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1. Pick a Prize

Picking a prize might seem simple enough, but you should take some time to think about your prize to ensure you choose one that will help to make your blog contest successful. The more exciting your prize is, the more buzz that will naturally grow around it. However, you need to consider the monetary investment in purchasing your prize and shipping it to the winner. Also, prizes that are related to your blog's topic are typically the best because they bring added value to your readers.

You might be able to find a sponsor for your blog contest who will donate a prize. Companies will donate prizes to generate publicity. You can publish your request on sites like ProfNet. You'd be surprised how many responses you're likely to get.

2. Choose an Entry Method

The simplest blog contest entry method is to ask people to leave a comment on your blog contest announcement post. That comment acts as their entry. Alternatively, you could require people to answer a question in their comments to be entered into the contest. Alternatively, you could require people to post about the contest on their own blogs with a link back to your contest post on your blog to count as an entry into the contest.

You can give different value to each type of entry. For example, leaving a comment on your blog contest post could equate to one entry into the contest but blogging about the contest on their own blogs with a link back to your contest post, could give them 2 entries. It's up to you.

3. Choose a Start and End Date

Before you announce your blog contest, make sure you decide the specific date and times it will start and end to set entrant's expectations.

4. Determine Prize Delivery Restrictions

It's critical that you determine how you're going to deliver the prize to the winner up front. For example, if you need to mail the prize, you might want to restrict the contest to people within a certain geographic area to reduce shipping costs.

5. Identify How a Winner Will Be Chosen

Depending on how your blog contest is set up, the winner will either be picked randomly or subjectively (for example, the best answer to the contest question). For random contests, you can use a website such as Randomizer.org to automatically generate a winner.

It's also important to set up restrictions around prize notification. You don't want to have to wait months for the winner to get back to you with their mailing address, so you can send the prize to them. Set up a limitation stating how much time the winner has to respond to you after you send their prize notification with their contact information for prize delivery else the prize will be forfeited and an alternate winner will be chosen.

6. Write the Rules

Make sure you include rules with your blog contest announcement post. Include the entry deadline, delivery restrictions, how the winner will be selected, directions for entry, and anything else you can think of to protect yourself.

He blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

1. Write Well and Write Often

Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.

Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati.

2. Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.

It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine.

3. Use and Update Your Blogroll

By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers.

4. Harness the Power of Comments

Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.

Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more.

5. Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed

Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.

6. Use Links and Trackbacks

Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.

You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links!

7. Tag Your Posts

It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati.

8. Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog.

9. Remember Search Engine Optimization

When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.

10. Don't Forget Images

Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.

Well, get your blog and make for your life style..