5 replies to this topic

[slaycandy]

CLICK HERE FOR BANNERS & ADVERTS!!!

About the Competition:
This is a competition to encourage the fans attending to help us advertise this event and get the word out about this convention to as many Lord of the Rings fans as possible! While there can only be one winner remember that the more fans that get to know about Return to Middle Earth the more tickets get sold and that means we have more to spend on activities, parties, guests and the event as a whole; ultimately spreading the word only makes the event better for everyone.

The winner of this competition will get: TO BE ANNOUNCED! (We plan to announce the prize for the winner soon)
Prizes for runners up will depend on how well everyone is doing. At the moment we are leaving this open, we may decide that anyone to get over a certain level points deserves a prize of sorts, or we may decide to do 2nd and 3rd places. This is something that will be decided later on once we see how the competition is developing, but if all goes well we hope to have some additional prizes!

How to Win!
We want to get adverts, banners and buttons spread over the internet on various fansites for Lord of the Rings, plus cast fansites, and other sites related to the fandom. So, what you need to do is contact the webmasters of various sites and ask (kindly) if they would be willing to link back, give them the address of where to find an advert, banner or button ( http://www.massiveev...site.php?linkbk ) and wait for their response!

Points Structure
Below is the points structure that we have adopted for calculating the winner! All you have to do is forward the replies from the webmasters to the competition email address given in the 'how to enter' section.

We are going to be judging the winner based on a points system. The points given are as follows:

• A RtME advert featured on the sidebar of every page will gain you 50 points.
  
• A RtME advert featured on only one page will gain you 20 points.
  
• A banner/large button featured on every page of the site will gain you 20 points.
  
• A banner/large button featured on an affiliates page will gain you 10 points.
  
• A button link featured on every page of the site will gain you 10 points.
  
• A text link (or tiny button link) featured on every page of the site will gain you 5 points.
  
• A button link featured on an affiliates page will gain you 5 points.

Points will be doubled if the site in question is very busy and has had a lot of traffic (over 200,000 hits on a legitimate counter). If the site has a counter with over 1million hits your points will be quadrupled!!


Sample Email
Just to give you a sample of what the emails were like that were sent to webmasters for one of the previous Twilight competitions I have copied one of the emails used by an entrant. I have modified it so that it would work for the current event...

Quote

Hi there,

I noticed that your website is dedicated to Lord of the Rings, and you obviously have a large number of fans of the movies/cast visiting daily.

Therefore, I was wondering if it would be at all possible for you to help us spread interest for Return to Middle Earth (an unofficial UK convention for fans to celebrate 10 years of Lord of the Rings in November 2011), by putting an advert in your sidebar, or a banner on your website, adding us as an affiliate, and/or even putting a banner or link somewhere such as a news post.

The website can be found here: http://www.massiveev....uk/middleearth

The current guests for the event are: John Rhys-Davies "Gimli", Sala Baker "Sauron" & Jed Brophy "Sharku/Snaga" in LOTR and "Nori" in The Hobbit.; with further guests to be added.

In turn, this will greatly benefit fans worldwide, as many do not yet know about the convention. If you are able to post a link, you will be providing them with an opportunity to meet people with similar interests, not to mention the stars. We will also benefit from a much more diverse group of attendees.

The Return to Middle Earth website has a page dedicated to banners to advertise the event: http://www.massiveev...site.php?linkbk

Thank you very much for your time, and I would be extremely grateful if you could consider helping us out!

Kind regards,

I thought this was a well written, and very kind email that was used which is why I chose it to use as an example here!!!

Bonus Points/Discretionary Points Available
If you get any of the webmasters to post an article about the convention, and advertise the event more prominently then you can gain bonus points! These bonus points will be determined by the extent of the advertising you get! Likewise is you come up with a way to advertise that isn't mentioned in this post send it my way and we can work out points based on my discretion - I'll look at things like how prominant the advertising is, whether there is a banner/button/etc, what details there are of the event, etc. The more information and the more prominent the higher the points!

What if we email the same site?
In the event that a few people have replies back from the same website stating they achieved a link back, we will check the dates on the emails, and if they are incredibly close, and it is difficult to determine who exactly was responsible for the link back, then we will issue the same number of points to those few affected for your efforts!

EMAIL if they require a link back!
It is worth noting that some of the Series/Cast fansites that are out there require a link back for them to return a link to RtME. If this is the case you need to specify this clearly in your email to me so that I can add their button to the RtME website.

Other Sized Adverts
While I have buttons, banners and adverts that meet all of the standard web sizes you may find a website requesting an advert at a different size. If this is the case please email and enquire about getting a different size and I can try to arrange this for you.

Points System for Livejournal Accounts (and similar blog posts):
A post must advertise the event, give details about the event, and link back to the website with a large button or banner. Points will be:

• Personal Livejournal account (That is not F-locked) will gain you 5 points. (You can only get this once, so you cannot set up multiple accounts)
  
• The first person to post on a community with 50-100 members will get 5 points
  
• The first person to post on a community with 100-1000 members will get 10 points
  
• The first person to post on a community with 1000+ members will get 20 points

This is stop multiple postings on the same community and spam, and to stop people from setting up comms and getting their friends to join up so they can post and earn some points. Because of the ease of postings on LJ and the fact that it is harder to get banners/buttons posted on websites, this is why you get fewer points for this section. I hope that makes sense.

