Claiming the Contest Prize

The first time it happened, I could not imagine why in the world the winner would not reply to my email to receive her $50 prize. Before sending her a check from www.funnyphotoscontest.com, she had to verify her mailing address. So why wouldn’t she respond? But when it happened a second and third time with other winners, it finally occurred to me that the recipient’s email program had probably filtered out my message as Spam.

When I initially opened my email account, funnyphotoscontest@gmail.com, it never occurred to me that it had all the markings of “junk” email. But the word contest most likely looks like some company offering a bogus chance to win something for nothing. As for the word photo, it could possibly imply a pornographic site. Although this might not be the explanation, I decided it would be wise to change my email address.

But, the problem persisted. Although many winners immediately answer the email that lets them know they won, several others don't respond at all. Thus, creating a new email had solved only part of the problem. Luckily, I learned by sheer coincidence that the words I typed in my subject line, “congratulations” or “your photo won”, may also cause the Spam filters to reject the emails I sent.

Now that I’m using a new email address and simply typing “your entry” in the subject line, I’m hoping I can lay the problem to rest. But you never know with computers. Humans are suppose to be smarter, yet with all this frustration and with all the hair I’m pulling out of my head, it won’t be long before I’ll have to purchase a wig !

"Who's Winning"

It’s the 17^th of the month with all the excitement of a new contest (new ones start on the 2^nd and the 17^th of each month). And on those dates the hits to my site, www.FunnyPhotosContest.com, double or even triple. What causes the flurry of activity you might ask? The answer is very simple. Not only are the new photos posted, but viewers flock to the site to vote for their favorite.

Actually, there’s a little more to the story. During every contest, there is usually one or two Mom’s who are filled with anticipation and are anxious for their child’s photo to win. As a result, they flood their favorite forums and their friend’s email with a request to vote for their photo. And the recipients eagerly respond by voting and telling others to vote as well.

Although voting makes the contest thrilling (with current results posted every few days), it does give computer “savvy” photographers an advantage. Thus, to level the “playing field”, votes (although very important) do not by themselves determine the winner. As stated in the contest rules, “the contest winner will be selected by the FunnyPhotosContest Judges from the FIVE photos that receive the most votes.”

Above is the photo receiving the most votes at this writing.

Funny Photos Contest

It seemed like a perfect hobby for retirement. Little did I ever dream that www.FunnyPhotosContest.com would take over my life. In fact, it started out simply enough as a photo contest on the Internet for funny or cute photographs. For a small fee contestants could enter cute or funny photos. With a new contest every two weeks and viewers voting for their favorite picture, a photographer could win $50. In addition, twice a year, the 12 winning photos from the previous six months would be judged and the winner would receive an additional $500 grand prize bonus. With my two grown children as consultants, we were ready to launch our website.

No problem…except only a few days before the contest “went live” we realized that as an unknown site, web surfers may not want to pay our entry fee. Why would they, when the web abounds with numerous free photo contests? Thus, we removed the fee and prepared to pay the prize money ourselves. So much for my hobby, www.FunnyPhotosContest.com had just become a business. To make matters worse, my children and I had no experience operating a website business. Nevertheless, we decided to proceed and simply plunged in.

As novices in the website business world, we had a lot to learn, how to advertise the site to attract viewers, how to obtain sponsors to cover the cost of the prizes, and how to increase our position on the search engines like Google and Yahoo, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Although, we started six months ago, www.FunnyPhotosContest.com is still “a work in progress” and is evolving as we go along. Fortunately, we have received hundreds and hundreds of fascinating photos and have attracted many wonderful and loyal followers. Although my hobby has changed to a business, it’s a lot of fun and I have no complaints.