May 29 2008
Internet Week: What’s All the Buzz About?
Next week, as part of Internet Week in New York City, Associated Content will be hosting a one day contest for writers featuring a $5,000 grand prize. The company, based in Denver, has been marketing the heck out of the contest and will probably see entries from thousands of the 100,000 or so “content producers” that write for the site.
In the interest of full disclosure, count me as one of the people that will be entering the contest.
But the more personally interesting part of this contest is the buzz that it is creating in writer’s communities around the web. People want to know what the judging criteria will be and just how many people willa ctually enter. Writers are paranoid about sharing their topic ideas with anyone other than a trusted few and some are working harder at this contest than they do on most things they write.
Personally, I have three people reviewing my entry, something I rarely do. But the other discussion on the writer’s forum I most frequently visit, Accentuate Services, has been abotu the odds of winning a contest like this. Even if all of the people registered with Associated Content enter, they are limited to one entry per person. That makes the odds of winning one in about 100,000 and much better than your average lottery. The investment is small too: No charge, just the time it takes to perfect an entry. And, there is a guaranteed payoff. Associated Content pays writers via page views. The better the entry, the more people will view it and the more money the writer makes,not to mention the possibility of winning $5,000.
Don’t imagine for one second that Associated Content is doing this out of the goodness of its corporate heart. Most estimates are that they will get at least 10,000 entries and are issuing just one prize. So that means in terms of upfront payment, they are paying fifty cents per article or less, depending on the number of entries. The publicity for the contest is overwhelming and the buzz is all over the web. You can’t buy the kind of advertising that they are getting for a mere $5,000.
Articles I have seen in critique at the forum have impressed me and mean I am working that much harder to polish my own and I can’t wait until Tuesday when I can start reading the others!
