Remodel, Blog & WIN! Contest Rule Changes
Remodel, Blog & WIN! Contest - Changes to Official Rules, August 12, 2007
Hello All;
Well, after much deliberation, we here at RemodelingMySpace.com have decided to make a few changes to the official rules, in the interest of providing better exposure for the contestants, and to provide a better user experience for general visitors to our site. In addition to making changes to the Official Rules, we have made many technical and visual changes to our site (how do you like the re-design?) to support the rule changes, and the mission of the site overall. Our Mission: “To provide a wealth of great remodeling and how-to ideas and information, for people just like you… through sharing.”
Because of in-house technical issues and delays, we were not able to apply our full marketing plan to the contest and our site in general, so we have decided to extend the deadline of the contest to accommodate the new fixes and implementations.
In a Nutshell
In short, here is a brief overview of the changes, and what they mean to you:
Change #1 - Contest is now open to international bloggers.
That means we’re broadening our scope of entries, and that there is more link popularity for us to pass on to you as a contestant.
Change #2 - We’re extending the contest deadline by just over 3 months.
What this means is more time for you to promote your site, more time to complete your project and make posts, and more time for us to provide better exposure for you.
Change #3 - We’re now being very strict about linking to us as a judging criteria.
What that means is that if you do not follow to new linking criteria within 15 days of entering or receiving this notification, your entry will be disqualified and deleted from the contest.
Change #4 - Contestants have access to post on our ideaBlog.
This means that we’re providing you with yet another way to promote your blog, as well as to provide great remodeling ideas and inspiration to our ideaBlog and website visitors.
With all that said, here are the changes to the Official Rules of the Remodel, Blog & WIN! Contest at RemodelingMySpace.com:
Changes to Official Rules - Remodel, Blog & WIN! Contest:
Rule #2 - ‘Eligibility’
(Addition - Paragraph 1, Sentence 2):
“For the cash prize, entrant must be a legal resident of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, or a legal resident of Canada, excluding the residents of the Province of Quebec, or any other country, province or state where any contest rule, prize, award or entry is NOT prohibited by law or decree. Any entries not eligible for any reason will be disqualified from winning any award or prize and the subject entry will be deleted within 24 hours of Sponsor(s) becoming aware of ineligible entry, prize or award. Any entry that is awarded a prize and is later determined to have been ineligible, will be required to return any prize of monetary or material value within 7 days upon notification of disqualification and ineligibility.”
What this means:
International bloggers and websites are now eligible! …if not otherwise prohibited by some reason of law or decree in their resident country, province or state. Otherwise, you’re disqualified, and will have to return any prizes.
We implemented this change because we’ve had several requests from international bloggers to enter, not realizing so many people around the world actually blog about their remodeling project! (We were very surprised and happy to learn about such communities as HouseBlogs.net!)
Rule #3 - ‘Timing’
(Change - Paragraph 1, Sentence 1):
“Contest begins at 12:00:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, March 1, 2007, and ends at 11:59:59 p.m. EST on Friday, November 30, 2007. Contest Winners will be announced on Friday, December 7, 2007.”
(was: ” Contest begins at 12:00:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, March 1, 2007, and ends at 11:59:59 p.m. EST on Friday, August 24, 2007. Contest Winners will be announced on Saturday, September 1, 2007.”)
Rule #6 - ‘Prizes’
(Change - Paragraph 1, Line 3):
“Entry Deadline: Friday, November 30, 2007”
(was: “Entry Deadline: August 24, 2007.”)
Rule #11 - ‘Winners List’
(Change - Paragraph 1, Sentence 1):
“The winner(s) shall be announced at http://www.remodelingmyspace.com on Friday, December 7, 2007 - or can be notified by sending an e-mail to contest@remodelingmyspace.com. If winner requests confidentiality, only a first name and state will be provided.”
(was: “The winner(s) shall be announced at http://www.remodelingmyspace.com on Saturday, September 1, 2007 - or can be notified by sending an e-mail to contest@remodelingmyspace.com. If winner requests confidentiality, only a first name and state will be provided.”)
What this means:
We’ve extended the contest deadline!
This rule change has been implemented because we have not had the ability to provide the extent of marketing that we had planned for, and we now have that ability, so we would like to apply it to provide better exposure for the contestants as well as for ourselves. We would like to have at least 50 blogs enter to make it; a level playing field, a great idea generating inspirational resource for visitors, and a worthwhile marketing effort for ourselves.
Rule #5 - ‘Judging Criteria’
(Addition - Section 2 ‘Blogging’, Point #2, Paragraph 1):
“Contestant’s blog or web space must link to at least one resource on RemodelingMySpace.com that is considered helpful to your blog or website visitors. Link(s) must be in a post, web page or navigation bar within 15 days of entering the contest, or notification of this rule change/addition made on August 12, 2007. Link(s) will be considered INELIGIBLE if it points to the following page(s):
- RemodelingMySpace home page - http:www.remodelingmyspace.com
- RemodelingMySpace ideaBlog home page - http:www.remodelingmyspace.com/ideablog
- any contest related page other than the list of entries page at http://www.remodelingmyspace.com/contest-entries.htm (← this page IS eligible)
- Vote For Me! Buttons and related links to any page on RemodelingMySpace.com are NOT eligible as resource links
Any website or blog that does not create a link to an appropriate eligible page on RemodelingMySpace.com within the 15 day alloted time period of entering this contest and/or notification of this rule change will be disqualified, removed, and deleted from the list of contest entries, as well as an individual entry.
What this means:
We’ve become much more strict with requiring a PROPER link to our resources as a judging criteria. If you don’t create a proper link to us (see points above) within 15 days of entering or being notified of this rule change, you’ll be disqualified and deleted from the contest.
This contest rule change was implemented because there are some contestants who are not honoring the rules (specifically, Rule #5 - ‘Judging Criteria’, Section 2 ‘Blogging’, Point #2 - Contestant’s blog or web space must link to at least one resource from RemodelingMySpace.com that was used during the contestant’s remodeling project.)
Requiring links from all contestants is a means of collectively and rapidly increasing our overall ‘link popularity’, which we then pass on to each contestant by linking to them from various pages of our site and blog. This helps all of us in the search engines. When a contestant enters and we link to them, but they do NOT link to a resource on our site, they are effectively stealing link popularity from all of us. We previously had no way to remedy that situation, now we do.
Rule #5 - ‘Judging Criteria’
(Addition - Section 2 ‘Blogging’, Point #3, NEW):
“Contestants will have access to - and are recommended to make posts to - ‘The ideaBlog’ at www.RemodelingMySpace.com/ideablog in order to promote their blog or website entry into the contest by making an entry that offers ideaBlog visitors a remodeling idea that was used during the entrant project” Contestants can start making posts by registering for The ideaBlog here.
What this means:
Promote your blog or website for FREE on our site! Get more voters! Get more LINKS!
This rule addition was implemented to help contestants to promote their blog potentially for more votes and exposure for the judges, as well as to create valuable links to their blog, and to offer great remodeling ideas to our ideaBlog visitors.
That’s it, please provide your comments or suggestions:
Let us know what you think of these rule changes, or if you have any other ideas you think we should implement in order to enhance the intent and effectiveness of the contest. Thanks!
