What are your thoughts on selecting recipe challenge winners by vote?

Two bloggers reached out to me to express frustration with the voting structure of the Iron Foodie Challenge. They were concerned that the winner would be chosen not by merit, but by the breadth of their social network. It is definitely a valid concern.

After organizing several recipe challenges, my view is that the far majority of the polls produce the “right” winner. When I say “right” I simply mean that it is plausible that the winner produced the best recipe in the group.

I certainly have seen recipe challenges slip into a popularity contest. I does not happen often, but when it does … it just kind of spoils the party. I remember an instance where the worst submission won the contest. So, we awarded an identical prize to the runner-up.

Lately we have been sending free samples at the outset of the challenge so everyone wins in a way … And, we have been in the habit of creating many prizes, sort of as a hedge against a runaway popularity contest. For example, in the Iron Foodie Challenge, we initially announced that there would be only one winner … but then we added three runners-up prizes. And at the last minute, because the possibility of a popularity contest was actually in the back of my head, we added a second grand-prize winner to be chosen by the 25 recipe challengers. (I have only gotten about 15 votes back, so if you haven’t emailed me your pick, please do so).

We set up our recipe challenges based on some basic presumptions … and I’d love any feedback to confirm or debunk them. The first presumption is that recipe challengers benefit whether they win or not. We do get lots of positive feedback … many bloggers have told me that their blog had record visitors during a recipe challenge. I also presume that the recipe challenges act like a little social network of themselves…challengers make new relationships with their competitors and readership nudges up. If my presumptions are correct, then wouldn’t we all want to drive maximum traffic to the voting regardless of who wins?  Because if we didn’t do voting, then there would be only 3 judges instead of the 1,400 that have already weighed in. In most cases, in theory at least, a higher number of voters should lead to a more accurate result.

I am SOOOOOOO open to ideas regarding how we can structure these challenges. We keep trying various things to balance the popularity factor, but I am actually considering doing away with voting altogether. Of course, we like the voting because it drives traffic to our site. And, I am not just saying that in terms of numbers. It helps us start relationships with more bloggers and potential customers, which is one of the main goals of our blog. But we also want you all to feel that these contests have been fun, challenging, and as fair as possible … whether you win or not.

I just kind of wanted to bring this discussion into the open. I am immensely grateful for the two bloggers who reached out to me. And, I hope that you all will share your sentiments either in the comments below or via private email to me.

45 Replies to “What are your thoughts on selecting recipe challenge winners by vote?”

  1. Justin,

    Thank you very much for your candor on this subject. In like manner, I’ll be upfront that I was one of the two bloggers who expressed a concern about the voting process.

    While I have to admit being less optimistic than you about the outcome of an “open-voting” contest platform, that’s not what I wanted to comment about, here.

    I want to take a minute to say how much I appreciate and respect how you and, by association, Marx Foods, handled my objections, and have been forthright in sharing them with your readers.

    I would have been very easy to simply bury our concerns, dismiss our opinions as “sour grapes” and focus on the majority.

    I’m very impressed that you did not.

    Likewise, regardless of the contest or it’s outcome, I was EXTREMELY impressed with the quality of the sample ingredients that I received. You offer top-of-the-line products, two of which I’ve never used, but will now be a staple in my cupboards, and there’s no question that I’ll be ordering from Marx Foods in the future.

    Lastly, I could not agree more – in the end everyone is a winner, in that there were some very exciting new recipes birthed from this. I know, for one, I have a new favorite salmon recipe, lol.

    Thank you again for you time, and consideration.

    -Perry

  2. I think we have to face it any contest like this where the winner is chosen by people coming to a site to vote is most likely going to be won by the person with the most contacts. People come to vote because they are directed by someone through their blog, facebook, twitter, etc…so the person with the most active online community is most likely going to win. The people they direct to the voting most likely aren’t going to take the time to view all the entries & chose one made by someone other than the person in their network. I knew this going in because I’ve seen it in a lot of similar contests. You do contests like this because you think it will be fun. You try to get as many people as you can to vote for you but I think the only true way a contest like this could be fair is for a non-biased person or persons choose the winner.

  3. Thanks for this post and opening the dialogue. After being a participant and observer in FoodBuzz’ epic Project Food Blog and then Iron Foodie, I’ve become disillusioned. In fact, I just made the personal decision that I would not participate in any more of these challenges that had open voting. I know there are more than the 2 bloggers you mentioned and me who feel this way.

    I love the challenge but hate pandering for votes – and that seems to be what open voting requires. It’s disheartening to see it’s all about ‘the win’. Yeah, a prize is nice but I’d almost rather do it without a prize, just for the sport. I believe we should be judged on merit, not the size of our network. I’ve observed that many participants do not have the following to support their # of votes, so it’s just ballot stuffing. In fact, I stopped looking at the voting results shortly after they opened and I saw what happening.

    The problem with open voting is that as serious bloggers, we are not serving our readers by participating in these contests and then deluging them with ‘vote for me’ posts, emails, tweets and updates. That’s not what they signed up for — and its very distasteful to us. We should continue to publish quality work to the best of our abilities and use social media to promote ideas, support each other and interact with the public-at-large.

    BTW, I thought Iron Foodie voting was going to be open only to Foodie Blogroll members and that’s why I entered. But even that has its pitfalls because it’s only human nature to vote for your blogging buddies. So, my suggestion to you, as it was to FoodBuzz, is challenges should be judged on compliance and merit by a qualified panel with nothing to gain from who wins.

