As most of you know we are running a contest to give away a 22″ monitor if you vote for our blog at Bloggers Choice Awards. I received an email from a customer that was concerned that this may be unethical. Since receiving that email the following quote keeps running through my head…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Is the contest unethical? I can understand how it can be seen as unethical and think it falls into a grey area. Ethics are usually black or white but here is why I think this one falls into a grey area.
Our original intention for the contest was to not buy votes but to reward those that read our blog who we thought would naturally vote for us. We did not expect to have the contest picked up from the blog sphere. So as you can see the intention was pure when we started but obviously that message may not have come through to everyone.
There really is no way to fix it now the contest is posted and if we pull it now that would be even more unethical. I will say this publicly if we were to win the Bloggers Choice Awards then we would decline it and explain to them why we won and that the next contender should win. I have tried to review the rules of the Bloggers Choice Awards but have not found any such rules on their site to date.
Lesson learned for me and future contests will not reward people for voting for us on anything.
As a reader of the blog did you feel it was unethical? If so why? or why not?
nessence
June 23, 2007 9:48 pm
Thank you for clearing this up. Regardless of ethics, your blog extends more than your customer base and an award shouldn’t matter. Why did you feel you had to bribe people in the first place?
Offering something of value in exchange for influence is bribery.
Vadim
June 23, 2007 10:14 pm
I think offering an award for a favorable vote in a contest is unethical. This could be fixed if the award was offered for any vote: positive, negative or something in between, meaning the award was offered as a contest promotion. OR offering an award unconditionally disregarding the contest, in the same way as they are offered on a radio – to some lucky caller.
P.S. On the other note, I just realized how many supporters the blog has.
P.P.S. I love a new fury theme.
Matt
June 23, 2007 10:47 pm
This thought had run through my mind while thinking about the contest. I even joked about bribery on my post about it.
I think everyone can forgive you, since you never intended to be “buying” votes.
What I think you should do, to stop any further damage to the Bloggers Choice Awards, is to end the Contest. But, still draw the Winner and give away the Monitor. Otherwise, you’re basically “fixing” the Awards, and if you do win, people are going to question if you really should have won. You could also potentially be ruining BlueFur’s and the Bloggers Choice Awards credibility.
So, draw the winner, send the Monitor to them and write up an apology post. Then, send apology (as well as post it), and possibly be asked to be removed from the Awards/Voting.
I think this is the best route to go, at this point…
Thinkreferrals
June 23, 2007 11:09 pm
OK, so what are the accreditations of these awards, are they registered anywhere? I also have searched for rules and have determined that there are none. So at this point the question of ethics has to be asked, what is ethical in an unethical awards contest? Is it ethical to gain link popularity by holding a blogger award? What is the prize you are so unethically trying to win? If there is no real prize, how can there be an unethical way to win it?
Since there are no rules posted, perhaps this contest is designed to determine the blogger that can get the most votes . . . since blog contests are pretty normal now, I am going to assume that some contests could have been expected by the bloggers choice awards. On the other hand, I’m sure the Blogger Awards don’t care where the links come from, as long as they get links.
My opinion is that there is nothing unethical about your contest, I think it is well above board, creative and I for one would be truly pissed off if you did not accept the award . . . that is what would be truly unethical.
WCBdigest
June 23, 2007 11:23 pm
It is very noble of you to withdraw your 3 entries in this contest Matt. Wouldn’t want to do anything unethical now would you.
The truth of the matter is that this contest has done wonders for this blog and it is marketing genius. A few people want to cry about how unethical it is to have a contest and give something away in order to win NOTHING in an award blog that is simply another contest that isn’t even giving away a monitor or anything of value.
I think the problem isn’t that it is unethical, the problem is that it wasn’t thought of by other bloggers and other bloggers are pissed that someone would give away a monitor to gain some marketing for their blog.
Funny how you have a nice little link in your comment to gain a bit of link love from this Big Bad Unethical Contest. Hey, is that Ethical?
Blogalith
June 23, 2007 11:31 pm
A Blog contest Unethical for a Blog Award? Have any of you been to Blogs lately? Contests are expected and if a Blogger Award is truly worth anything in the world of blogs, it would not only expect contests to gain votes, but it would demand them.
All the most successful Blogs have contests, this Award is for the most successful Blog in it’s category, that would have to include contests to gain votes or it wouldn’t be much of a Blogger Award. If everyone else wants to withdraw from this contest, I would be perfectly happy to accept the monitor.
Since Matt has withdrawn his 3 votes, that will make it just a tiny bit easier for the rest of us to win wouldn’t it?
Matt
June 23, 2007 11:39 pm
First of all, I didn’t withdraw my entries.
Second, I didn’t add that link in my comment for link love. I did it to help the point out. Besides, doing it for link love would be extremely foolish, Links is comments have a nofollow on them. Besides, I get tons of Links to my Blog from this Blog, anyways…
Blogalith
June 23, 2007 11:45 pm
forgive bluefur? write an apology post because of proper blog marketing? damage to the bloggers choice awards? where do you get this stuff?
bluefur should get the award by default for most appropriate entry into a blog award.
Matt
June 23, 2007 11:53 pm
It’s funny how you seem to think I withdrew my entries. Since I never said that, and haven’t.
I simply stated my opinion on the matter at hand.
Matt
June 24, 2007 12:03 am
I’m not saying that BlueFur shouldn’t get an Award. They’re a great host.
Having a contest like this where to enter, you have to Vote for them, unbalances the Awards. It bringing people that might not even think that BlueFur deserves the Award (I do think they deserve the Awards, though) voting just to get entered into the contest.
Rainer
June 24, 2007 7:01 am
I don’t think that anyone actually thought you withdrew your entries. Just pointing out that you should, since you have such high ethical standards.
Nothing unethical here, simply an excuse to have a contest where BlueFur gives something away. Bringing great traffic to the site is after all the only reason for the contest. Great Blog Marketing, something I would expect from a Blog in a Blog Awards contest, GREAT JOB GUYS.
Matt
June 24, 2007 12:48 pm
I never said that, either.
Vadim
June 24, 2007 10:45 pm
I think calling a contest (which one?) unethical doesn’t require having ethical standards much higher than usual. There are actually two contests – the first one is Bloggers Choice awards, where BlueFur is a contestant and the second one, which is conducted by BlueFur himeself, where BlueFur holds a monitor lottery between those, who votes favourably for him in Bloggers Choice. We are discussing only the second one.
The truth of the matter is that if you care only about traffic, any promotion (including this discussion), bad contests brings a ton of it and it is a different matter all together if a contestant uses awards to get ahead in a competition, which requires a certain level of skill. Voters would have conflicting interests – one is voting for the best blog and the second one is winning a monitor. For example, how would you feel if a plaintiff in a court would hold a lottery for a jury if they found a defendant guilty? Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?
Johan Cyprich
June 25, 2007 2:21 pm
There is nothing unethical about your contest. What your doing is just another way of marketing your blog and business. Companies all over the world do the same sort of thing so its not even worthwhile thinking about.
I wouldn’t worry about the people who have complained. If you try to please everyone, no one gets pleased …
christian
June 26, 2007 8:00 am
a contest open to the public is a contest open to the public.
Meaning anyone can enter it.
So maybe this person who complained, is mad that his/her chances now are much much smaller.?
Maybe next time have a contest only for BlueFur members?
Or a contest for outsiders to be able to enter private bluefur contests.. lol
Either way unethical i dont think so…..