Onlinevideocontests.com is easily one of my favorite websites on the entire Internet that doesn’t feature boobs or captioned cat photos.  Until now they’ve pretty much focused on doing just one thing, really, really well; listing video contests.  The design of the site is PERFECT.  It’s clean, user-friendly and simply cool-looking.  You can even do custom searches for contests based on specific criteria like whether or not they use judges or public voting to determine the winners!  It’s just awesome and I can honestly say that the site has helped me find more than a few contests that I went on to win.

And the the folks at “OVC” have made a good thing even better by adding some great new features to the site.  Registered users can now post their winning videos in the “WINNERS” section and if a filmmaker needs votes to win a contest, they can post their video in the “UP FOR VOTE” section.  I expect to be making use of both features in the near future.  Follow the links to check out the new stuff:

http://www.onlinevideocontests.com/winners

http://www.onlinevideocontests.com/upforvote

If you’re like really, really new to the concept of making money and winning prizes by entering multiple video contests, Happy Joel is a guy you should study and Films4prizes.com is a site you should bookmark and check every, single day.  Joel’s won like a billion dollars by entering video contests (correction: figure is closer to $200,000) and shares his secret to winning in the above interview.  Spoiler alert: His secret tip is just to put the work in and enter ‘cause you never know when you might win.  That’s simple but excellent advice.  I know a ton of filmmakers and I tell them over and over that they should give video contests a shot.  Some seem tempted and I’ve even helped a few people find contests and plan entries but in the end, the chicken out.  They don’t want to risk spending their time, money and effort on something that might not pay off.

And that right there is why video contests ARE worth the time, money and effort.  Though they’ve really grown in popularity, there are still a ton of video contests that are getting very few entries.  So don’t be a wuss.  Get over to films4prizes.com, pick a contest that sounds fun and go for it.