Do Your Readers Follow the Law of Attraction?
Since oldest known times, people tried to figure out the nature’s laws. One by one, the gravity law, the energy conservation law, the action-reaction law, like many others, were discovered and studied, so they are now perceived as a given. In search of our spiritual nature, we claimed to discover another kind of natural laws, harder to prove, but very attractive to our minds. Let’s take for example the Law of Attraction. How many of you believe in it? How many of you wrote about it at least once? There are more than 2 million results in Google for law of attraction.
Steve Pavlina has a very simple definition for it:
The Law of Attraction simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about.
In other words, your intentions and your good (or bad) will can influence your environment. And your blog. And your audience. This seems to be a perfect recipe for success: just think and the Universe shall follow.
Why do I feel like you don’t fully believe me? Did you also notice that there’s one small piece still missing from the puzzle? Can you find the explanation why some blog contests which give away a few pens can have hundreds of participants, while others,
with prizes of $400 or even $800 are hardly ever noticed?
The intention is the same, the recipe is the same (give and you shall be given), why not then also the outcome?
Can you spot that tipping point beyond which the Law of Attraction starts to work?
Ronald Huereca says...
Hmmm. I guess the tipping point might be how established one is and the perception of credibility. If I know someone really well and they’re dishing out pens like Christmas candy, you betcha I’m going to fight for one. If I don’t know anyone at all and they approach me on the street and say, “Hey.. I’ll give you a pen if you…” I’ll probably just walk away.
Simonne says...
Yes Ronald, what you said makes sense. What if somebody you don’t know so well, or maybe you don’t know at all, wants to get to know you better, and chooses to do it via a contest with low entry barrier and an attractive prize?
Ronald Huereca says...
Well, in real life if someone is giving something away, I am immediately skeptical. I suppose the same thing would apply in the online world for me.
I ran a contest on my blog a while ago (back in January of 07) and I knew it was just breaking the ice with my readers since it was my first contest. The second contest I ran went much better. It’s all about credibility in my opinion when it comes to contests like these.
You have to ask yourself, if Darren (of ProBlogger) were just some random guy offering a thousand dollars in cash for participating in his group project, wouldn’t you be a little skeptical? But since we all know Darren is a blogging guru and a man of his word, we’ll write and write until it’s impossible to keep up with all of the entrants.
My suggestion with such contests is to start small. When a store opens in the US, the grand opening isn’t right away. The store allows the neighborhood to get acquainted with store and staff, and then throws the grand opening with giveaways.
Simonne says...
Thank you very much Ronald. I see your point. My first contest was a failure and made me be afraid to host contests for a long time. After a while, I organized a second one and I considered it a success because I got five participants
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In blog contests, I think that money is not the key attraction for participants. People entered Darren’s projects even when there was no money involved. They were after other kind of benefits: communication, links, awareness…