Allan Tan’s Internet Marketing Resource Centre

If you?re looking for a quick way to bring more traffic to your site than you?ve had in a long time, running contests is the way to go. You might think that you need an expensive item to give away, but people really are happy to get anything that?s free. Offer a book, a small gift basket, or a free sample of whatever product or service you sell through your website. Gift certificates work well too, and are cheap to mail to the winners.

Once you?ve decided what to give away, put up a post on your company blog with the parameters of the contest. Give yourself a few weeks before the deadline to enter if you want to maximize the number of entries. The longer the contest runs the more exposure you?ll get as readers pass the link along to others who may be interested in entering.

Besides the traditional ?shout outs? through social networking, you can also now advertise your contest through websites such as Prizey. These contest-listing sites are usually free, and you reach thousands of people already interested in entering a contest. Of those, even if 3% of them visit your site and enter your contest, you?re doing quite well.

Remember, you?re marketing yourself just by running the contests, even if the product you are offering is unrelated to your site. It helps to offer a product or service that is relevant though, so that entrants will have a reason to return to your site–even when you aren?t having a giveaway.