12-Minute Affiliate
  • Home
  • /
  • Blog
  • /
  • Social Contest Review – How it Compares to Kingsumo Giveaway Plugin!

Social Contest Review – How it Compares to Kingsumo Giveaway Plugin!

May 30, 2015

minutes read

Social Contest Reviews

Have you ever run a Giveaway?

I am an absolute fan of Giveaways and Contests to build a list and I keep doing it regularly. It is these giveaways that has helped me build a list of more than 25K. While a lot of people argue that the list built using giveaways don’t convert, I blatantly disagree with it.

There is a specific strategy to managing the subscribers you build using these giveaways. For a fact, it is true that these subscribers are more inclined to anything that they get for free, but that doesn’t mean that they will not buy anything. You just need to prep them for whatever you are offering and then gradually keep moving them into a buyer’s list.

I follow a simple strategy. I send them offers that are priced between $0.99 to $1.99 first. These could be simple reports. Once they buy, I move them into a list of buyers to whom I then pitch a slightly higher priced product. People who buy that, are then moved into another list and so on. And it has worked for me and I am sure will work for you as well. You just need to try it out. I might write a detailed post on this strategy later.

So how do you run a contest?

There are numerous scripts, softwares and plugins out there that can help you setup and run a giveaway/contest.

If you are on WordPress, then the options are many. Some are FREE but with limited capabilities and yet others Premium ones that could cost you anywhere from $60 till $600.

But, if you are not on WordPress, then you will find difficulty finding something that can help you do it.

Another option is to run a giveaway on Facebook, which is what most people prefer to do. I highly recommend doing this, because it helps increase the virality of the giveaway. But then, the problem with this is that most tools and services that help you do it will charge you a fortune for it.

Just some of the options to run a giveaway (aka. contest) are:

  1. Kingsumo Giveaway Plugin – $198 for a single site license (No Facebook Option)
  2. Rafflecopter – $84/month for a fully featured option with Email Integration
  3. Heyo – $25/month but with a limit of running only 3 campaigns per month and only on a single FB fanpage.
  4. Facebook Apps (Varied Pricing depending upon features)

Something that I hate is the monthly payments options for services that actually doesn’t need to be used on monthly basis. But the fact that services that help you run contests and giveaways are much in demand, makes it a lucrative option for a monthly billing option.

This is precisely where Social Contest entered. And I was simple impressed with it, right from the word go. This post today is on Social Contest Review and I am going to show you all of the features of this service and what makes it stand out from the crowd.

Social Contest Review – First things first

social contest reviewWhat feature of Social Contest would have been the most appealing so far as I am concerned?

No marks for guessing that right!

It is the pricing. Social Contest was launched at a base price of $27.00 and I would have jumped into it even if it did not give me all the features that it offers. Because I had bought Kingsumo giveaway plugin some time back at a special discount of $47.00 and it had only half the features that Social Contest was offering.

At $27.00, Social Contest was an absolute no-brainer.

And best of all, there was no monthly charges like most other options available in the market.

I still remember running my first giveaway with Rafflecopter. I had taken up their basic plan which was priced at around $12.00 per month at that time, only to find that I was so limited with the options that I couldn’t integrate my email autoresponder to the giveaway. Aweber did not have an import option then, and I struggled with all the leads I could generate and cancelled the subscription after the first month itself.

Social Contest has an upgrade which gives you even more options that the basic ones and this was priced at round $67.00. And at this price you could get a developer edition which meant that you could run contests and giveaways for your clients as well.

Features and Options in Social Contest

One of the best things about Social Contest is the fact that is an SaaS (Software as a Service) service. So you don’t need to install anything or, host it on your servers. It runs from their servers and hence makes it all the more easy to setup and manage.

Let me show you some of the features of Social Contest. The below is a screenshot from my Dashboard.

Social Contest Features

You can see from the above image, that Social Contest offers you pretty much every feature that you can think off.

What each of these options do is, give you the flexibility to run the contest whichever way you want. The more the entry options, the easier it is for participants to enter. Each entry gives them an extra point and at the same time, gives you an option of pushing them to take an extra action that will increase the virality of the contest.

Let us look at these options.

  1. Questions: You can choose between asking a question that the participant has to answer or, select one from a single choice list or, select multiple answers from a list of choices.
  2. Google +: You can provide a URL that the participant has to +1 to earn the points.
  3. Visit on Facebook: The participant has to visit a Facebook fanpage
  4. Youtube: Make them watch a video, subscribe to your channel or, even submit a video
  5. Visit an external Page: Direct your participants to any page or, URL. This works well if you want to drive traffic to your blogs.
  6. Pinterest: You can make them follow you on Pinterest or, Pin an image of your choice
  7. Twitter: Make the participants follow you on Twitter, retweet a tweet of yours or, send out a tweet
  8. Viral Share: This is my favorite. You can make the users share the contest on Google +, Facebook and Twitter. This helps in the contest going viral.
  9. Bonus: This is an option that you will not find in a lot of other Contest Plugins and services. Using this option you can make the participant complete a minimum number of entries in order to unlock a bonus.

You can see the number of options you get access to with Social Contest giving you complete flexibility in running the contest the way you want.

Simplicity in Designing and Setting Up the Contests

Setting up a contest in Social Contest is extremely easy. It starts by picking a template from the 15 odd readymade templates that you get in the ultimate version. If you upgrade to the PRO version you get even more templates. And if you choose to design it on your own, you can do that as well.

templates

Just pick a template, edit the information, add an image or, a video, set the start and the end times for the contest and you are done. It is that simple. You can see it in the screenshot below.

social contest design

You can control over every aspect of the design and appearance. With the added feature of running contests in multiple languages, you have the option of targeting audiences in specific languages as well.

Publishing the contests

This is another feature that I liked very much in Social Contest. You can publish the contest directly to your Facebook fanpage, embed it on your website or, use the direct link to send traffic to.

publishing the contest

If you want to publish it to a fanpage of yours, all you have to do it click a few buttons and its done. You can see it in the below images.

Fanpage Install

You can see how simple it is to publish the contests.

Support and Updates

You get lifetime updates for FREE. And since I trust the people who were behind this amazing service, I knew their support will also be fine. I got a taste of their support because of the a glitch in the system early on after I purchased. The developer option was not showing up on my dashboard and I had to reach out to them. I got the response from them within 4 hours and my issue was fixed.

And with a 30 day money back guarantee, you just cannot be at a loss.

Social Contest Review – The Conclusion

If you understand the importance of building a list then let me tell you that the best and easiest way to build your list is by running contests and giveaways.

And if you are planning to run a giveaway in the near future, I would recommend that you get your copy of Social Contest while it is available for this low a price. It is an absolutely recommended buy.

You can order your copy of Social Contest by visiting this link here.

Social Contest

27
9.8

Pricing

10.0/10

Features

9.9/10

Usability

9.7/10

Design and Appearance

9.8/10

Support

9.5/10

Pros

  • Affordability
  • Lots of Useful Features
  • Extremely Easy to Use
  • Beautiful Designs
  • Beautiful Templates

Cons

  • Limited to 15 Fanpages in Ultimate Version
  • Only 15 Templates available in the Ultimate Version

About the author 

Dilip Kumar  -  

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members.
Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members. Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
>