    I love Marx Foods, you’ve been more than generous to many bloggers, and I like that you’re open to finding the right formula for future events. Hope these comments help.

  4. I participated in the challenge because I thought it would be fun, I would hopefully expose my new blog to some potential new followers, and I would have the opportunity to try some new products. Like Joan, my recollection was that the voting would be open to members of the Blogroll only, but even then, being a new blogger, I assumed I wouldn’t stand a chance.

    With the voting open to everyone, I knew I had less than a snowball’s chance in New Orleans … but what’s the alternative, unless you’ve got a panel of folks handy to recreate all of the recipes and vote on which you think is the best. A random selection is no better. One would like the think that the most appealing recipe would win, or the one with the best use of the offered ingredients, etc., but I’m assuming it’s the one with the biggest contact list. Not your fault – it’s just the nature of things.

    It wouldn’t stop me from participating in future challenges for the fun of it, the experience, etc., but I’ll always go in assuming there’s no way I can win and being a little resentful of whoever does. I think of that every year with the challenge of all challenges – the annual Pillsbury Bake-Off. I always thought the best recipe won, but I found out last year that’s a joke too. Whoever has the most friends makes it to the end, then the judges vote, so someone could truly have an awesome recipe, but not even the judges know about it because it doesn’t get that far.

    Heck, I’m just happy to still have leftover ingredients…I’m trying to figure out how to ration them out during my Christmas baking/cooking frenzy! 😉

  5. RE: Joan Nova says:

    “The problem with open voting is that as serious bloggers, we are not serving our readers by participating in these contests and then deluging them with ‘vote for me’ posts, emails, tweets and updates. That’s not what they signed up for — and its very distasteful to us. We should continue to publish quality work to the best of our abilities and use social media to promote ideas, support each other and interact with the public-at-large.”

    Joan,

    That is an EXCELLENT point! One I hadn’t thought of, but should have.

    -Perry

  6. I’ve struggled with this topic for quite some time, well a year. The first contest I entered was a huge disappointment and it wasn’t the last time, but I think its because I looked at it from the stance of quality of the recipe alone. And, frankly, who am I to decide solely from reading a post/recipe if mine is truly better than another’s?

    I think each contest sets the rules of the game, so if you’re selecting a ‘winner’ based on votes, then that’s just it. If you don’t have a huge following or 1000s of friends and family members willing to click a link and vote for you, you’ll have to be happy with just participating. This is the first time I decided to reach out to my friends and ask for votes and it wasn’t easy for me to do, because I still want the vote to be about the recipe.

    I think it was a comment I read on Joan’s blog not long ago that helped me see the value in these contests, popularity or not. It echoed much of what you say on your post, Justin. At the end of the day, we all come away winners in one way or another. I struggled with the decision to ask for votes; when I posted it on my blog, when I asked on FB and on Twitter, each time was uncomfortable. But a funny thing happened. My friends passed it on to their friends and I ended up with a whole new set of followers that I might’ve never had access to.

    I know I’ve had more visitors as a result of this and other of your challenges. I’ve connected with some new cool bloggers too. I discovered new ingredients, but most importantly, I challenged my cooking chops. I see these contests as a fun challenge, but I’m not expecting to gain national recognition from them.

    And I think that’s the difference. If the purpose of a contest is to name the best whatever in the world or the web or whatever medium, then the criteria should be very specific and judged by professionals. Otherwise you end up with the person with the best PR or ability to motivate others to action. I don’t watch American Idol, but I hear the latest batch was a big disappointment for most because they felt the selection was based on popularity or notoriety. I’m rambling, I know.

    I’ll just say this was a great learning experience for me and I loved being a part of it and I LOVED working with the ingredients and seeing the differet applications to them.

  7. I think, ultimately, it should be up to a panel of judges that you’ve chosen and/or participate in, but you could have some sort of popular vote aspect to it, too.

  8. Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I also just received a dozen or so emails in response to this post. Unlike all of you way-more-experienced-than-me bloggers, I am not used to responding in comments to so many different threads. So, please bear with me if this is all over the place.

    I am sorry to those who thought the voting would be contained within foodie blogroll. A few people were under that impression. FBR and I decided from the beginning that it would be hosted on my blog. Sorry if we weren’t abundantly clear about that. Maybe everyone presumed that because most FBR events are contained within FBR?

    Between the comments and emails, I am hearing everything from “it doesn’t matter to me … I am excited to participate” to “open voting sucks”. The Iron Foodie challenge was tricky because we are bestowing a title upon someone and there can only be that one person. But, what would you all think if we made it a policy to always have dual-winners going: 1) to be decided by open voting (to reward those who have built up a large following and also reward us for hosting the contest by sending the traffic our way); and 2) a winner selected by either a judge, a group of judges, or the challengers themselves? To those that are turned off by open voting, would this bring you back into the contest-sphere?

    As mentioned, we lately started asking the challengers to pick a second winner. I am thinking that maybe we should move toward using this as our primary system? And, then we can add an open voting poll for runners-up?

    Several people who wrote me an email ended with something like: “And the worst part of it is, no matter what you do you won’t please everyone.” I would spin that a little differently: Every winner selection methodology has downsides and upsides. So, I need to figure out is how to maximize the joy and benefits for everyone and minimize the downsides.

    I do feel that open voting leads to the “right” winner most of the time. And, it is the methodology that suits me best. But, it also is the methodology that can hurt the credibility of our contests.

    Open voting could lead to a popularity contest. But, a single judge or even a few judges (whether it is me, you or anyone else) is not at all transparent and certainly uber-subjective. It is not impossible to imagine a judge favoring a friend. And, every hybridized model between those two has some mixture of faults.

