  Contests & Activities
This week: Reliable Contests & Activities Edited by: NaNoNette  
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Reliable Contests & Activities
You want to be sure to get a return for the time you spent writing and participating.
Every time you write for a contest, you have a few expectations. The minimum expectation is that you will get a review if you followed all the submission guidelines. There is always the hope for a prize, but that depends on many factors. How many people entered? how good is your writing? what does the judge like? So, you can't count on winning every contest, but you should be able to count on getting at least a review for your writing.
How do you know if your expectations to see a review will be met? Take a look at the forum. Is it active? Does the host regularly post? Regularly doesn't mean every day or even week. If you're looking at a monthly contest, the host should have a made a few postings:
- announcing the current round with prompt
- announcing winners.
See what the contest parameters are and decide from there how much interaction a host should have to be a respectable host that you want to write for.
Activities are similar. There are those that are pretty straightforward.
Raffles for instance. If a raffle host updates their page every few days, at least once a week (if there were ticket orders), you can assume they are serious about their activity and they will wrap it up in a timely manner.
Shops are pretty straightforward in that you pay for a service and you should then receive it. You should email the owner of the shop before you send them any gift points for their goods. Unless you see the shop owner around the site and the shop is set up in a forum format and you can immediately see that they are always actively replying to any orders. Shops can sell images, signatures, other type of designs, review packages, merit badge packages, and anything that can be offered through the site. Once you "bought" your item, it's up to the shop owner to deliver. If they are absent from the site, your gift points are gone.
Not so straightforward activities include auctions.
Auctions can be very tricky as they usually include many people who agree to donate things to sell. Those can be anything. Sometimes, it's a membership, something tangible sent from the Writing.Com shop, merit badges, or reviews.
Here is where things get tricky. Once the auction is over, the person who donated is in charge of delivering what was in the package to you. That doesn't always work out. Either the donor is absent from the site, it turns out they can't afford to award the package they promised, or they simply forget.
Some members who run auctions have a disclaimer that every single item will be delivered by them if the person who promised the package doesn't come through. Those give you some safety that you can at least ask the host when you will receive your goods.
Auctions can be a great way to raise funds for a group or a member. They are fun, there is a little competition, and in most cases you win some cool goodies. Start of slow and find out which auctions are run the best.
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For my last Contest & Activities newsletter " Group Membership" , I got the following replies:
Mary Ann MCPhedran  wrote: Yes You're right and I try to go round them all, but I lose sight of what I have joined and get caught up in what group should I do the reviews and the activities. I'm not quick on the computer so I don't get as much writing done as I ought to. I should maybe try to organise my writing within the groups and try to do at least one in each of them. Thank you for your newsletter. Mary Ann MCPhedran.
If you feel overwhelmed by your group memberships, it's definitely a good idea to create a little cheat sheet of what your goals are with each group. If you find that a group is not meeting your needs or you're not interested in meeting the group's demands, it might be a good idea to do some house cleaning and leave some groups while recommitting yourself to those that are the best fit for you.
Thundersbeard 30DBC JULY HOST  wrote: Could you do a feature on the different groups on WDC by genre? eg. the Steampunk Authors Guild for Steampunk or Sci-Fi, but also other groups that are focused on fantasy, sci-fi,or pulp fiction.
Be on the lookout for my Fantasy newsletter on July 25, 2018.
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Contests & Activities: June 27, 2018 Issue [#8950]
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