Contests are a great way to boost your traffic and helps with recommendations and repeat visits.

One way I incorporate contests into boosting traffic is by a referral program I have. If you notice I have a small form on just about every page of my site that allows visitors to recommend their friends to our site. The program sends out an email describing the site and a thank you to the referrer. The program also sends me an email with both the referrers and referrals email addresses. The program then writes both email addresses to a text database. At the end of each month I take all the email addresses from the referral database and draw one out to win whatever it is I happen to be offering, many times it's advertising slots.

The great part about the referral contest is that the only way to be eligible for the prize is to refer someone. As a greater incentive I offer one entry to both the refer and referral. The response is always good and the amount of personal referrals and word of mouth advertising I receive far outweigh the cost of whatever it is I am offering.

You can also incorporate a similar system into newsletter sign ups. All referrers can be entitled to an entry for every new subscriber and so.

Tracking can be as simple as writing down a persons email address or going all out and installing a custom tracking system. I use a mixture of both. Use your imagination and see what you can come up with.

A random contest run through your newsletter subscriber base will greatly improve word of mouth advertising for you. People love to win things and winning by surprise is a double bang! Just think of the referrals you will get if you pulled a winner out of the blue with no notice!

Source: "David Seitz of http://www.associatesearch.com"


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