Update: The sale for the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin is live at just $17.00.
It will eventually rise to $27, so now is probably the best time to get it.
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Demo contest here. Please note this ISN’T a real competition. 😉
Here’s a list of features.
o Optional list building via autoresponder service integration.
o Optional gathering of name and email addresses via plugin.
o Set date/time for contest start, end, and award announcements.
o Set the number of winners.
o Optionally restrict to WP subscribers only.
o One entry per user, IP address controlled.
o Unique referring link for each user to promote.
o Full customisation of all text fields including error messages.
o Optionally upload your logo and product images.
o Built in product image slider.
o Add your own question and answers.
o Four different template layouts.
o Six colour themes.
o Thirty-seven great looking fonts built in.
o Optionally set your own background image.
o Contestant sharing via optional social network integration:
– FaceBook
– Twitter
– Google+
– LinkedIn
– Tumblr
– Pinterest
– StumbleUpon
– Digg
o Contestant sharing by email and referral link.
o Winner selection via button click.
o Email send to winners.
o Fully loaded statistics section.
Phew!
It’s a HUGE plugin that helps you list build by running competitions where the winners are those who refer the most other entrants to you. I would also recommend that you give every entrant at least something so that everybody wins.
We all like to win stuff, right?
In other words you’re adding a touch of excitement to what would normally be a giveaway list building exercise that normally isn’t there.
You’ve probably seen this kind of thing done on TV where a gameshow will advertise a competition in the ad break. The questions are so easy that hardly anyone ever gets them wrong, and often they’re multiple choice to make it even easier.
As for the competitions themselves, they’re impossible not to get the question right. 😉
With the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin, if the entrant selects the wrong answer, they’re told right away so they can have another go.
When they finally get the right answer, they’re asked for their name and email address, and I would also suggest that you tell them to start sharing the competition with their friends via the social networks and through email. They get a unique referring link to enable them to do this.
So there’s two key aspects to this plugin, but it’s up to you if you use them both.
#1 – Optional – Give everyone a prize. We all like to win stuff.
#2 – Give the people with the most referrals something extra.
Once you have their name and email address, then you can send them emails to get them to promote the competition, and even enhance it by adding in unadvertised prizes to build the excitement.
And of course, you can send your new list promotional offers for which you are an affiliate.
Everybody wins, and that’s the kind of thing I like, and I hope you do too.
I’ll get some tutorial videos up on Monday and cover each section in turn. Don’t worry though, it’s very much self-explanatory and a few minutes experimentation and you’ll know your way around it.
-Frank Haywood
Frank,
This looks really nice. One comment … one question.
For the demo the background image does not fill the entire screen. About 20% of the screen on the right is just white.
I might have missed this – can the email addresses be exported to CSV?
Thanks … Bernie
Hi Bernie,
The white on the side of the screen is because I used a cropped photo and didn’t tile it in the settings. D’oh! 🙄 I’ve just tiled it and of course it doesn’t look right, so I’ll replace the photo shortly.
As for exporting as a CSV, I can’t believe I missed that. Double d’oh! I’ll get that fixed. As a workaround, you can export directly from the database using phpMyAdmin to a CSV, so it’s not a biggy but I should have had that put in for ease of use.
-Frank
Looks interesting, Frank.
The only thing I was waiting for that was not shown, is the selection of the winner, and the delivery of the Award.
I would like to see that….the demo is not working currently.
Thank you.
Hi David,
Oops. I’ve set the end date to December so the demo is working okay now. When I do the tutorial videos (should have done them yesterday, but got tied up with something else), I’ll show you the winner selection (essentially the people with the most referrals) and email send.
-Frank
Hi Frank,
The plugin is awesome. However, I’ve been looking for a plugin that does what yours does and a little bit more. Is there any chance you’ll be adding these features in the future? If so, I’d be prepared to pay even 5 times of what you’re currently charging.
Here’s exactly what I want it to do. I want the “viral” component to be ESSENTIAL, instead of sharing it simply increasing the chances of winning.
Here’s an example scenario: John visits my site, sees the competition, and subscribes. He;s in my list, however, John still hasn’t entered the competition. For John to enter the draw, he has to get his friends to “like/tweet” the page using his referral link, N number of times. I decide what N is. It could be 5, 10, 50 etc. Once, John’s referral link is shared by his friends N times, he is automatically entered in to the competition. There has to be a way to make sure that John cannot enter the competition without him bringing me enough visitors. If he doesn’t bring me any visitors, the concept of “viral” is not met.
