pbennett

I'm thinking about running a contest on my site for Halloween...

I came across this plugin called Contest Burner. Have any of you guys used it? I already have over 15 plugins for my site and I was wondering if any of you have experienced any technical problems using it. Not feeling like crashing my site...

Thx.

Melodican

Hey there

Never used the plug buddy but I was speaking to Mike Stewart and he was telling me that he can find over 120 reasons per year to have a sale.... 120 ! I guess that works out at one every 3 days which is mad....

Increased his sales HUGELY though !

Good luck with the sale :-)

zapseo

Just be careful you are not violating any laws.

This tends to be one of the bigger killers (laws) of people wanting to run contests.

pbennett

yeah, the laws are the next part of my research. I thought I ran across a site that would run the contest for you, but i haven't been able to find it again.

guardinator

I have used contest burner and I can say that it was probably the best plugin that I ever bought. It creates a contest using API's from facebook, youtube and twitter.

I have used contest burner and I can say that it was probably the best plugin that I ever bought. It creates a contest using API's from facebook, youtube and twitter.

Yes, Contest Burner still works after all the Facebook changes.
Also someone asked if there were training videos to look at before a purchase... here they are here:support.businessinnercircleDOTcom/vids/cbsetupnew/

I have used this plugin on my site:tweetandwinDOTnet a few times. Not only did I make some money from having clients pay for a contest, but the people that came to my site during a live contest visited my sponsors and the ad revenue generated was great.

I highly recommend this plugin. It was worth every penny.

brendanwenzel

I too have used Contest Burner on multiple occasions and highly endorse it. Best plugin I've ever used.

OpticalOut

I just checked out this plugin. Looks amazing.

tlarsen2080

I am very interested in this Contest burner product.
But does anyone know if it violates the facebook terms-laws they have, or does it utilze the process as they see fit-
Or does this need to have the okay from facebook before running a contest??
Hope some one knows...THANK YOU !

fosu

I don't understand, if it violating (law)? why would the big name (guru's) promoting and endorsing this product.....

Izesta

In my day job, legal counsel has knocked down our desire to hold various contests. Some go through, some don't.

There are lots of state laws regarding games, contests, raffles & lotteries. I think most states require you even set up escrow accounts to be certain prizes are awarded.

Be sure to check it out.

The product is being sold probably with a caveat that "you" are responsible for adherence to any applicable laws &* regulations. The usual fine print.

Mo Goulet

I just purchased another plugin (EzWPCloner Plugin). Uploaded it to server, activated it then ran the plugin and got multiple errors on what was supposed to be a 5 step simple operation. I submitted 2 support tickets with no response.

He is also promoting this plugin and another...

My advice is to stay away...

bolaji

What's up, folks:

I got the Contest Burner plug-in a few days ago. And this was - get this -after being publicly critical of the launch!

After seeing dozens of breathless comments on the pre-launch pages about how excited people were, I felt compelled to caution the newbies not to make an emotional purchase just because "everyone else was doing it".

I also used the analogy of a toddler buying a BMW. Sure, it's a great car, but if your business model isn't ready for that particular tool yet, buying it is a waste of money.

These were general criticisms against the traditional launch formula (scarcity, hiding the price until the last minute, etc.

I posted the comment, and within 15 minutes, Bill McIntosh had sent me a private response.

He was extremely courteous, and elaborated on how this tool could work, even for newbies.

I was so very impressed with his response, that I gave Contest Burner a closer look.

I made the purchase (it was more affordable than I thought it would be), and I've been extremely pleased.

As a matter of fact, I just launched my first contest a few minutes ago!

Who is Bolaji O? » The Great Rat Race Escape Thanksgiving Contest

I'd appreciate your expert eyes checking it out...
it's also an opportunity to kick the tires,
see how the plug-in works, and
envision how you might apply it.

If there's anything you think I should update on the contest page, do let me know.

Thanks!

