Can you help me design the perfect contest?
Hi all,
I'm working on a contest to help launch my upcoming website. It is an article contest in a somewhat specific niche.
I would like to hear from any of you who have done anything like this before. Let me explain you the basis of my contest.
Participants will send an article on any given sub-topic.
Readers will rank the articles
Winners get the cash prices
Fairly simple at first sight but here's when it gets a bit puzzling for me. I need to decide if I narrow down categories to give less prizes but bigger amounts or have many categories with smaller prices. I'm starting with a $1k budget but because of the specifics of how this will work, I might be able to increase the amounts later on.
On top of that I need to make sure it is crystal clear that the submitted articles will belong to me with all their rights once the site receives them. I think it is pretty much inevitable that they will generate some cash simply due to advertising, but i want to make sure i can use them in any way i want further down the line, so any guidance of how the TC of the contest would look would be nice. The best approach would probably be to hire a lawyer to draft it but id like some input on your previous experiences to have a better idea of what i should aim for.
The other thing is, I want to use this contest as a recruiting exercise. Those who write the way I want the site's content to be will be offered the chance to write permanently on a per article fee basis. Because the niche does need serious research for each and every article I intend to offer as much per article as I can possibly afford. Is it best to offer a high fee with no extras? A performance based fee or a mix of both? On top of that I don´t even know if I should advertise the fact I'm looking for writers as that might influence the other contestants.
I guess to some extent the end game of the project is to create something similar to squidoo or hubpages but much smaller, very niche specific. It seems to me that planning for that on as much detail as possible is a must, so as not to get lost in the middle of it.
Any input on this would be very welcome. Thanks in advance for your replies.
Santi
I'm working on a contest to help launch my upcoming website. It is an article contest in a somewhat specific niche.
I would like to hear from any of you who have done anything like this before. Let me explain you the basis of my contest.
Participants will send an article on any given sub-topic.
Readers will rank the articles
Winners get the cash prices
Fairly simple at first sight but here's when it gets a bit puzzling for me. I need to decide if I narrow down categories to give less prizes but bigger amounts or have many categories with smaller prices. I'm starting with a $1k budget but because of the specifics of how this will work, I might be able to increase the amounts later on.
On top of that I need to make sure it is crystal clear that the submitted articles will belong to me with all their rights once the site receives them. I think it is pretty much inevitable that they will generate some cash simply due to advertising, but i want to make sure i can use them in any way i want further down the line, so any guidance of how the TC of the contest would look would be nice. The best approach would probably be to hire a lawyer to draft it but id like some input on your previous experiences to have a better idea of what i should aim for.
The other thing is, I want to use this contest as a recruiting exercise. Those who write the way I want the site's content to be will be offered the chance to write permanently on a per article fee basis. Because the niche does need serious research for each and every article I intend to offer as much per article as I can possibly afford. Is it best to offer a high fee with no extras? A performance based fee or a mix of both? On top of that I don´t even know if I should advertise the fact I'm looking for writers as that might influence the other contestants.
I guess to some extent the end game of the project is to create something similar to squidoo or hubpages but much smaller, very niche specific. It seems to me that planning for that on as much detail as possible is a must, so as not to get lost in the middle of it.
Any input on this would be very welcome. Thanks in advance for your replies.
Santi
Writer for hire