Insanely Brilliant or Just Insane? The HubSpot $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest

HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Current Articles | RSS Feed

Insanely Brilliant or Just Insane? The HubSpot $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest

digg it |

reddit |

del.icio.us |

StumbleUpon

Do you think you have what it takes to produce content that spreads like wildfire? Then put your creativity where your mouth is and compete to win $5,000 for writing that brilliantly insightful article or producing that hilarious video. Intrigued? Read on...

We're huge on publishing content here as part of a greater inbound marketing strategy and have even had some success with our content going viral (lots of articles on the front page of Digg and viral tools like Website Grader and Press Release Grader). We've had our share of failures, too (we consider this a necessary evil when attempting to produce viral content).

So, we're going to try and enlist the creative minds out there to help produce more viral content. And we're putting our wallet behind this to the tune of $5,000. You can win more than once, and we'll keep running the contest for the next 3 months or until we run out of money ($50K).

How to Win the $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest

Complete this form to enter. If your proposal is accepted, we'll email you and then you can complete the article or video.
Once completed, you deliver the content to us and if we think it rocks, we'll post it on our blog or YouTube account. We will pay you $100 for an article or $200 for a video that we post.
If your content is a viral success, we'll pay you $5,000. Success for an article means getting to the front page of Digg. Success for a video means over 10,000 views on YouTube in under 30 days.

Viral Marketing Contest Rules

The article or video content must relate to marketing in some way. For examples of our articles that have been virally successful, see 12 Quick Tips to Search Google Like an Expert, Now Any Business Can Tap 53 Million Facebook Users (For Free), and GoDaddy's 16-Step Checkout: Brainless Marketing At Its Finest?
The content must be original and created by you, and ownership of the content passes to HubSpot when we publish it.
Scripts or other automated tools to drive votes or views are not allowed.
We'll keep running the contest for the next 3 months or until we spend $50,000, whichever comes first. We might extend the contest depending on the results, so stay tuned.

Enter the $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest Now >>

Posted by Ellie Mirman on Tue, Jul 29, 2008 @ 09:47 AM

COMMENTS

Great idea, I think you'll get your money's worth.

posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 10:57 AM by Ron Nametko

Great idea...now I have to start thinking of something to write about!

-Justin

posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 11:32 AM by Justin Levy

Brilliant idea guys!

posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 2:43 PM by brian halligan

Neat idea, but how are you going to keep people from defrauding you via phony You Tube views?

posted on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 10:28 PM by Damon Cali

Can the author of the article or video use the article for their own blog/website, besides giving you(hubspot) the ownership of article/video?

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 5:36 AM by Aditya

Small companies must come with innovative marketing approaches to distinguish themselves from the crowded world of Internet. Your contest makes a lot of sense as you will outsource content creation at more than a reasonable price. Plus, it’s always worthwhile to plant many seeds and see which one will blossom!

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 9:21 AM by Pierre-Olivier Charlebois

@Damon - Faking views is absolutely against the rules. We're trusting people to be honest, but we also have some pretty smart engineers around here who can sniff out some schemes.

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM by Ellie Mirman

@Aditya - Yes, authors/creators will be able to post the content on their own blog after the contest is over. We just ask that you link back to the original article on our site. HubSpot needs to be the first one to post the content and the original source of the content. That's why we're offering the reward.

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 10:02 AM by Ellie Mirman

Let me get this straight, you want me to create something "viral" in exchange for $5,000. In turn so you can get 10, 20, 30 times (or more) that in increased business. Hmmm...I think I'll pass on being exploited.

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 1:10 PM by Skip

Skip: That's the beauty of choice. If you don't think it's a fair deal, you can choose not to participate.

posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 1:12 PM by Dharmesh Shah

I vote insanely brilliant. $5,000 is pretty good motivation for someone to create an article or video.

Even though it is relatively difficult to create something that viral, I think you'll get a good response.

HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog