster Contest was started on May 7 -- two days later than scheduled and a week before Mother's Day. It will be a short contest.
The process of entering the MyPostcards Network CardMaster contests has been an interesting experience to date. The contests are touted as a way for CardMasters to show their wares and be compared with their peers. They are also specifically intended to bring traffic to the entrant's sites. The contests have been run since 1997 and the winner's list has been published at the CardMaster Hall Of Fame since the beginning.
I created Cards From Ogden Point in 2004 and while I guess I had probably seen the information about contests as I signed up for the free service from MyPostcards.com, and upgraded that to the Pro Service without the system's advertising, I had not really paid any attention to the idea of the contests. My aim in creating the Card Site at the beginning was just to create a fun way for people who know me to have contact with me and each other by using my photographs in Posties. I had no thought of the site as it exists today nor the world wide attention it receives.
The following visitor map from Clustr Maps that I talked about in a previous post wasn't even a dream at that point.
There has to have been a couple of contests run between the time I went on line and when I entered the Easter 2005 contest -- if I got notification of the contests I didn't consider them. I did read the notification of the Valentine 2005 contest, and rather than enter it, I decided to watch it to see what the contest idea was all about.
I have had only one contact with anyone in the CardMaster community other than the sign up and payment correspondence from the folks at MyPostcards network.
That single contact was a nice Welcome Message that is in my Guest Book from a lady in Pennsylvania who went on to publish her own blog. Her "From The Hills" card Site shows up in the Hall Of Fame several times. Her site is not on line any more -- but it was a fun and interesting site using her artistry for some different and fun cards. The sort of site that worked well with mine as we offered completely different types and styles of card.
So with that little bit -- (really with that complete lack) -- of knowledge, I watched the Valentine contest unfold -- saw that the contest could bring visitors to the site, -- and I signed up for the Easter 2005 Contest and several contests since that date. The results have been gratifying as I have showed up in the Hall Of Fame 5 times in the past year and have received good feedback in the contests and directly in other communications.
As I said at the top of this page, the contests are designed to bring traffic to the sites (and the system) and to showcase the sites.
There are definitely three distinct groups in the contests:
1) the "amateurs" and "newbies" like myself who are in the contests for the exposure and the feedback
2) the sites that host various forms of advertising -- they seem to be entered regularly without getting many votes -- but the clicks they get must make their entries worthwhile.
3) The site in which the Posties/Cards are part of a larger site and the Posties are added as a feature to create returning traffic to the main site. Some of these are businesses and some are charities.
That grouping is a generalization I realize and some of the sites fit in the middle of the generalization. A number of the small sites have some advertising that is in most cases an attempt to generate some income to offset the cost of hosting the site. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it is up to the visitors whether they consider the various sites to be an advertising site that has E-Cards or an E-Card site with a bit of advertising -- the line between the two is a continuum not a dividing line LOL.
The contests have brought traffic to my site. The Spring/Easter contest showed up as the second largest source of visits to the site during April. The Valentine Contest was the largest source during February. So entering them meets the contest's stated intent and I will likely enter more of them as time goes on. The other large source of visits to the site is the MyPostcards Network itself. Those visits either come from my updated listings in the system's New Listings as I keep adding new content to the site and/or from searches for specific types of card within the system like the Easter Card Search. Being part of a "Network" does work in this case. The system does have advertising on it so the system benefits from the visit. The referral is from them to the various Card Sites. If the sum and total of the sites weren't worth visiting, the system wouldn't get the visitors it does. I like to think that sending "A Card From Ogden Point" is one of the reasons people return to the network.
Other potential sources of referral are not always as successful -- the CardMaster Top 50 system I referred to last month saw me as being in the range of 40th to 50th their "Top 50 Sites" most of April and brought me a grand total of 3 entry referrals for the month. Either that system's multitude of pop-up ads got more from my links to them than I got from them or the links benefited neither of us. Once Mother's Day is over I'll review whether or not the links to that system stay on my site. I'm not going to risk breaking links to pages within my site the week before one of the busiest card days in the year. Every piece of code I put on the page adds to the complexity and loading time for the site and the pages in it -- so I can only keep those elements running on the pages that I find useful or of benefit to the site.
