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Running a contest for your e-zine subscribers or web site visitors is one way you can generate interest and give more exposure for products or services you want to promote.

A contest could be as simple as spotting a word or a set of words within an e-zine's issue or searching for a graphic on a site. A contest can run for one issue, or it can last for a month or more.

If you plan to run a contest, make sure you have a "contest management response system" in place.

This could be as simple as an automated e-mail receipt to let your participants know their entry has been received.

Run a contest that asks your participants to send their responses to specific e-mail addresses. Then create an automated receipt confirmation for each account.

Include a link to your products, affiliate links, or services in your confirmation receipt.

Every time someone enters your contest and sends her entry, she receives a confirmation message. Thus, you've just exposed your products to your contestant.

Encourage multiple entries and your contest participants get exposed to your promotional texts multiple times.

Ok, what about contest prizes?

If you publish an e-zine and you sell advertising space, you can give away free ad space to the winners.

If you have your own product, or a product you have resell rights to, you can give away free copies of it to your winners.

If you have a service, why not put that up as a prize?

In any case, though, let your prospective contestants be interested in the prizes. Yes -- put the complete prize descriptions, along with the contest mechanics, on autoresponder too.

And then include links where they can purchase the prizes. Hey, some people might not want to wait to win your contest! So it's good to cover all bases.

Run a contest that lets autoresponders handle entries and confirmation receipts and you'll have a promotional tool that can bring in profits for you!