And I hope this detail was useful.

lefty359

It looked good to me until I saw the $77 price was only for one domain.
A real deal killer for me. Good luck with it.
When does the contest end? I couldn't find out from the salesletter how long was the optimal time to run these contests.

brendanwenzel

In my experience, the optimal time is usually anywhere from a week to two weeks. That gives the contest enough time to really gain steam, but also doesn't make it too long a time for people to just completely forget about it. Of course this is something that should be tested a little bit more. I actually have a friend running a contest now that will last a few months for a couple basketball tickets. And I'm very eager to see how this runs out.

brendanwenzel

what are you even talking about? This has absolutely nothing to do with contest burner.

lefty359

Does anyone know what the price is to use on multiple domains?

rtole99

I just purchased the contest basic plugin and I want to say it is was like $147 or something like that. It is a very slick tool and I am working on setting up my first contest in the next couple of weeks.

lefty359

The bsic 1 domain plugin supposed to be $77. For $147 did you get the multiple domains one?

rtole99

Sorry, I was not fully awake when I wrote that. I paid 77 but the multiple domains was 147. I just got the basic one.

dcushion

I was at a Jeff Johnson seminar a couple of years ago and he cautioned everyone to make sure you have all the appropriate legal disclaimers and info on your site if doing contests.

He said he paid significant money for his attorney to provide legal protection for his contests. The attorney was also there as a presenter and wholeheartedly agreed.

It was enough to scare me off... but, perhaps, I am too cautious... or just didn't want to pay more attorney fees.

But, Jeff knows his stuff and I listened.

Melody

Great discussion - my hubby had asked me about this one just a few minutes ago, any my first response was 'well, contests are tricky due to being highly regulated...'.

I love the concept and the plugin but have not gotten it yet because I really wanted to see how things shake down legally.

Would love to hear Kinsdvater's take on this one?

Melody

tim413

Hi All!!!!!

I just purchased this product. I got the 77.00 one domain.

The legal issues do concern me. I did a little research and found this article on sweepstakes. The law firm implies you need to use them to make sure what you are doing is ok. Here is the link New York City Internet Sweepstakes Attorney | New Jersey On-Line Contest Lawyer | Canada Prize Promotion Law Firm

Look forward to more dialog on this issue!!!!!

Tim

asimbawany

Im looking at the page right now but I dont see the multi domain option. Is it an upsell?

tim413

Yes..... it is an upsell. I think the upsell adds 5 domains.

The upsell also adds more options to the plugins. The upsell page tells you what the options are, but I could not tell you what they are.

Tim

Frank Tocco

I also have a lot of plug ins on my wordpress site and have run my 1st contest burner contest without any glitches at all, thankfully.

It's so simple but very effective.

All I can say is, Contest Burner is doing exactly what it says it can do. Very refreshing for a change.

scdayton

I don't have this plug-in but would seriously consider it if the product owner provided a pdf or training video's on how it can be used for free.

He lists a lot of ideas for using Content Burner, but no place does he give an example of how it could be useful in these situations. For example he lists things like using it for promoting affiliate products, CPA offers and offline local businesses, yet he doesn't give a single example of CB being used in any of these instances.

There are tons of text on the sales page dedicated to the "lots of traffic and tons of exposure to your offers" yet nothing on the payoff portion. I mean that's great I can get lots of traffic ad potential sales, but the large elephant in the room (ie. the rewards I have to pay out) is completely ignored.

I could pay someone in the WF service area to build me lots of links and web 2.0 sites for $67 or something like that, but I'm afraid this plug-in is going to put me on the hook for owing a bunch of people $100k worth of iPads or something.

Perhaps this is not the case, but the sales page unfortunately doesn't cover the payment side of things nor does it cover the practical use of the plug-in with the examples it says it could be used for. I for one might be interested in this to use for local offline businesses as a service. However am I going to spend a $147 for a plug-in that gives me no info on how this might be used with local business while also providing no guarantees so if I go through the training and find it really isn't practical for this use I'm now out $147? No way.

They should give away at least some training for free so you know if the plug-in will be of use for what you want to use it for. Maybe one training example per type of business use.

Anyway I'm not knocking the plug-in itself, it may be great. The sale page however was 100% hype and unfortunately no real life examples of how the plug-in could be used in the real world. Cut the hype from the sales page which would make it about 1/8th it's current length and provide some useful material on it's practical use in the real world and they might have something here.