    The answer seems to be to make sure there is an abundance of methods to select an abundance of winners. It’s a good thing my business is growing … because this is gonna get expensive 😉

  9. Hi Justin,

    First of all thank you for this contest. I just read your post and it was well written. I have to agree with some of the concerns, and they are valid. This time of year is busy and I just don’t don’t have the energy or willingness to ‘beg’ for votes every hour, every day. I respect my readers and followers to much for that. Having tweeted , Facebooked to friends, fans and followers I still have only 37 votes.I feel I made a great effort, but I’m just not comfortable in doing more to win a contest. But I’m happy just getting the great samples from your company. I know there is no way I can win.

    Unfortunately that’s the nature of the these type of contests. The one IP address is both good and bad as I couldn’t solicit votes from co workers and I’m not giving them an extra thing to remember when they are at home.Nor do I feel comfortable asking for their personal email address.But it does help against excessive fraud.

    I feel there are many deserving entries and some not so much, but that a personal matter of preference.

    Perhaps next time rather than reader vote, you can have unbiased panel selected by you? That way its fair and impartial. Or a popular vote vs panel vote?

  10. This is a very thoughtful and interesting dialogue, and it helps to hear the perspectives of other bloggers when it comes to recipe contests. Since I am the one usually taking part in hosting the contests (Royal Foodie Joust, Iron Foodie, other FBR contests) as opposed to participating in them, it is hard for me to know the right answers.

    Since it was Justin and I who were figuring out how to set up this contest, I knew I did not want to be on the panel of judges. As a blogger and community leader (via Foodie Blogroll) I figured no matter who won, people might think I was playing favorites (since I know almost all the participants personally), so I wanted to stay away from that as much as possible. Another reason why The Royal Foodie Joust has always been based on community voting.

    A lot of you mentioned distaste for pandering for votes. I don’t think that was ever mine or Justin’s intention – to have you ask your readers for votes over and over. From my perspective, I figured participants would post a link to the polls on their entry post, and maybe tweet or facebook about it.

    We just wanted the voting to be more open so that more people might be introduced to the participant’s blogs. The Foodie Blogroll widget receives and over 1 million daily impressions. Just from having a link on the widget to the contest page, or your blog linked from the website, as being listed as a participant gives so many chances for the participants blogs to be noticed by new readers. That was really the FBR hope from the beginning. One of the reasons we do contests on FBR is to get more and new exposure for our members’ blogs, and this was a great way to do it.

  11. There’s no easy answer, but at least you’re trying. Rather than runners up, perhaps a triple voting path ‘judges’ pick’, ‘contestants choice’ and ‘readers choice’ might be worth a try. Then, those of us who want to compete but don’t want to pander for votes can be content to present our entry and take our chances with the judges and our peers; others who are willing to go for the popularity vote will have 3 avenues available to them.

  12. Perhaps a “multi-round” style of voting?

    Round one: by the contestants
    Round two: by a secret panel
    Round three: open vote

    I’m still not wild about the open voting, but I also understand that there is a marketing aspect to holding the contest, and wouldn’t begrudge the sponsor his fair shake.

    However, I think it’s most fair to have it at the end, so that whatever number of contestants remained at that point, they would at least have gotten to the final round solely on the merit of their recipe.

    To insure visits, you could require each contestant to create a new blog post at each level, or offer side prizes for “Friends of the Chef” votes, separate from the actual title and grand prizes.

    Personally, I’d rather just see just the first two rounds, with the “Friends” (open vote) prize added in as a side bet.

    Just some thoughts.

    -Perry

  13. Perry – we are formulating our “ridiculously delicious” challenge for next year and my current thinking is a multi-round event, just like you said, where we start with 20 challengers, then we pick ten, then the next round is open voting and the top 5 advance, then the final round is selected by all of the challengers … or something like that.

    Joan / Perry – your thinking is definitely mirroring mine.

    Jenn – thanks for weighing in here … definitely some good insights.

  14. I was one of the people who thought this was going to be decided by Foodie Blogroll members only, and I thought that was pretty cool. I told my friends I was in a contest, but they couldn’t vote. Then, when I found out it was open voting, of course I told people to go vote. It wouldn’t make sense to tell them I’m in a contest, but don’t vote for me.

    That’s what the sponsor of a contest wants. Get as many people to the site as possible, have them look at the products, and maybe become a customer. If it was closed voting, it wouldn’t be nearly as good for the sponsor.

    Is it fair that people with more contacts have instant votes? Probably not. Someone with 1000 followers on their blog has one advantage, while someone who works with a lot of people who will support them has a different advantage.

    And being in the top 5 or 10 early is another advantage, because some casual voters might not look at all 25 entries, and just vote for the ones that already have a larger number of votes. That isn’t fair either, but it’s how people vote.

    I thought it was nice that it was only one vote per IP address, so that eliminated people voting over and over. One vote per person seems reasonable. Still not fair to people who made great recipes but received fewer votes than they should have, but more fair that having dozens of people voting every hour.

    Even if it was just Foodie Blogroll members voting, there would still be winners and non-winners. I’m not going to say losers, because I was pretty excited just to get picked to participate, and I went into this thinking I’d do my best and I’d be ahead of the game with just my samples and some visitors to my blog, and the experience.

    Despite voting issues, the contest was good for anyone who wanted to draw people to their blog. I track my traffic, and there were times when I’d see twenty hits in a row coming from Marx Foods, and I’d think, “wow, I wonder what that did to my votes,” and I’d go look and there would be maybe one more vote. Maybe none. So apparently there are plenty of people who are looking at the recipes and not blindly voting for someone they know.

