PureBlogging

I received several requests for a detailed breakdown on how this blog benefited from the 1000th Comment Contest. In this post, I will try to detail the effect that it had on my traffic, the number of comments, and the income from this blog.

After looking at the stats, I decided to break it down into three periods:

1. June 1 – June 19 (Baseline performance before the contest was announced.)
2. June 20 – June 30 (Contest is announced on June 20th and I did one contest update on June 27th.)
3. July 1 – July 3 (Second contest update on July 2nd as the contest draws to an end.)

Traffic
I was little surprised to see the traffic breakdown because traffic actually decreased after the contest was announced. However, there was big increase as the contest approached the end. The numbers below represent unique visitors per day.

June 1 – June 19: 840
June 20 – June 30: 800 (-4.76%)
July 1 – July 3: 1067 (+27.02%)

Comments
The number of comments steadily increased as the contest went along. The numbers below represent number of comments per day.

June 1 – June 19: 9.3
June 20 – June 30: 14.6 (+56.99%)
July 1 – July 3: 33 (+254.84%)

Income
I’m still not comfortable giving actual income numbers so I’ll just list the % increase here. Income followed the same trend as the number of comments but not to the same degree. The numbers below represent income per day.

June 1 – June 19: used as baseline
June 20 – June 30: +28.70%
July 1 – July 3: +111.30%

For Part 2 of the contest, bloggers were asked to blog about the contest and that resulted in nearly 50 new links for PureBlogging.com. Those links help to increase page rank, Technorati rank, and will hopefully provide some traffic in the future as well.

Overall, I was very pleased with the results. What do you think? Was the end result worth the $200 in prize money?

Actually, we have 2 winners…

Great job everyone! I was hoping to finish the 1000th Comment Contest before July 4th and you guys came through for me. Now I need to come up with a few ideas for next month’s contest.

PART 1 (1000th Comment):
The 1000th Comment was posted by Rhys from The Gospel According To Rhys. If you haven’t checked out his site, you should… he’s a funny dude and it’s definitely worth a read.

PART 2 (Spread the Word):
The randomly selected winner for Part 2 of the contest is… Alwitt Xu from Prosperity Achiever. If you’re looking for more blog tips (I know I am) be sure check out his site.

Congratulations guys! Email me your PayPal addresses and I’ll send your prizes.

Thank you to everyone who participated. I really appreciate you taking the time to get involved. Now, anybody have an idea for next month’s contest?

We’re getting close to naming a winner in our 1000th Comment Contest. So close in fact that I’m not going to tell you exactly where we stand. All I’ll say is this… We should get our 1000th comment sometime tomorrow!

Keep those comments coming…

That also means you have approximately one more day to get your entries in for Part 2 of this contest. And please remember, if you are participating in Part 2 of the contest make sure you send me an email with the link to your post. After I get your email, I will send you a note letting you know that I have received your entry… that’s the only way that you can be sure I have you on the list.

I will try to locate all the entries by going through the pingbacks and checking Technorati but to be on the safe side please send me those emails.

If you haven’t entered already and would like a chance to win your share of our $200 Cash Giveaway be sure to check out the original 1000th Comment Contest post for details!

Well, it’s been a week since we started the 1000th Comment Contest so I thought I would give you a little update. I’m surprised that the number of comments hasn’t increased over previous weeks but Part 2 of the contest has been very popular and I am extremely happy with the response.

We had 95 comments in the last week and our total is now 878. It would be nice if we could reach our goal before the 4th of July. I think that’s within reach… what do you think?

There is one thing that I do need to mention. If you are participating in Part 2 of the contest make sure you send me an email with the link to your post. After I get your email, I will send you a note letting you know that I have received your entry… that’s the only way that you can be sure I have you on the list. Please send me those emails.

If you haven’t entered already and would like a chance to win your share of our $200 Cash Giveaway be sure to enter the 1000th Comment Contest!

I think it’s time to have another little contest. What do you think?

As of today, 783 comments have been posted on PureBlogging.com and lately we have averaged about 100 comments a week. So we should hit the 1000 comment mark in about 2 weeks and I thought I would give you 2 chances to earn a little cash…

PART 1 (1000th Comment):
Whoever posts the 1000th comment (excluding me, our guest bloggers, and trackbacks) will win $100 CASH via PayPal. During this time, comments will be strictly moderated and short irrelevant comments will be deleted. That means no comments like “Hey, nice site.” or “Yeah, me too.”, or “You’re so cool!”, etc. Only comments that contribute to the discussion will be counted.

PART 2 (Spread the Word):
Anyone who writes a blog post about this contest will be entered into a random drawing for $100 CASH via PayPal.

If you decide to enter Part 2 of the contest, please keep in mind that your post must be a new post and cannot be added to any other post. The post must contain a link back to PureBlogging, this post, and mention that I am giving away $100 CASH to the 1000th commentator and anyone who blogs about the contest will be entered in a random drawing for another $100 CASH prize.

Here is an example of what I am looking for:

David Culpepper is holding 2 separate cash giveaway contests this month. He is awarding $100 CASH to whoever posts the 1000th comment on his blog. He is also randomly drawing a name for another $100 CASH to anyone who blogs about this contest. Visit his blog for some great blogging tips and to find more information about how you can win.

This contest is open to everyone. If you have a blog - you are eligible to enter. It doesn’t matter where you are or what language your blog is in. You can enter one part of the contest or both. If you are entering part 2 of the contest, please make sure you email me the link to your blog post.

This contest is being held until I receive my 1000th comment, which should be sometime in the next two weeks. Afterwards, the 1000th commentator will receive $100 cash via PayPal and I will hold the drawing for all those that blogged about the contest.

I should also mention that I got the idea for this contest from Nate Whitehill who has a great blog about business, blog and web development.

Update: This contest is now over… you see the winners by clicking here.

Did you participate in the Group Writing Project at ProBlogger? If you didn’t, you should have.

The post that I submitted didn’t make it to the front page of Digg like some of the other submissions but I did see a little increase in traffic. I found a lot of great new blogs and I can’t tell you how many links I got from participating. In fact, the links are still coming in. It was great experience and I believe my blog benefited greatly from the exposure.

If you chose not to participate, don’t worry because there is another project going on that could prove to be just as beneficial for your blog. Plus, you could win your share of the $10,000 prize pool!

Brian Clark of Copyblogger has announced that he is having a group copywriting contest. The contest will be judged by Brian, Seth Godin, and Darren Rowse.

Get all the details from Brian’s post: Copywriting Contest: $10,000 in Prizes for Irresistible Offers.