Example LJ Post
This is an example of a really good Livejournal post that you can use!

Quote

<b>Want to Meet the Stars from Lord of the Rings?</b>

<a href=http://www.massiveevents.co.uk/middleearth target=_blank><img src=http://www.massiveevents.co.uk/middleearth/linkbk/468-02.jpg width=468 height=60 border=0></a>

<b>Return to Middle Earth</b> is an unofficial UK event to celebrate 10 years of Lord of the Rings. The event will be held from <b>Friday 11th - Sunday 13th of November 2011 at The Park Inn, Northampton UK</b>.

The current guests for this event are: <b>John Rhys-Davies</b> "Gimli", <b>Sala Baker</b> "Sauron" & <b>Jed Brophy</b> "Sharku/Snaga" in LOTR and "Nori" in The Hobbit. Further guests are to be announced!

<lj-cut text="Click for some more info">
This unofficial convention aims to bring together fans of the Lord of the Rings movie series and books to meet some of the stars and enjoy various events over the weekend. There will be activities each day from the guest talks and photograph sessions to quizzes and late night themed parties!

The programmes available to buy are:

<b>Standard Adult Programme</b> at £88
<b>Silver Programme</b> at £155 - Limited in numbers!
<b>Gold Programme</b> at £225 - Limited to 150!

Standard admission includes one free autograph from each guest, an exclusive souvenir convention booklet, entry to all stage activities, and themed parties over the weekend.

For more information on what these programmes include and full terms and conditions check out the website!
</lj-cut>


For more information on these, check out the official website:  <a href=http://www.massiveevents.co.uk/middleearth target=_blank>RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH!</a>

How to Enter:
We have set up an email account: me-competitions@hotmail.co.uk
Once you receive a reply from a websiter owner confirming that they will advertise for us please forward these emails you have received to the above address with "Middle Earth Competition - YOUR FULL NAME" in the subject line. In your message could you please include links to where the buttons/banners are being shown specifically on these sites. Please include your full name with each email and forward each email you have received separately. Your points will be tallied up as we go along.

Some things to note:

• Do not forward emails until there is actually advertising on the site; I won't add points in until I see the adverts/banner displayed[/b]
  
• Please check your links before sending, in the past I often had mistakes in links so couldn't find the sites to see advertising
  
• Please be polite to everyone that you email, being pushy or persistant may alienate potential advertisers
  
• Please be patient, I will reply as soon as I can; if you have not had a reply within two weeks then you can email to check whether or not I have received your emails
  
• Remember that this is a competition and must be treated as such, you cannot discuss points at all and you could lose points for doing so.

The competition will close FRIDAY JULY 29th!!!! At this time the final scores will be double-checked.

The winner will be announced on stage at the event.

GOOD LUCK!!!

SJ
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There is to be NO discussion of points in this thread.


If you have any further questions please feel free to reply and I'll try to answer as soon as possible!

CLICK HERE FOR BANNERS & ADVERTS!!!


Note that this competition can be cancelled if there is a lack of interest. Discretion can be used to deduct points for cheating, discussing points, or if we receive any complaints from webmasters regarding your dealings with them.


Please note that it is late so if there are any mistakes in the above post I am very sorry!!!!

Any questions feel free to ask them here and I'll try to answer asap!
SJ
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[hobbitfanatic]

What happens with the sites that only have forms to fill in rather than email addresses?

[slaycandy]

When you send those forms off the webmaster will receive it like an email and reply to your email address. When you forward this on to me I'll still see the original email that was sent within the form.

We had a few like this when we did the competition for Twilight in the past and never came across any issues :)

[HPaddicted]

Does this mean tickets aren't selling too well then? Because I really, really don't want the event to be cancelled

Saying that, i'm definitley on board to help!

[DavidB]

It doesn't mean anything. This is being done for other events too.

[slaycandy]

As David said it doesn't mean anything at all! We are running this competition for all of the events later in the year, I so far have it all set up and ready for Bitten 2, Hallowhedon 3, Eternal Twilight 6 and now Return to Middle Earth. The only one I still need to work on is Warp 10. The competition needs time to run, gain participants and let people get the word out over time; this is why we are focussing on the events later in the year at the moment.

The bottom line is the more the merrier!!! This competition is just to try and get the word out to as many people as possible and possible some new fans to come along, and perhaps fans from further afield who want to attend. We could have 400 tickets sold for an event and we'd still want to let more people know about it so they could have the chance to meet some of the actors, mingle with other like-minded fans and have an all around great time. Plus (as the post states), the more people coming to events gives the organisers a bigger budget for the parties, extras and guests so helping to advertise is an all around plus for everyone!

SJ
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