How to Create a $500 Sponsored Prize Contest for $24.99

Most of us are constantly worrying about finding new ways to grow our email list. One of the things that have worked very well for me in the past has been sweepstake contests.  Not only have they generated a great amount of email subscribers but also created quite an excitement within my target audience.

But the problem is that contests are messy.  First, they only work if the prize is really big. Second, you have to download and install a contest tool and third, you have to worry about things like legal terms, whether its Facebook approved or not, announcing the winner and delivering the prize. There are some services that solve some of these problems, but no service has thus far solved it all.

I’ve been working with a company called Incentivibe.com that helps businesses offer big contest prizes (e.g. $500 vacation) for a fraction of the cost (e.g. $24.99) by pooling businesses together so they can share the cost of the prize with other businesses.  With Incentivibe, you can host contests with big prizes on your website, with your name as the co-sponsor.

Additionally, they’ve taken all of the dirty work out of running contest promotions. Incentivibe provides you with a free contest tool that requires no technical skills, and provides free services such as winner announcements, prize delivery and legal terms to ensure the contest is compliant with various regions and social media platforms.

So what kinds of results can you expect?

Incentivibe claims that according to their research, which was published on Marketing Profs, landing pages with Incentivibe’s contests generated 3-7 times more email subscribers than pages without contests. What’s also interesting is Incentivibe has designed its contests to ensure that it converts good traffic and does not attract untargeted leads.  You can find how they do that over at the Unbounce blog.

So, how do you get Incentivibe on your website?

Setup is pretty easy and takes less than a minute. The first thing you will need to do is sign up for a free 14 day trial (no credit card information is required to get started).

You will now be able to sign into your account and create a monthly contest promotion.

Next you will want to select the prize of your choice by deciding which is best for your audience. Some of the prizes that you can offer for a $24.99 monthly subscription are Tiffany Co. gift card, Nike Fuel band & sports watch combo and iPad & Apple TV combo.  There are other prizes also to attract your given niche.

Once you have selected your prize, you can decide which action you want your visitors to take to enter the contest.   You can ask your visitors to like your Facebook page or enter their email to get started.  Then you can select what additional actions you’d like your visitors to take to award them additional entries. For example, you can ask your visitors to provide an email to enter the contest and then ask them to tweet and share your website to increase their chances to win.  The next step in the setup phase helps you integrate Incentivibe’s contest tool on your website.

The great thing about Incentivibe is that they host everything on their end, so all you will need to do is copy-paste a small line of code on your site and an entry form like the one below will appear in the bottom right hand corner of your website. Additionally, Incentivibe gives you the ability to quickly integrate their tool with services like WordPress, Mailchimp, Aweber and more.

With the contest promotion now live on your site, more and more of your online visitors will now convert into email subscribers for a chance to win.  As people submit their email and share the contest with their friends to get more entries, you will be able to check all of your stats from the backend.

So let’s recap what the Incentivibe service does for you.

1. Co-sponsor $500 prizes for $24.99
2. Simple yet powerful lead gen system
3. Complete contest legal terms
4. Prize delivery
5. An all in one solution for creating contests

Is there a promotional price or an affiliate program?

Well … you can’t expect all of this awesomeness for free. Incentivibe costs $24.99 per month after your 14-day free trial period which includes not only the prize but also all sorts of free services. But they have a promotion going on right now where you can get 20% off on their plans and you can enter their own contest for a chance to win 1 year free plan.

Incentivibe also has an affiliate program that you can apply to if you want to share this with your audience and help them get more leads on their website. You can email info at Incentivibe .com and request more details.

I’ve seen a lot of promotion services out there and I’ve realized that some of them are priced way too high, especially after seeing and using Incentivibe on some of my sites. The ease of use, co-sponsorship of $500 prizes every month, along with dealing with all of the messy stuff, I think the price is well worth it.