Santa Beardy says: "Merry Christmas to all the non-jerk asses out there!"

Thanks in large part to the Crash The Superbowl contest, traffic to our little blog has really been on the rise lately.  And the good news is, it looks like many readers are sticking around.  So if you’re new to the site, thanks for checking us out!  And if you haven’t done so already, why not subscribe to our RSS feed?

It’s been really great hearing from our readers (well, our readers who don’t think I’m a “douche pumper”) and if you’re enjoying the site, please feel free to throw your voice into the mix and leave some comments.  I especially like hearing from other regular video contest entrants so if you’re feeling friendly, drop me a line, introduce yourself and tell me about your contest track record.  I love hearing about success stories so if you want to do some bragging, go for it.  We may even want to cover some of your victories here on the blog.

But the thing we are most interested in hearing about are they ways you’ve been screwed by a contest!  Have you sat and watched helplessly as some jerk-ass cheated their way into a victory?  Know of a contest organizer that’s been ignoring their own rules?  Are you starting to suspect that a company is never going to actually pay you the winnings the owe you?  Well let us know!

Video contests have become so popular, so fast that the scene is pretty much a lawless, disorganized mess.  If you see someone who is obviously voting for their own video over and over in a vote-based contest or if you suspect that a company is screwing filmmakers out of what they’ve eared, what could you do about it?  Well now you can tell us.  Companies hate negative press, even if it comes from a Podunk little blog like ours.  It’s easy to cheat or to mess with filmmakers when you think no one will ever know what you’re doing.  But if we call out these people in public, there will forever be a record of their crappy conduct on the web.

Just a few weeks ago a filmmaker e-mailed me and explained that a video contest site had been jerking him around for almost a year.  He won a $500 prize from them that they would just never pay up.  He e-mailed them over and over and he always got the same response “Sorry, we’ll send the check out ASAP!”  He told us that other users of the site were having the same problems.  We e-mailed some users of the site and before we could even start writing out story, the company in question contacted us and asked what was going on.  Long story short, that dude has his check and an apology about 5 days later.

So please folks, use this site as a tool for keeping jerks in line.  Maybe you want to complain about a contest but you’re worried about wrecking your chances of winning.  Well if you find yourself in such a circumstance, let us know the details and we will consider lodging a complaint on your behalf.  As always, you can contact us at VIDEOCONTESTNEWS@GMAIL.COM.

Again, thanks to everyone out there for checking out the site.  Merry Christmas and of course, good luck!