Thanks for Helping Jack Up Votes on Video Contest
It’s the kind of thing that drives semi-pro creators insane (see Jared’s VideoContestKing post). A video contest based not on the quality of the entries but the “popularity” of the creators.
I entered Great Wolf Lodge’s contest, but was amazed that despite family & friend e-mail campaigns that we couldn’t get beyond 2% of votes. My wife kept checking daily, and asking me what more she can do. So reluctantly, I posted this Uncle Nalts video, and now we’re in the running.
A big thanks to captvids.com for captioning my entry (Charlie is sometimes hard to understand in this entry).
P.S. Here’s another contest site: Video Contest News.
I’m originally from PA. so normally I would have a problem voting against the Pocono Mountains vid, but being a person who appreciate fine art, and in recognizing that Charlies video was clearly the best, he easily got my vote. Honest, it has nothing to do with the fact I am trying to get Nalts to collaborate with me on a YT vid project…eh hem….
Hey, can I vote everyday? It said I can only vote for one video, but is that ‘one per email’ per day, or just ‘one per email’ finito?
Kevin, the last link goes to your video entry on YouTube, not another contest site.
I wonder what kind of campaign the current leader has (had) going on to have that many votes. A bot that could solve the CAPTCHAs is quite unlikely (although manually entering hundreds of different names / email addresses isn’t out of the question).
I’m not sure exactly how the captioning CaptVids captioning process works. Did they just send you a .sub file (like I’ve done before for a few of your videos), or did they somehow manage to upload the captions without having to go through you? The latter case would be interesting but I don’t see how it would work. (I’d certainly be more inclined to caption more of your videos if I didn’t have to send you dozens of emails over several weeks/months to get you to upload them.)
This contest should be interesting to watch over the next weeks (I think the contest ends Oct. 9 at 11:59:59 PM). You are currently at 28% vs 37% (you were up to 29% a bit earlier tonight). I’m wondering if the Pocono Mountains entry will mysteriously start gaining more views if you get too close. Of course, you would almost certainly win if you used your main YouTube account to solicit votes during the last couple of days of the contest.
@1 I think “You can only vote once.” pretty clearly means once per person, ever.
Dang, I need to get to bed. It seems my comments are always on the long side when I’m up late.
Speaking of votes, which logo won? Did I miss it?
@3 Yes, you missed it. You can see the winning design at naltsconsulting.com.
You should definitely use the power of your main channel to crush the competition. You can bet they are doing everything they can to win, so you should too. Come on, it’ll feel so good. FINISH THEM!
@4, thx Alexis!
I voted, hope you win.
OMG, I just watched that Pocono video and it’s so bad I had to bail. They must be buying votes!
@1 You know that Nalts is from PA too, right? So you shouldn’t feel bad about voting for him, even if he did have to whore himself out on YouTube for votes. 🙂
I’d even be so inclined to think that parts of Nalts video were shot at the same Great Wolf lodge as some other videos in the contest…no I will not draw you a map.
Another interesting video popularity contest going on:
http://videocontest.ecompliments.com/
Greg Benson of MediocreFilms was in the lead until recently.
It seems Philip DeFranco (sxephil) put up a video in the last couple of days and it pretty much instantly shot into the lead by a wide margin. (IMHO, Greg’s entry is much better though.)
The YouTube big shots really have a big advantage for these kind of things. Is is fair for them to exploit their fan base? I’m pretty sure it’s completely legal and may not be morally wrong, but I have mixed feelings about it.
I’m glad you promoted your entry Kevin (although I had already voted for it weeks ago) since Charlie’s video deserves to beat the other top contenders, but I certainly understand your reluctance in doing so.
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem fair for sxephil to submit a lazy entry just a few days before the contest ends and walk away with $10,000 for so little effort.
But hey, life is not fair and I don’t think the big shots should be denied their right to promote their own stuff in an attempt to level the playing field.
The only solution I see is for the companies running the contests to design them better as Nalts has harped on again and again and again and again.
By the way Kevin, I still think you failed somewhat to practice what you preach with the way you ran your logo contest. I was rather disappointed. (See my comments on the logo contest post for details.)
*sigh* There I go again with a comment longer than the blog post.
@9. Yeah, now that you mention it I do recall nalts referring to his corn fed heritage at some juncture in a past blog. There, you made the whole proposition real easy for me. Sleeping good tonight.
Nalts isn’t from PA, but he lives there now.
There’s nothing morally wrong with YT bigshots mobilizing their fan base to vote in contests. These people have put in a lot of time to build their following. I don’t know why in the world I’m taking this position, cuz I don’t really give a f@ck, but there it is.
@12 Yep. I think he’s from the New Orleans area originally, but he’s been living in Pennsylvania for quite a while now.
I completely agree with you by the way. It just irritates me when the ranking of entries in contests are so independent of the quality of the work. (Just like I never wanted to watch American Idol again after the season where Sanjaya stayed on so long and Melinda Doolittle didn’t win.)
Whatever those people behind the Pocono video entry are doing to increase their votes, they’re back at it again.
At one point, it was 30% to 38%, but now it’s 27% to 45%.