Everyone seems to love contests. I know I do, so I came up with one where everybody wins, and two lucky bloggers win big.

The contest

It's pretty simple, actually — the person with the best REW Blog post wins!

The contestants

-Anyone in the real estate field (you don't have to be a Realtor) who is interested in free web development and improving their blogging skills.
 

The point

The purpose is to have a really fun contest (with some great prizes) and to encourage participants to learn about creating a great blog to promote themselves and their business. So, everyone who competes is a winner, because during the contest you'll be learning and developing the skills you need for reaching out to your prospects.

The prizes (more details at the bottom of this post)

First prize: $1000 worth of web development work
Second Prize: $500 worth of web development work

The details — how you win

First and foremost your REW blog will be judged on the quality and appropriateness of your content.

Other factors to be judged:

• Creative use of images — All-text blogs can be boring, so, see if you can spice things up with some images.
• Blog setup — There's more to your REW blog than your posts — creative use of static pages, appropriate use of the "links" section, appropriate use of the related links section, and appropriate use of tagging will all be factors.
• Category setup and organization — REW Blogs allows you to create multiple levels of parent-child categories — how you organize your content will be a factor.
• Bio box (including photo use) — Looking for the best, most creative, most appealing bio box...
• Search engine success — How many unique page views can you generate to your blogs in just over a month? What you write, and how you write it is a skill everyone needs to master — slightly dirty white hats only, folks! (Meaning, you can optimize your titles, content etc, and build links (legitimately) to your blog posts, but absolutely no spamming, or employing tactics that violate any search engine's terms of service.
  

When does it start and how long are you going to make me improve my blogging skills before you pay me?

The contest will run from August 20th 2007 to September 30th 2007. Only blog posts made between these dates will be considered for the contest. Get started right away, though, because cleaning up your links section, writing those static pages, brainstorming that perfect heading — all these can be done tonight if you don't feel like sleeping.
 

The judges  — AKA who you should bribe

Me — duh! Yeah, I will be judging. Mostly, my evaluations will revolve around the SEO side of things, but I'll chime in on other stuff, too. Each week (at minimum) I will post a helpful hint, tip or tutorial that allows you to be the best you can be, and try to land one of those top 2 spots and wicked cool prizes.

Gerry Thomasen — Copywriting department manager and senior editor for Real Estate Webmasters.

Eric Blackwell — Technologist for a RE/MAX office in Louisville — I'll let him write a better bio, but seriously the guy really knows his stuff and I have truly grown to respect his opinions and the way he helps people as a moderator at the forums on a daily basis. Incidentally, I haven't asked him yet, so Eric if you see this before I ask you — how 'bout it?

I have a whole list of others I want to ask, but I am getting tired so I'm going to cut this blog post short and come back to it tomorrow when I'm in the office and Gerry can fix all my spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

What can I use my prize for?

Any services Real Estate Webmasters provides. You do not have to be an REW customer, nor are we going to ask that you become one in order to use your prize — we have 30+ developers and SEO personnel on staff, and a simple breakdown of available services looks like this:

Graphic design
Programming
Content writing / editing
Search engine consulting / optimization

You don't even have to use your prize for your website. You can use it for other services, if you wish. Perhaps you need a new logo developed, or really want to have some high-end business cards made up (our graphics people have experience in many things, not just web stuff). Maybe you have an advertising campaign coming out, and you need some assistance with your written marketing materials. Who knows — if you have an idea, just ask, and I'll tell you if we can help you with it (at a professional level).

Existing REW customers, perhaps you want to add a bunch of those really cool plugins or modules like the commenting module (Blogsite) or the SEO-friendly business directory with mapping, or maybe you haven't purchased an REW Blog install on your own site, and are still just using the free ones here — whatever you like, it's your prize.

I would appreciate it if you would bookmark this page and come back often, as I will be editing this thing and adding to it as new information becomes available. As we get more judges on board and decide on the rules and specifics, I will post those as well.

Incidentally, the details and specifics of this contest need a little tweaking, so I reserve the right (don't worry, prizes etc won't change) to tweak as necessary until such time as Sept 1st, at which time the contest rules and other specifics will be considered locked. :)

See ya tomorrow!

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