    Maybe some of those people came back and voted for me later after they looked at the rest of the recipes, but at least they stopped by and looked at what I made. And maybe they’ll come back again. I know that during this contest I gained new subscribers and followers, so that’s a good thing, too. Maybe they didn’t all come from this contest, but I’ll bet that some of them did.

    While open voting isn’t fair, it’s better than taking time to design a recipe and then have the winner chosen randomly. At least there’s a chance that enough non-affiliated voters will cast votes for good entries. If all of the members of Foodie Blogroll had voted, it would probably have wiped out most of the advantage of the bloggers with the larger fanbases, but obviously that hasn’t happened.

    I suggested to Justin by email that future contests might be at least a little more fair if winners were chosen by several different methods. Maybe one vote among the competitors, other winners chosen by the sponsors, and also a popular vote to draw the outside traffic.

    Honestly, if I could win a recipe contest based on the recipe alone, that would make me very happy. But that’s not how this contest was devised,and we have to live with the rules as they exist. I think the best we can do is give our feedback and appreciate that Justin has taken the concerns into consideration and might run future contests differently.

    From the first required post where we had to talk about why we wanted to be in the contest, to the excitement of opening the box and seeing what I had to work with, to testing the recipe, posting it, reading responses… I thought it was all a lot of fun.

    Would I enter another contest? Sure I would. It challenges me to do something different. Of course I’d like to win the big prize. I already know what I’d buy. But even if I walk away with no prize, the contest itself was a blast.

  15. I has taken me a little while to collect my thoughts and answer this. I cannot believe someone would have the gall to give Justin and Queen a hard time about this contest. First and foremost, I thought this was a way for cooking enthusiasts to come together, and share some of their cooking. I know I went to almost everyone else’s site and commented on their beautiful creations, but only a few of the other contestants came to my site. There was very little comaradarie, which truly surprised me. It is interesting to me that the person who is currently in the lead, was the one who made the most effort to connect with me. Popularity or not, she has shown herself to be a professional.

    Also, if this were to be a serious cooking competition, there would have been official taste testers to try out our recipes, and judge them. This was for fun. The whole contest was based on a recipe we developed and photos posted to our site-available for our own readers and whomever came to visit. All visual-no taste test. A true cooking contest would include tasting and we all know that. So how would we get people to come visit our blogs if not by advertising/spreading the word? Let’s be honest here. Justin works for a company and has a job to do. In this case, his job was to represent Marx foods in an online cooking competition, market Marx Foods, and present new recipe ideas to his customers. The fact that he has done so much to please us, and has communicated so well with us, is only because he is a gentleman, and has done his job well. Foodie Blog Roll and Marx Foods owes us nothing. We did not have to pay a fee for entering this contest, we received free food supplies to participate, and we made our own conscious choice to participate. Several of the competitors are in other cooking contests at the same time, so I am guessing they should be aware of this already? This kind of behavior puts a black eye on all food bloggers, and I would not blame Foodie Blog Roll/Marx Foods if they never did another cooking contest again because of this behavior.

    I have been cooking for 30 yrs, some in a professional capacity, but this was my first cooking contest experience, so perhaps I do not “know” or “understand” online cooking contest etiquette. I thought part of the idea of this was to raise awareness with family/friends of our cooking/blog. Almost every single competitor here has advertising/monetization on their own blog. If you were not looking to market your blog, why have monetization? Why even participate at all?

    I am still learning, and this cooking contest has definitely been a learning experience. My recipe was wonderful, but my photos were not the best, so I come away from this knowing I have to work on my photography. I also know there are several fellow food bloggers that I admire, and would like to learn from. I have also learned that some people have taken this too seriously, and that is a little disturbing to me. Lighten up and have fun. We are not curing cancer or discovering a planet here, we are in the business of food, which is all about fun, friendship, and togetherness. Lastly, I have learned that there are some very mean-spirited and rude people out there in the blog world. I received several comments on my blog, presumably from a friend of a competitor here, who tried to post very rude, disrespectful comments about me and my blog. Very poor taste. Thank goodness for comment moderation.

    I do not feel anyone did anything wrong here. Were we not supposed to have our family and friends, and followers support us? What I find more upsetting is that Justin and Queen were harangued into adding another prize because some people cannot deal with healthy competition. Everyone came into this contest with the same rules, the same ingredients, and the same method of getting votes. I think it is in poor taste and more unsportsmanlike to harass the sponsor of a cooking contest, then it is to ask our family, friends, and followers to support us. We are bloggers. We are in the business of interacting with others. This was another way for us to do so.

    So Justin, what should you do differently? Technically nothing, but perhaps you could have competitors submit their food recipe in advance of the voting, so if there are duplicates that people have time to change them. Perhaps also have “official judges” not the general public chose the winner(s). At the end of the day, however, I think you did everything fine.

  16. Jules, don’t sell yourself short on those photos. They were clear and perfectly conveyed what it was you were doing. Be proud of your work.

    I also thought the voting was open only to members of the FBR. I clearly remember this being stated in the first email I received about it.

    I felt the length of time allowed for voting was much too long. Maximum time would have been better suited over three days, but eight was far too much. Blog posts that directed readers to the voting site simply got lost as bloggers moved on. For us to direct traffic to the Marx voting page, utilizing our social media connections was the next best thing. And if my connections, not to mention my family and my friends support my blogging by reading it on a regular basis, why wouldn’t I turn to them to support me in this contest? My simple request for support was re-broadcast multiple times by them, in turn asking their friends to vote as well. Isn’t this the fundamental aspect of community? Isn’t that what the FBR is all about? The extra support to me was mind boggling and unexpected. My Dad even got in to it, broadcasting the contest to all his friends.