-Stephen

rtole99

Hey Warriors,
It has taken me awhile but I bought the software about a month ago and finally setup a contest. It is pretty slick software. The setup is a little confusing so make sure to watch the videos if you do purchase the app. But I am impressed. They did a great job of the twitter, youtube, and facebook integration.

If you want to check out my contest that I setup
http://listbuilder123.com/free_info/...hallenge-links

Troy McDonald

I just took a look at the site....

No more $77/One domain option.

It's $147/One domain option.

No upgrade/upsell for multiple domain option.

gtgart

Hi Stephen

You get it, I get it and a lot of folks who view that sales page get it so why doesn't Bill McIntosh? Just something to give you the lead in, how to use it, screens shots aren't that hard a video that is not his son doing something in the dark and out of focus.

Lot of sales gone bye-bye for such a poor effort.

Will be giving it a go and report back what my experiences are. I may even do some video tutorials on this and send them along to Bill, he sure could use something of substance on his sales page.

Mtcw.

JeromyS

I was on the other end of Contest Burner, as a site visitor, contest participant. This was for Mike Johnson's launch of Autoblog Blueprint 3.0. It seemed to do a killer job of tracking and keeping score. Unfortunately, even though I managed to get myself into 6th place and was qualified for all levels of prizes, I didn't win anything. Mike gave me a free membership for my efforts though, which was nice. The system, tracked all users, kept score and at the end of it selected all the winners. From the contest participant end, it seemed to be extensive and appeared to do a great job.
Cheers!
JeromyS

Daniel LaRusso

I had a similar experience as a contestant, not from the guy you are mentioning, but from another person in this thread who ran a contest. Although it technically is illegal in the U.S. to run a fake contest where prize winners don't get any of the prizes listed, I'm not going to report it or anything, but it's just sort of cheezy if you are going to run a contest using Contest Burner to get people sucked in to your product or list, and then not actually give away the prizes.

Leanne King

also illegal in Australia to do this - ie not provide the prizes

I see that the owner is now doing a quick one line exit survey on the site to see why people leave and not buy.

asimbawany

Hi, to get people in not and not giving prizes would be illegal anywhere in the world im sure.

As far as the plugin goes, I bought the ultimate edition and have used it on 1 of my sites so far.

The plugin is very easy to install and use... The training is also very detailed.
On this particular site, I had a very small current base from which to take the contest viral but it still brought in about 7-8 times the usual traffic the first few days and then it started going down. you need to be able to push every few days to keep your contest motivated and actively promoting which again is explained in the training.

I highly recommend this product.

Jason Moffatt

We've had a lot of people asking us about Contest Burner and from the feedback we've got from other users and customers of our we decided to add it as a additional plug in option for our List Machine Pro theme.

We highly recommend Contest Burner.

TomScarn

Anyone find any definitive answer for the legality of the online contest? I'm interested but as always I don't want to break any state or federal laws.

Jason Moffatt

It's very dicey with some states. We paid Bob Silber $3000 just to write our terms of service when we were running our game Find That Tweet. However, that included a cash jackpot type of thing so we had a lot of things to worry about.

I think just giving away physical products would be much less of a risk of running into trouble. However, I'm not a lawyer and that's why we hired one who specialized in such a thing.

Bill (the owner of the product) may want to research this issue and have an attorney draw up some TOS papers that he can give to customers. I think that would be a pretty smart idea.

spiderhouse

Has anyone used this plugin recently? Is is still working with all the recent Facebook changes?

cybernet

yes, I'd like to know if Contest burner STILL works as advertised AFTER all these changes in FB.

HarryPotter

anyone got a response to the status of contest burner? would be interested to know

Ryan K

There shouldn't be any issues with legality with this item. The developers are all over that and wouldn't create a product that didn't conform to the latest codes. There are two versions of Contest Burner now - one for your site and another app within Facebook. So now you can have fun all over the place!

cybernet

I'm a beta tester for their Facebook version.

I like FB version but hesitate to use it in REAL LIFE. Reason is simple... NO support, no emails answered. I even tried to contact Bill via facebook. No response.

I got their FB version for free, but I'd rather pay and get support. Otherwise it's completely useless. I can't run a real contest unless I know there is a technical support there to back me up just in case something goes wrong.