Unless your Internet has been down for the last week or two, you’ve probably heard about Godaddy.com’s huge, new commercial contest.  It’s one of the absolute, best video contests I have ever seen.  First off, the prizes are huge.  Third place wins you $25,000, second place is $50,000 and first place is $100,000.  Second, many big-money contests host all the entries themselves.  But for this one, participants just submit their entries via youtube.  So unlike last year’s Doritos and Butterfinger contests, no entries will disappear in the depths of the sponsor’s servers and contestants won’t have to wait for days for their videos to appear online.  The only catch is that you have to sign up for a goddady account, which is free.

I think the thing I like best about this contest though is that the top three winners will be picked by Godaddy judges and not by a public vote.  That means the quality videos actually have a chance of coming out on top.  But the folks behind this contest did something else very smart.  Visitors to the site will be able to vote for their favorite entries but those votes have no impact on which videos win the top prizes.  Instead, there are smaller (but still pretty good) prizes for entries that are the “audience favorites.”

The deadline to enter is April 23^rd so you still have a good, long while to get your submissions in.  To kick things off, the Godaddy team created a sample entry.

Godaddy sample entry:

Here’s what the godaddy team had to say about their sample entry:

“If we expect you to make a commercial for the GoDaddy.com Commercial Contest, we should be able to make one ourselves, right? This is an idea we (Go Daddy’s Social Media Team) put together to give you an example of a potential submission for the contest. Of course, we’re not eligible to win. Also, our example’s a bit longer than the 30 second limit…”

I think it’s funny though that the sample video is 16 seconds longer than the official time limit.  Just goes to show how hard it is to keep an idea under 30 seconds.  Having their “social media team” create a sample entry is just the kind of thing that gives me a good feeling about a  video contest.  It shows that the sponsor is holding the contest partly for the fun of it.  I’ll tell you, not only will I be entering this contest, I plan to throw everything I got at this one.

Important Note! If you live in New York, Florida or outside of the US, don’t bother entering because you ain’t eligible for some reason.  Check the official rules for more details about who can enter.