The Secrets of Competitioning!

Getting your visitors involved is important on a site. That’s why competitions are such a great idea! And when it comes to Club Penguin Sites, competitions couldn’t get any easier (or fun!) Here are the steps to creating fun, easy and cool competitions on your CP site!

1. Add a competitions page. There are quite a few sites that have regular competitions, but but their competitions in posts on their Latest Posts page. If you ask me, this can get annoying as, the more posts you do, the further down the list the competition goes. It’s hard to find if you have a competition on. Also, people may see your post weeks later and try to enter it, even though it is finished already! If you have a page, people can click straight onto it, see the latest competition, enter it, view it, or just have a good look! It’s easy for you and your readers!
2. Create fun and easy-to-enter competitions! This is the hardest part. Thinking of a way to get everyone involved if they’d like to! A Spot the Difference, an Igloo Contest or a simple quiz can sometimes be better than a huge, complicated, blah-bi-di-blah of a competition! Also, try not to always need email addresses and particular programs to be able to enter it – this just eliminates all penguins who don’t have them! Make sure that it is easy to enter!
3. Make your prizes something that penguins want. Some sites just have one prize, ‘100o coins for your penguin’, and when you win, that’s what you get. Simple, easy… boring! For a start, quite a few people would not be willing to let another person log into their penguin, or else they just don’t need or want that prize. On many of our CWOC and Igloo Contest competitions (and our old Competitions!) we had a selection of prizes for the winners to choose from. That way, they can choose something to suit them best, and it also brings in more entrants! Also, our CWOC membership is a fun and very unique prize! No more ‘100o coins’ or ‘your site on blogroll’ prizes for us!
4. Advertise! If no one knows that you have a competition on, who will enter? Let friends and buddies know, perhaps ask if another penguin could advertise your competition, and of course, announce it to all of your site’s visitors! Let people know so that they can get involved, and not find out three months later…
5. Update! Okay, so Zeb and I haven’t exactly been showing much of this lately but, it’s always good to try to update your competitions regularly and have one on as much as possible! Always make sure that penguins can be involved some way – whether it’s a competition, a poll, or being able to have a laugh at some pictures! Whatever it is, give penguins something fun to do!

How to get hits on YOUR site!

Okay, here’s a tip when making a site – include lots of words in your title. I know that sounds weird, but it works!

For instance, if you’ve written a post on the Bookroom Writing Contest for example, and you call it “Writing Contest”, when people google to look for it, they have to look for “writing contest” for your site to come up.

But if you’ve called it “New Bookroom Writing Contest Ideas/Rules/How to submit” or something like that, if a penguin looks up any of those words, they will probably find it. You have more of a chance of people finding your site if anything they look up is in your title.

That’s probably why people whose sites are something like: “Club Penguin Secrets/Tips/Hints/Glitches” or whatever, people could look up any of those words and find their site.

So I hope that works – I will try it myself, actually. Fingers crossed that it will give you some extra tips!!!

You never know, you might have some extra visitors checking out that fantastic-long-titled page of yours soon!

Top 10 Tips for an Awesome Site!

1. For the first little while on your site, your number of hits will probably be quite low and not many people will visit it. But instead of giving up or just waiting, why don’t you use the time to make your site better? Create your pages and start using more and more posts, so by the time that your site is up there with Mohd’s, it’s amazing! I suggest putting up a Blog Stats widget on your sidebar and you can sit and watch your site grow!
   
2. Ok, well for a start, you have to make it look good! Spend some time jazzing up your header, figure out your colour scheme and make it look impressive and “professional”. People like colourful and interesting sites!
   
3. Make sure you keep your regular visitors updated with posts on all the new stuff. Also, people like cheats and secrets, so it’d be a good idea to write up posts or a page is great too with all your cheats and secrets. And if a new mission comes out, walkthroughs get lots of people looking at your site too!
   
4. Pictures say 1000 words. Instead of writing up a page that just blabs on and on in a million words about how to do the mission walkthrough, put in a picture! Seriously, not only is it alot easier to do and read, but it looks more colourful and interesting too!
   
5. Never, ever, ever copy people. There is absolutely no point in copying and pasting pictures or posts from another site straight onto yours. If people wanted that information, they’d go to the site you got it from, not yours! And the most boring thing in the world is when people copy of the Official Cp Blog – everyone looks at that. Either put it in your own words or forget it!
   
6. Make sure you  have things on your site that people can do! Put in polls, competitions, places to comment or ask questions and other things that allow visitors to get involved. Maybe you could have a Penguin of the Week or interview people – people like it when they feel “famous” and are mentioned on your site! Make sure that you add people with CP sites to your blogroll too!
   
7. Be original! For goodness sake, tons of sites have the catalogue on them and write about the Latest Newspaper. You don’t NEED that stuff if other people have it! Look outside the box – find things from behind the scenes of Club Penguin – maybe the CPIP updates or the latest message on the Agent HQ board. No one wants to find the exact same information on every Club Penguin site that they look at!
   
8. The most annoying thing is when people use bad language or paste inappropriate pictures on their site. Don’t you realize that Club Penguin users are kids from only 7 years old?! It puts people off when they look at a site that is offensive.
    <— annoyed penguin!!!!
9. Don’t get mixed up between Club Penguin and the real world. It’s annoying when people search your site for updates on rockhopper or the latest catalogue and they find photos of your favourite band or pictures of you! Make sure that if you have a Club Penguin site, it’s all about Club Penguin.
   
10. Everyone loves a Club Penguin Pics page. Seriously, if you want to entertain people, make up some funny pictures or capture a funny moment on CP!
    

So I hope that gave you a few ideas to fix up your site, or maybe even encouraged you to start your own! If you follow these tips, you might just find yourself with a few more hits!