    I have been writing my food blog for nearly 5 years and this was the first contest I have ever participated in. I enjoyed the challenge, enjoyed reading everyone’s entry- which I did even though I didn’t comment on many- and I was pleased just to be one of the final 25. Quite honestly, life intervened in such a way that I almost didn’t get my recipe done in time for the deadline. It’s disappointing to see that someone has to cry ‘Foul’ when they see what they deem to be unfair. We’re all adults. This contest was heavily meat-centric- should a vegetarian who comes to vote get ticked off because there aren’t more meatless options? What about someone who follows a vegan diet? Rarely is anything in life fair.

  17. “This kind of behavior puts a black eye on all food bloggers..”

    What kind of behavior are you referring to…having an opinion?

    Everything that I’ve read has been very polite, (obviously, you’ve never seen a flame-war!) and as positive as possible in light of what even Justin has admitted is a legitimate concern, and some very positive commentary and suggestions have come from it.

    This is how things get better.

  18. …and, by the way, you’re mistaken.

    If you received the same original email that I did, it stated very clearly,

    “We will then set up a poll for FBR (Foodie Blog Roll) members to vote for their favorite!”

    No mention of a open vote.

  19. I think that between the upcoming holiday and the contest, we may all be a bit frazzled.

    But really, overall was it a good experience for you, or a bad one?

    Up until I was made aware of these complaints, I didn’t realize there was this much angst brewing. I was mistaken about how the contest was going to be voted on, but that was my mistake, and not anyone else’s fault. When I found out that it was different, I adjusted.

    The only reason I posted here to begin with was that when I responded to Justin, he suggested that I share some of my thoughts here as well. I don’t have any huge gripe about the contest. I’ve seen much worse. I had suggestions on how to mitigate some of the complaints, but even if nothing changed, I’d enter this contest again if I could.

    Of course I want to win. We all want to win. We’re not all going to win. That’s the way it works. If you enter a contest, you play by the rules of the contest. In this case, yes, it was partially a popularity contest.

    Since there were no rules against posting on Facebook, skywriting a message about voting, or taking an ad in the New York Times, then no one was cheating if they did those things.

    We all did the best we could. Some people may have struggled more with one aspect of the contest than another, but I think everyone created something they could be proud of. That’s worth something, right?

  20. One last thing – as far as commenting on everyone’s site, I was planning on doing that after Christmas. I did peek in everywhere so I could vote in the contestant-only voting, but if I had stopped to formulate a comment for each, I would still be going through them all.

    I did appreciate the people who stopped by to day “hi,” though, and if anyone feels miffed that I didn’t respond, I’m sorry. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to spend a little more time on all your sites after I get through the holiday madness. And if not, at least know that I stopped by and waved at you.

  21. Have you considered weighting the votes? It’d be a bit more complicated from a tallying-it-up perspective, but might prevent some of the problems. Maybe visitors vote for a first and a second place winner, and a first place vote is worth eight points and a second place is worth five. At the end, whomever has the most points wins.

    It wouldn’t totally eliminate the problem, but it could even the playing field–the people with really strong networks will still get a boost from their followers, but forcing a second-place vote could put a spotlight on standout recipes (or whatever) from less popular/networked bloggers.

    I remain terribly impressed by the generosity that you guys have shown to bloggers and hope to see the contests continue for a long time–I love reading the entries and always seem to fine *someone* new to follow.

  22. First of all the initial correspondence about this contest and the voting plainly said it was going to be open ONLY to FoodieBlogRoll members and I am sure a lot of us did the same thing I did and either asked people to quickly join FoodieBlogRoll or simply told them that they could not vote. When it was then “open voting” it came as a little bit of a surprise and I had to contradict myself to my readers, but that was a small hurdle to overcome.

    It is not difficult to check stats and see who has more comments and who doesnt and we as bloggers feel that when we see blogs and blog posts with a lot of comments then we decide that those blogs have larger followings and then in turn would get more votes and with this in mind the reverse would also be assumed ie: few comments = few followers = few votes. I think what people might be misunderstanding is that perhaps their recipe, while very precious to them, did not or does not have the mass appeal that they had imagined, I for one would not expect people to be clamoring for aji panca sorbet or dulse ice cream no matter how good it tastes.

    It would be wise to think that some people know their way around a computer and the internet and it would not be unusual for someone to know how to do things that other people do not know how to do and it would be sad to think that people were “ballot stuffing” as one commenter mentioned but it also would not be an unthinkable idea. Limiting voting to one ISP address is a way to prevent such things but I dont think it is fool proof. I have been in other contests and I have received e-mails from other bloggers detailing how I could get extra votes and when I told them I would not even think of doing such a thing they quickly were no longer followers of my blog – I guess I offended them. I am not suggesting or accusing anyone of wrong doing I am simply relaying thoughts and ideas that were conveyed to me.

