Welcome to "The CCC PF Guest Blogging Extravaganza" - the first ever Personal Finance Guest Blogging Contest. This is a chance to win big prizes and share your knowledge of personal finance topics. To make this contest a success, we have lined up the following experts to help out.
Miranda Marquit, one of the best-known financial writers on the Internet, has been secured to help manage the contest.
David Leonhardt of The Happy Guy Marketing will be coordinating promotion and sponsorships.
Hesham Zebida, the successful organizer of two ComLuv-Famous Bloggers guest blogging contests, has agreed to be an adviser as well as a major sponsor.
Ann Smarty, who runs MyBlogGuest.com, has also agreed to serve as an adviser, as well as a major sponsor.
SPONSORS: See the end of this post for details.
| UPDATE (December 23, 2010): In the first two days of this announcement, we already have over $1000 in sponsorship. The additional sponsors at the time of this update include these $200+ sponsors:
0 APR Credit Cards by Card Wisdom (USA) |
The contest will be in January, and we shall announce the exact dates in a future blog post. In this blog post we will cover preliminary information for writers and for sponsors so that you can start preparing.
Why participate? Cash Prizes. Backlinks. Fame. Traffic. So much more...
The most obvious reason to join The CCC PF Guest Blogging Extravaganza is to win big cash prizes, just for writing a blog post and sharing your knowledge. And there will be plenty of cash to offer from our sponsors, which we will outline in more detail the next time we post on the contest (and keep updated as sponsors add to the pot).
There are also a number of other reasons to participate:
- This is the first ever guest blogging contest specifically about personal finance.
- Other guest blogging contests have created huge publicity and opened up new audiences for participants. This one will, too.
- The thrill of being part of an exciting event.
- The exceptional publicity that will come with such a widely promoted event.
- The chance to share your knowledge or your opinions.
- Of course, all accepted entries will get a pair of links back from this blog (and possibly from several others).
- It's 100% free to join!
Participating is simple. Just write a blog post and submit it to us. Details on how to submit shortly.
The Rules:
Anybody from any country can enter, even if your blog is not personal-finance related.
Write on any personal finance topic, except credit repair and debt consolidation (sorry, we try to stay away from those topics). Of course, topics such as the stock market, making money online, companies and gambling are off limits, as they are not really personal finance.
Our readership includes a high percentage of Canadians and Americans, as well as folks from the UK, Australia and other countries. If you plan to make reference to specific programs such as the US 401K or the Canadian CPP, please make sure that the overall post will be enjoyable to people in either country and other countries (a guest post specifically about 401K or CPP will not be accepted, for example).
Make sure the guest post is at least 500 words long and in English.
Make sure your guest post is an original, not a spun copy of something already on the Internet.
It goes without saying that your guest post must be your own work, that you own the rights to it.
We reserve the right not to publish at our own discretion (but we will let you know the reason, and you might then have the opportunity to make changes).
To qualify, you must announce the post and/or the contest on your blog and link back to all the sponsors. Code for this will be posted shortly (as we line up the sponsors).
You may include up to two self-serving links in your post, but no affiliate links and no links to websites whose primary purpose is in direct competition to ours. Only one of thsoe links can be in the main body, but the second an be in a signature paragraph at the end of your post, along with a link to your Twitter profile, if you wish (which would be a third link).
Sponsors are not eligible to compete for cash (but they can submit a guest post for the sporting fun of it).
How we'll choose the winners:
Every guest post that is accepted and posted for publication is a winner. In addition, three of the guest posts will be chosen for cash prizes. The exact amount of the prizes will depend on the sponsors that come forward, so we will be announcing that at a later date - and updating it as the kitty swells.
The top three winning guest posts will be decided on a points system:
- One point per comment received and approved (except your own comments)
- One point per ReTweet showing up on the post (Tweet as every day if you wish, get friends to retweet, etc. If you tweet more than once per day yourself, we reserve the right to disqualify you.)
- One point per FaceBook "Like" showing up on the post
- One point per vote at the sites shown across the bottom of the post (Delicious, Digg, Mixx, Google and Yahoo), as well as OldDogg, Tipd and Reddit - legitimate votes, only please. We reserve the right to disqualify anyone gaming the sites or violating their terms of service.
- 10 points for being mentioned and linked to in the post of a blog the writer has no interest in.
- 10 bonus points if your post is about credit cards.
Each judge will have 200 points to distribute as he/she wishes, with no more than 30 points from any one judge going to any one post. We plan to have 3-5 judges. The judges will be looking for:
- Quality of your ideas
- Quality of writing
- Originality and creativity
- How well you respond to comments posted
These rules are subject to fine tuning up until the contest formally begins. In particular, we might give out several third-place prizes, if the sponsors are generous.
Winning tip: The earlier you submit the post, the more points you are likely to gain, as we will be publishing posts in the order we receive them.
Winning tip: Get your friends to tweet, like and vote - but don't do anything unethical like bribery. We reserve the right to disqualify anyone who violates the terms of service of any social media website.
Why sponsor? Tons of Backlinks. Branding. Leadership
Sponsoring a guest blogging contest is a great way to reach multiple markets at once, since every entry requires that a different blogger mention your sponsorship on their blog. Which also means, you get plenty of keyword-rich, contextual backlinks from a variety of blogs.
The earlier you get in, the more blogs will mention you as sponsor and the more backlinks you will get.
$200 Sponsors will be listed at the top of the others, along with a logo and keyword-rich text link. All entrants will have to mention you as sponsor and link back to your website.
$100 Sponsors will be listed next, along with a keyword-rich text link. All entrants will have to mention you as sponsor and link back to your website.
$50 sponsors will be listed last, along with a keyword-rich text link. Entrants will be given the option of mentioning you as sponsor and link back to your website.
Over $200? If anyone wants to sponsor more than $200, please let us know. We'll work out a custom package for you.
How to sponsor?
Please contact David at info [at] seo-writer.com about sponsorship. Get in early for the most publicity and the most backlinks.
Hi Janet. I’m torn! I don’t know if I want to be a sponsor or if I want to enter the contest myself!!! I have some great personal finance stories that I would like to share so I will think this over for a few days before throwing my hat in the ring on either side of the fence.
Thanks for this contest, reading the entries should be fascinating!
How very tempting…
Great idea! Never have written a guest post, but have a couple good ideas already.
I need a little time to do some research, so a heads-up on the dates would be great!