Blogging Idol Is A Joke | Why the Big Competition Fails to Measure Real Success

9 Jul 2008

Blogging Idol Is A Joke – Why the Big Competition Fails to Measure Real Success

Author: Jim | Filed under: Observations

One of the biggest competitions running in the blogosphere is the “Blogging Idol” competition that is being hosted by DailyBlogTips along with a few sponsors. The idea? Essentially, this contest is focused on being the better blogger. Whoever owns a blog and manages to raise more RSS subscribers in July than anybody else will get themselves a nice $1,500 cash prize. The final count is 108 entries, gunning for the big prize.

One the official contest launch page, there is a listing of everyone in the competition (including myself), along with their progress to date with a comparison to the first of the month. I decided to join this contest not because of the $1,500 incentive, but just because I could. Sending a quick email to Dan Scocco, the owner and contest moderator, was simple enough… and I could track my performance against my peers. I wholeheartedly support Dan and most of the other competitors, but this thing has begun to reek of a scam fix-job more than anything I have seen this year.

Why Is Blogging Idol a Joke?!
Before you raise your arms and start voicing your anger that I could possibly demean the competition, hear me out. I absolutely love the idea of competing to see who is the best start-to-finish blogger out there with some win-win competition. However, a lot of the methods being used to juice RSS numbers just aren’t fair and shouldn’t be judged as such. I’ve broken things down into three main reasons why I feel that Blogging Idol has become more of a scramble for numbers than a case study of blogging: a flawed premise, an open participation and unreasonable competitive practices.

1. The Overall Premise is Flawed
To decide who wins this competition, it was decided to go with the most dramatic increase in RSS subscriber numbers. From the get-go, we should be a bit uncomfortable with the notion that all progress will be thought of only in terms of subscriber numbers. Granted, I feel that RSS is the best method to show growth in a blog’s popularity. However, feed numbers are extremely volatile and can be manipulated with ease. I don’t like being the whistle-blower, but the whole thing is flawed from the get-go.

I get the strange feeling that people are using this to their advantage in manipulating their results. Let’s take an example from the actual competition where I suspect cheating is involved. The two front-runners to this point are Romeuy.com and StockMarketIndia.net. In both cases, the blogs appear less professional than typical industry standards, have excessive advertising, and little to no active comments. In fact, in the case of StockMarketIndia, I found 14 straight posts with no comments whatsoever! Romeuy leads the pack, boasting a gain of 241 subscribers in just one week… one week. With an Alexa.com rank of 406,606 and just one post in July, I simply can’t see this as legitimate. Not far behind, StockMarketIndia has seen a boost of 167 readers in the same time period with little to show in terms of actual traffic. Now i’m not saying either of these bloggers are fudging numbers, but the $1,500 prize creates quite an incentive to do just that.

A lot of the growth that is represented in RSS subscriber numbers is completely valid. There are, however, cases like the two mentioned that seem to be outlandish at best. I may be poking fun at our top-two blogs, but the fact remains that there is a huge mismatch in many cases between subscriber numbers and traffic growth. The solution? This contest should be a mix of RSS subscriber growth AND actual traffic flow.

2. Unprofessional Blogs Are Allowed To Participate
My main concern is not with people faking stats, it’s the fact that the enrollment was completely open… Blogging Idol didn’t take no for an answer. I have absolutely no problem with newer bloggers with under 50 subscribers entering the contest, my concern is with blogs that are riddled with poor content and excessive ads. The problem is that without some barriers to entry, a lot of competitors in Blogging Idol don’t have legitimate blogs to grow.

The problem? A virtual kamikaze RSS-attack can be undertaken by blogs that have no reputation on the internet. A simple interview/application process could have taken the trash out of Blogging Idol with relative ease. If things didn’t pass standards, certain entries could have been barred. The problem with this, is that blogs are essentailly demeaning themselves with begging for rss readers that it is hurting the blog’s reputation. By throwing things like a free link for subscribing out, small-time or unprofessional blogs are able to pick up dozens of RSS readers without batting an eyelash. Blogs that are more reputable in the competition such as The University Kid or Elite By Design cannot do this, less they risk reputation.

In effect, I think that it was in poor taste to allow anyone and everyone into this competition. While second-tier blogs are able to throw free advertising and other gimmicks at potential readers to artificially boost their numbers, top-tier bloggers (who should understandably be better at blogging) are unable to step down a level to grovel for fear of flooding their websites with excessive linking or content.

3. Unreasonable Anti-Competitive Methods Are Being Used to Win
The Blogging Idol isn’t a competition to decide who is the best blogger, it has become a contest of who can gain the most RSS subscribers… which isn’t what this should be about. I’m all for blogging contests to rally some interest, or guest posting on other blogs to expand your network. There are plenty of tricks of the trade to get people over to your blog. The problem lies in doing things like offering free text links for subscribers, soliciting people on social media, encouraging standing readers to double-subscribe with email and spamming feedburner links in public arenas.

The methods being employed by certain Blogging Idol competitors are anti-competitive in nature. What I mean by this is that people are offering unreasonable incentives to subscribe that will boost numbers for the short term, but cause a fall in the long term. I’m not about to break down and spam a subscription link to people on my mailing list, and doing so is a way of gaining subscribers… not readers. The difference between a subscriber and a reader is that a subscriber is simply a number, a reader is someone that actually uses your website for information.

These types of unreasonable anti-competitive practices focused on boosting RSS numbers could effectively have been stopped with the previous two solutions I have mentioned: an application process and an additional judging parameter.

Bottom Line: It’s a shame that one of the better sounding blogging competitions is being scored in such a manner, because it really undermines those blogs out there that have an established reader base. The way Blogging Idol has decided to rank winners is allowing for unfairly incentivised subscriptions and the propensity for cheating the system with such a large cash prize in the headlights. Rant over.

-Jimvesting