    Now none of this is really neither here nor there – this is not rocket science – many of us have been on the receiving end of a number of goodies from both MarxFoods and FoodieBlogRoll so in that respect we are all winners. I think what makes this contest different from other contests is the idea that it was “Iron Foodie” and that would suggest that the recipes would be a little more on the unusual and creative side so everyone really went all out to come up with what they thought was outstanding and with this in mind the individual entries become very precious to the contestant.(thats twice I have used that word) Precious entries results in precious contestants (now thats three times) it is this “preciousness” that seems to be guiding a lot of the grief in my opinion. Do I have the perfect solution? No I do not. Is there a perfect solution? Probably not? I think no matter how you slice it only one person can win. Do I think my entry is the coolest? Of course I do. Do I have a decent following? Yes I do? Do I have 1000’s of Facebook friends? Yes I do. Can I explain the voting results? No I cant. It goes back to what I said earlier that perhaps we are disillusioned into thinking that we have the best entry because it is our entry but it doesnt have mass appeal. In contests like these it seems that uniqueness and creativity and skill with a camera go out the window – the bottom line becomes “can I make this and would I make this” and I think that is what influences the votes, (plus our friends, family and co-workers) but dont go by what I say.

    Most of these contests ARE popularity contests and there is really nothing wrong with that, the whole idea is to drive traffic and if traffic is driven in the end then the primary goal is achieved. If people decide they no longer want to participate then it is their loss. Pandering for votes is a huge distraction but it really is part of the whole. I am one of the bus drivers of traffic to MarxFoods and I am happy to do it whether I win or not. There are a lot of good ideas expressed here and I think that if they are all gathered together and a solution is determined then there will be a new batch of complaints and new obstacles to overcome.

    Perhaps each of the 25 contestants should sponsor a contest and determine a winner in the best way they can so that they can see what the possibilities and constraints are all about and then report back with the “perfect” solution.

  23. I find it refreshing that we’re all able to share our thoughts and concerns so openly in this type of forum! Thanks to each of you for your candor. Thanks to Justin and Jenn for creating such an awesome challenge. Their generosity to host and market our blogs is more than admirable!

    In my opinion, this contest has benefited all of us by growing our reader base, challenging us to create effective ways to reach our readers and nudged us to create new and exciting recipes using “free” products that are truly exquisite!

    I would love to win on merit alone but that isn’t how this contest was presented. I came into the contest expecting to solicit votes and quite frankly, was disappointed when I learned that each IP would only get one vote. I planned to hustle up enough votes to win with my large following on FB and Twitter but despite all my pandering I still haven’t gotten enough votes to win the contest! I have however, gained over 10 new subscribers and had more hits on my blog than ever before! My FB friends have been extremely supportive and I’ve created a recipe that I can be proud to present to all of my readers.

    I’ve been involved in several competitions and have not won any of them, but that doesn’t deter me from trying again and again. This is about growing as a chef, food blogger and sharing comrade with like minded individuals.

    There have been many useful suggestions brought forth by this discussion. I trust that Justin and Jenn will continue to provide a forum for each of us to expand and grow our passion for food blogging and come up with the fairest ways to conduct future challenges. Although, I think this one was pretty straight forward.

    My only suggestion would be to set forth concise contest rules so there can be no question of what is expected from potential challengers.

    I’m very happy to have had the opportunity to play!!

  24. I only have time for a quick comment, but I do want to share my opinion. I enter a lot of recipe contests, but I only enter voting contests when all semifinalists receive something, because I feel that voting contests are simply popularity contests (and are very easy to cheat in), and I HATE begging for votes–I find it embarrassing. I entered this contest because I wanted to try some new ingredients, and because Justin mentioned that there would be other “runner-up” prizes, which I erroneously assumed would be chosen by the sponsors, based on merit. My fault for assuming. Having said that, I had a GREAT time developing my recipes and using new ingredients, and I wholeheartedly appreciate the sponsors’ generosity and willingness to have a discussion about the situation. So, thanks Marx Foods and Leftover Queen for such a fun opportunity.

    I initially wasn’t going to ask for any votes, but was persuaded by my husband to post on my FB page, and on a cooking contest board that I am a member of. A few days into the contest, my husband visited the Marx foods contest site on his smartphone, and saw that he was able to vote again, because he has a dynamic IP address.

    When I found this out, I e-mailed Justin to let him know that it was possible to vote multiple times from a smartphone. That was all I said. I didn’t gripe about it being unfair, or anything else. I simply told him that it was possible out of respect for him and because I think he believed he was running a fair contest. (I have also been in contests where people actually go to vote exchange sites on FB and make deals to vote for each other’s entries. I can’t imagine anyone being so desperate to “win” that they would do that, but it happens more frequently than one might imagine.)

    Anyway, I want to reiterate my gratitude to Marx Foods and Foodie Blogroll and give my suggestion for future contests. What about having a contest that is judged by the sponsors (or whomever) and having a poll for people to predict the winner? Then, out of all of the correct predictions, one voter is randomly selected to win a prize. Then, people may be more inclined to actually vote for the one they think is best, so that they will have the opportunity to win a prize. Blogs would get even more traffic, because voters would actually go to the blog to evaluate the recipe, and the sponsor would still get the traffic from the poll. Just a thought.

    Well, my comment wasn’t as “quick” as I had planned, but I really wanted to make my thoughts known and also say thanks for a really fun opportunity. I also found it very interesting to read the other contestants’ comments. I’ll be interested to see who wins the contestant vote. Good luck, everyone!

  25. I think what started out as an open discussion at the request of Justin has become a little contentious. Let’s all just take a deep breath and remember that these blogging contests are relatively in their infancy to many of us and we are all learning, sponsors and bloggers alike. (It may be different for those who have been entering recipe contests for a longer period i.e. come from contests to blogging, rather than the reverse.)