The process of entering the MyPostcards Network CardMaster contests has been an interesting experience to date. The contests are touted as a way for CardMasters to show their wares and be compared with their peers. They are also specifically intended to bring traffic to the entrant's sites. The contests have been run since 1997 and the winner's list has been published at the CardMaster Hall Of Fame since the beginning.
I created Cards From Ogden Point in 2004 and while I guess I had probably seen the information about contests as I signed up for the free service from MyPostcards.com, and upgraded that to the Pro Service without the system's advertising, I had not really paid any attention to the idea of the contests. My aim in creating the Card Site at the beginning was just to create a fun way for people who know me to have contact with me and each other by using my photographs in Posties. I had no thought of the site as it exists today nor the world wide attention it receives.
The following visitor map from Clustr Maps that I talked about in a previous post wasn't even a dream at that point.
There has to have been a couple of contests run between the time I went on line and when I entered the Easter 2005 contest -- if I got notification of the contests I didn't consider them. I did read the notification of the Valentine 2005 contest, and rather than enter it, I decided to watch it to see what the contest idea was all about.
I have had only one contact with anyone in the CardMaster community other than the sign up and payment correspondence from the folks at MyPostcards network.
That single contact was a nice Welcome Message that is in my Guest Book from a lady in Pennsylvania who went on to publish her own blog. Her "From The Hills" card Site shows up in the Hall Of Fame several times. Her site is not on line any more -- but it was a fun and interesting site using her artistry for some different and fun cards. The sort of site that worked well with mine as we offered completely different types and styles of card.
So with that little bit -- (really with that complete lack) -- of knowledge, I watched the Valentine contest unfold -- saw that the contest could bring visitors to the site, -- and I signed up for the Easter 2005 Contest and several contests since that date. The results have been gratifying as I have showed up in the Hall Of Fame 5 times in the past year and have received good feedback in the contests and directly in other communications.
As I said at the top of this page, the contests are designed to bring traffic to the sites (and the system) and to showcase the sites.
There are definitely three distinct groups in the contests:
1) the "amateurs" and "newbies" like myself who are in the contests for the exposure and the feedback
2) the sites that host various forms of advertising -- they seem to be entered regularly without getting many votes -- but the clicks they get must make their entries worthwhile.
3) The site in which the Posties/Cards are part of a larger site and the Posties are added as a feature to create returning traffic to the main site. Some of these are businesses and some are charities.
That grouping is a generalization I realize and some of the sites fit in the middle of the generalization. A number of the small sites have some advertising that is in most cases an attempt to generate some income to offset the cost of hosting the site. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it is up to the visitors whether they consider the various sites to be an advertising site that has E-Cards or an E-Card site with a bit of advertising -- the line between the two is a continuum not a dividing line LOL.
The contests have brought traffic to my site. The Spring/Easter contest showed up as the second largest source of visits to the site during April. The Valentine Contest was the largest source during February. So entering them meets the contest's stated intent and I will likely enter more of them as time goes on. The other large source of visits to the site is the MyPostcards Network itself. Those visits either come from my updated listings in the system's New Listings as I keep adding new content to the site and/or from searches for specific types of card within the system like the Easter Card Search. Being part of a "Network" does work in this case. The system does have advertising on it so the system benefits from the visit. The referral is from them to the various Card Sites. If the sum and total of the sites weren't worth visiting, the system wouldn't get the visitors it does. I like to think that sending "A Card From Ogden Point" is one of the reasons people return to the network.
Other potential sources of referral are not always as successful -- the CardMaster Top 50 system I referred to last month saw me as being in the range of 40th to 50th their "Top 50 Sites" most of April and brought me a grand total of 3 entry referrals for the month. Either that system's multitude of pop-up ads got more from my links to them than I got from them or the links benefited neither of us. Once Mother's Day is over I'll review whether or not the links to that system stay on my site. I'm not going to risk breaking links to pages within my site the week before one of the busiest card days in the year. Every piece of code I put on the page adds to the complexity and loading time for the site and the pages in it -- so I can only keep those elements running on the pages that I find useful or of benefit to the site.
posted by ...ron... | 3:08 PM
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