First of all, thanks to all of those who have wished me a happy birthday! Adnan from Blogtrepreneur and Pearl from Interesting Observations were kind enough to write posts wishing me a happy birthday and many happy returns. Thank you both for your kind words!

It was actually a stroke of brilliance for Adnan to use the opportunity to have a contest on his blog. See, he asked in his post for his readers to guess my age. The first person to leave a comment with my actual age would get a free link for a month from the front page of Blogtrepreneur. Brilliant, huh?

What’s so smart about this tactic is that everyone loves a contest. It’s a great way to encourage readers to get involved with your blog. The prize is also something of value that doesn’t cost Adnan anything to provide. His blog has a PageRank of 5 and a good amount of steady traffic, both from search engines and regular readers. A link from this blog is obviously of use to another blogger, especially a newer blogger.

This has sparked my own creative thinking about contests. I’m going to consider some ways I can use competitions that offer something valuable as the prize. This can help to drive some good traffic as well as reward readers for coming and participating. I’d like to hear about your experiences and ideas with contests, too.

P.S. Congrats to Pearl for winning Adnan’s contest!