    We may not agree on everything, but I think we all agree that Justin is doing his best to get feedback on how to make it better next time. For all of us. That’s commendable. And, yes, we all are winners for being chosen and participating. Let’s not punish each other for candor — or perhaps a misstatement — and continue the dialogue in the spirit it was started.

  26. My last comment crossed in cyberspace with Elinor and was not a direct answer to her comment. In fact, I very much appreciated her candor and dialogue. It added much to the conversation.

  27. Like Elinor, I enter a lot of recipe contests and I have a personal policy that I will only enter those that have merit-based prizes, meaning I will not enter a contest where the winner is based solely on voting. Voting is very, very easy to manipulate, and I recently broke my own rule to enter a contest to win money for charity (which is why I broke the rule), and the top vote-getter racked up more than 100K votes in 24 hours–definitely not by word of mouth alone. It is way too easy for people to cheat, plus I want to be judged on the strength of my recipe, not my ability to pander and pester folks.

    Having said that, the Marx contests reward everyone from the start–you get lovely ingredients to play with, and in my case it generated major hits for the recipe I came up with for the mushroom contest, which was picked up by Food News Journal. That’s a win-win, whether I pander or not. I would happily do another voting-based contest for Marx but I would not ask for votes–and then the issue is that I am not doing my part to drive up traffic for the sponsor, and that gives me pause.

    I would prefer merit-based contests but I do see Marx as handling this differently than many of the other voting contests. I do hate the overall trend.

  28. I think it is your prerogative Justin. We should just be grateful for the opportunity to participate and for your generosity and kindness!
    That being said I do prefer a panel of judges over a “popularity” type contest. I have participated in both types of contests and have taken more pride in a contest where my recipe was considered by its own merit.
    Even if we don’t win this was so much fun and we got some really awesome FREE samples : )

  29. I was thinking that some time after the contest is over, I might grab all the links to everyone else’s blog and put them up as a post on my blog. Maybe a little writeup about how this was the contest I entered, these are all the entries, and encourage people to go look at all the other recipes.

    If anyone else thinks this is a good idea and we all put up the links on the same day, it might be a fun way to move some traffic around from all our sites. I’m not suggesting permanent links or anything, just one post.

    I’ve got things scheduled in advance, but maybe if anyone’s interested, we could pick a day. If people think this is a stupid idea, that’s fine too. I’ll probably do it anyway. Maybe Christmas Day. Ho ho ho and here’s a little treat for my readers, a whole package full of interesting new blogs to look at.

  30. I’ve tried voting contests a few times and it’s always left a sour taste in my mouth. It’s not about merit! The people voting for you DON’T actually think YOUR recipe is the BEST, they’re just voting for you because you ASKED them to! It’s really a contest about who has the most friends, coworkers and/or blog readers.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love Marx Foods and was in fact the winner of their Grass Fed Beef Contest last winter. However, it was judged by five chefs and not a popularity contest. Since then, I’ve tried entering a couple more of Justin’s contests but was left saddened after not getting many votes because I loathe begging friends/family/coworkers to vote for me. I don’t want to win that way. I want to win because my recipe was judged to be the best by qualified individuals.

  31. I’m glad you’re thinking about this issue. To my mind, if it’s a recipe contest you’re running, it should be about the best recipe – even if it’s submitted by a friendless hermit. And I hate the idea of encouraging “cookie-deleting computer wizards” who throw off the integrity of a contest. So I believe you do need foodie judges to decide winners of recipe contests.

    At the same time, I do understand the marketing goal of bringing more people to your site. Perhaps you could do what some other contests are doing – offer a “Most Popular” or “Reader-selected” prize as well – something lesser than the grand prize.

    I have pretty much stopped entering voting-only contests, since I hate bothering my friends with these things. I just want my recipes to be judged on their own merits.

  32. Wow … a lot to digest here. Let me pop a healthy dose of digestive enzymes and see if I can pull together a plan/policy that speaks to everyone’s concerns/desires … and that maximizes the joy!

  33. Perry – can you forward to me that email where we said it would happen on the FBR site? I couldn’t find it. You are impressively thorough. And, assuming that you are correct … I stand corrected.

  34. I think the voting contests sre okay as long as the sponcer does not ask for “VOTE ONCE A DAY”. That is ridicules. Once is enough. One vote period.

  35. We approached each aspect of your “Iron Foodie Challenge” as a family, so I put this question to the group. We all agreed with the two bloggers who felt that the bigger your social network, the more votes a challenger would get in this particular contest. That said, we additionally agreed that only allowing one vote per ISP was more fair and that not forcing voters to “join” a mailing list or other service was a refreshing change from other contests.

    All four of us also completely agreed with your statement that “recipe challengers benefit whether they win or not.” We did not compete in this challenge for the prize (although a gift certificate to Marx Foods would be an added treat!) We entered because we wanted the opportunity to try new ingredients, and to literally be “challenged” to try something out of our usual comfort zone. Working together as team brought us closer together as a family. We have had increased traffic and we have established new friends in the food blogging community as well.

    Going forward, perhaps you might consider a weighted point system, (my sons liken it to the BSC scoring system,) with a percentage of the total points would come from outside votes, a percentage from competitor’s votes and a percentage from judge’s votes.

    Thank you for your willingness to listen and concern over the challenge. You (and Marx Foods) are a tribute to the foodie community! It has been a sincere pleasure to work with you over the last month and we look forward to a continued “fruitful” relationship!

  36. Voting has been one of the most disappointing and controversial developments in recipe contesting.

    I am regularly hounded for votes, to the point where it has become a nuisance. The contests where you can vote every day (or even multiple times a day) for periods that can be as long as 6 weeks are by far the worst. I wind up resenting the folks begging for votes as much as I do the sponsor.