A more advanced feature I’d like is if John refers 5 friends he enters a competition that gives the winner Prize A. If John brings 10 friends, he enters another competition whose winner gets Prize B. Prize B is obviously more valuable than Prize A.
I’ve tried similar plugins (e.g. List Eruption by Mark Thompson), however, none of them do what I want.
I sincerely hope you would consider adding these features to this plugin. Hoping to hear from you favourably!
Chuck
Hi Chuck,
Thank you. Okay I think I get it, but I’m not sure how to implement the detail of the more advanced bit – I’ll have to have a think about that as there would be a need to change some of the “mechanics” of how the plugin works, maybe change the referring ID to a [URL]#123456, and someone would have to actually click that link in order for the plugin to register and confirm the referral. Not impossible, but it gets a bit tricky – I know that because I’ve been there once before. 😉
However, when the current version of DCC selects the winners, what it actually does is it selects the top n referring entrants. So the more referrals someone gets the more chance they have of winning. My apologies if you already get that, I’m not sure if I made it clear enough. You can see how many referrals each entrant has made in the admin panel, so you could sort-of-almost do what you want and simply manually allocate the top prize to the person with the most referrals, and then second prize and so on, all encapsulated in a single competition.
And then of course you can “jolly” those people who joined to enter your next competition too, and so things get bigger and better each time.
I can’t promise anything, but I’ll have a think about it. Once I’ve used this plugin in earnest myself, I’ll have more of an idea of enhancements for it once I see some genuine entrant feedback. 🙂
-Frank
Great plugin, thanks !
Hi Ana,
Thank you. 🙂
-Frank
Hi Frank,
Just bought this plugin, I haven’t had a play with it yet but the options available and the price were irresistible!. thank you.
another thing you might be able to help me with is I have quite a few of your plugins now and was wondering if there is a download page where they can be viewed. Im not the most organised person and Im sure I have lost some of my bookmarks to the various download pages on some of your older plugins I have bought and thought a customer download area might be useful to me anyway : ).
cheers
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
Thank you. There isn’t a single download page (yet), but the new version of SmartDD (if it ever sees the light of day) has that functionality built into it. Currently the programmers stance (he owns half of SDD) is that he doesn’t want to release v4 in its current state as it doesn’t meet what he feels are “current programming standards” – things have changed and he doesn’t like the way he wrote some of the code. I am HOPING that he will change his mind. 🙁
The other alternative is to join the Plugin Great membership. It’s $20 / month and you get every plugin I release, at least 2 per month and they’re all on the downloads page.
Oh, and one other alternative is to get yourself organised. 😉 Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but I couldn’t resist that.
If you use FireFox (I think Chrome does it too via a Google account), then you can sign up for a free “sync” account which will store all your bookmarks for you in their cloud – it’s supposed to be secure, and I use it myself. The nice thing is that if you use multiple PCs like I do, then all your bookmarks are replicated across each machine once you’ve authorised each one.
Just a thought. 😉
-Frank
Hi Frank,
I’ve checked and seen the contest page is responsive, I think this is your theme that’s responsive ?.
So, we have to use a responsive theme to get it working on all media : PCs, tablet and smartphones ?
Regards
Hi Patrick,
It doesn’t matter about the theme, the plugin generates its own layout and uses its own CSS.
-Frank
Is this developer rights?
Hi Bruce,
I forgot to say but yes it comes with full developer (client/flipper) rights as I know that’s what people want. 🙂
-Frank
Hi, really like your plug in. I’ve installed it on my wp site and have it setup works great… While testing it with me as a contestant, I forgot to click on email icon and didn’t get the referral link. When I went back to the site, of course it said I was already entered.. so couldn’t get the link..
How or where can I retrieve that link and put it into an autoresponder message for contestants that might do the same thing?
Hi Dave,
Ah yes. We’ll have to get that fixed. What it needs is to recognise the IP address of the person and display their IP address as part of the “You’ve already joined” message. It also needs to display the referral ID in the admin panel. Leave it with us.
In the meantime, from an admin’s point of view, what you can do is view the WP database in phpMyAdmin and browse the wp_contest_member table. In there you’ll find all the referral IDs in a field called mbr_key. You can also edit the IP address too, if you want to test with multiple email addresses.
-Frank