    Many contesters spend considerable time, effort, and money developing thoughtful recipes using sponsor’s products. It has happened many times where I go to the sponsor’s website to vote and see something that is entirely unoriginal, and looks like cat barf on a plate, which has received thousands of votes. This is one reason I do not enter these contests.

    In my opinion, there are two ways to make a voting contest more palatable. The first is to limit the voting to one vote per person, period, and keep the voting period short. The second is to offer two ways to win — one based on traditional judging and merit, the other based on number of votes (a People’s Choice), for example.

  37. As an Iron Foodie competitor, I wanted to quickly weigh in…I want to first start by saying I am a TINY blog. Most sponsors won’t give me product to giveaway, rate, review, etc. They tend to focus on larger blogs with a bigger reader base and that’s okay. I’ll get there one day. But, Marx Foods didn’t care when they picked me to compete. I knew that I’d be outclassed, especially in a voting situation. For me, I have had over 40 people read my Iron Foodie recipe since it posted, which is huge. If there was no voting, I’m not sure how many people would have checked it out. I’m thankful that Justin did not discern based on readership…and if I don’t win, I do have 8 ingredients, which, I don’t know so Justin please correct me but based on what I’ve seen on your site would easily retail for $50 and a few new readers, as well! There’s just no easy answer to this, but knowing a lot of people who hate the voting component of contests, I’m glad everyone has this forum to express their opinion. I told Justin you just can’t please everyone, but I think a “runner-up” prize, even chosen by Justin himself, might be a nice option to explore after a voting prize.

  38. Justin,

    Just sent it. It’s from the very first email that went out, “Foodie Blogroll: Iron Foodie Contest!” on 11/01.

    Repeated in “You are one of 25 challengers!” email on 11/09.

    Thanks!

    -Perry

  39. A of all) I agree with what Chris (#4) and Jules (#16) said. So: Ditto there.

    B) I understand feeling frustrated with a cooking contest being judged by open poll.

    What I don’t understand is feeling that frustration and then entering a contest being judged that way and then complaining about it.

    It was very clear from the get-go that final judgement would basically be a popularity contest…..even when it seemed the open poll would be limited to Foodie Blog Roll members. That’s still nearly 10,000 people who don’t know everyone; it seemed obvious the outcome would be weighted in favor of blogs with a well-established following.

    It was clear, so no harm no foul. I don’t have any complaints. On the contrary, I had a blast.

    C) A couple of ideas for future contests, just to add to the brainstorm:

    – Do a selection process for a panel of food blogging judges. Have them enter, answer questions, show credentials, etc. If they are selected, stipulate that they must make each dish and blog about their process. (Naturally the field of competitors would have to be smaller, and even then it would take way more time for the contest to be completed. Those are the cons.)

    – Group competitors by blog following. That way the field would be even within each group.

    Overall, thanks to Justin and Jenn for a fun food adventure. Cheers!

  40. Hello Justin, I am the editor of Cooking Contest Central, a website that has been listing cooking and food related competitions for about 14 years.
    Our membership is made up of dedicated contest hobbyists who thrive on creating recipes and putting them into competition with others. Although CCC members are known to vigorously vent on voting contests, their comments are mostly confined to member areas of CCC. It has become such a volatile subject we had to set up a separate forum just for the voting issue. I want to thank you for bringing this subject up in a public forum. Although I am aware that contest sponsors have differing motivations when sponsoring a competition, I hope they will take heed of this discussion.

  41. I think you should do away with voting contest. The people who vote are directed to your site this is true. However they never look at anything on your site they are just there to give their friend a vote and leave. So what you recieve for a winner of the votes is the most popular kid in the group basically. I avoid contest with voting involved and do not purchase products from the companies that offer voting contest. Your company is loosing good customers and good recipes.

  42. I am a little late on this subject, but here is my take. I have entered a couple of these voting contests and may still if only a fraction of the win, (like 1 or 5%) is based on votes. I understand the sponsors wish to expand the number of people exposed to their product, but I also know that anyone I have ever directed to vote for a recipe, didn’t even remember the sponsor. Asking me later about the outcome, they couldn’t even remember what type of product it was! Sadly, that is not the main reason that I am steering clear. Yes, I am SICK of people begging me for votes for one thing and another, but the real reason is CHEATING and hurt feelings. I know for a fact that seemingly “normal” folks cheat regularly in these contests. A “friend” of mine openly laughed to me about having her teen child “clean the cookies” on their computer in order to vote over and over (and over and over)without dectetion. This was for a contest with a prize to a major city to compete for a big cash prize (this person did get the trip). Even though I know that many people informed the marketing firm of the obvious cheating, they ignored the problem. I can’t help it, but now I hold the sponsor in a very unfavorable light, and often bypass their (many) products. PS, when the vote tally or ranking is visible in an ongoing way, it seems to egg on the ugly behavior.

  43. While I have to agree that open voting seems to generate the most votes for those with the best social network, I feel personally that then enlarging one’s social network could be a wonderful challenge…Those “socially enhanced” bloggers, so far as I have seen, give great content.
    For me, entering a contest is a chance to challenge myself to create something new and out of my comfort zone, to do my best, to learn from my mistakes and to learn from the winners what I could do better next time…and, to have FUN!
    There are so many amazing foodies, bloggers, and recipes out there, and I love that Marx Foods provides all of us bloggers with high-quality samples and challenges to experiment with! I feel like a winner every time.

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