NOTE:  Our traffic has gone up a good bit thanks to the Crash the Superbowl posts.  So if you’re new to the site, thanks for visiting.  If you’re looking for a place to promote your Doritos commercial, scroll down to the next post.  But if you feel like reading some non-CTSB video contest news, scroll your eyes down to the next paragraph.

There are lot of reasons NOT to enter certain video contests.  If the winner is picked by a public vote, you should probably stay out of that fight.  If the prize is really small that means the company is cheap and might not even pay up if you win.  But the most offensive red flag is a contest that charges you an entry fee.  All I can say about that is Fuuuuu*k that noise.  Finally, I try to avoid contests that are run by non-U.S. based companies.  For one, those contests are usually open to everyone, everywhere which means that your competition is THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD.  But more importantly, if you have a problem with that contest, what are you going to do?  Fly over to their home country and sue them?

So those are what I consider to be deal-breaking red flags.  That said, I think I have officially discovered the WORST video contest I have ever seen.  Somehow they managed to pull off the rare, 4-red-flagger contest here.  It’s “Doc Sniper’s Make Some Noise Video contest” and it immediately comes off as suspicious because the point of the contest is incredibly vague.  Check out this description:

That’s it?  Make a video with music in it?  What the heck is the point of that?  Ohhh..I know.  The point is that to enter the contest, you have to pay a $10 ENTRY FEE!  Pretty much any filmmaker will already have some kind of project that includes music in it.  So maybe a ton of them will decide to take a shot, pay the 10 bucks and enter to win the massive $500 jackpot!

This just has “scam” written all over it.  The winner of the $500 prize is picked by the “Doc Sniper” community.  So think about that; you have to PAY to enter the contest and then if you want the prize, you have to get a bunch of people to register to the site to vote for you.  I repeat, Fuuuuuuu*k that noise.

I kind of feel bad for ripping on DocSniper.com because after looking through the site, it seems to be the passion project of some young entrepreneurs hoping to build a new social networking site.  I don’t think they actually want to rip people off but based on the business model they are presenting, I think that it’s inevitable that people are going to get screwed.  Basically it looks like they are trying to build a pyramid scheme for video contests; if 100 people each pay 10 bucks to enter the contest then 50% of that money goes to the “winner” and 50% goes to Doc Sniper.  According to the site, it is their goal to do one contest like this every month.  But so far, just 3 people have entered the “music” contest.  Are they still going to pay out the 500 bucks if they only take in $30 in entries fees?

The final red flag here is a little weird but there are several videos on the site from “Doc Sniper” himself in which he explains certain aspects of the site.  Click right here to visit the site and watch one of these videos.  (best example is on the front page in the upper right hand corner)  Something is weird about Doc Sniper.  It took me a second to catch on but the guy in the video is doing a fake American Accent.  I kept poking through the site and in the forum, someone mentions that Doc Sniper is based in Australia.  So there you go, the final red flag.  And this red flag is so scary it has a picture of an even redder flag on it!  The people behind this site are going out of their way to make it appear like they are based in the US (besides the accent, they seem to really drive home the fact that prizes are paid in US dollars.)

Like I said, I feel bad for coming down so hard on this site.  Despite the weird fake accent, “Doc Sniper” even seems like a nice guy.  So Doc, if you have a google alert set for your name and you see this, I recommend that you drop the entry fee idea ASAP.  There are just way, way too many free video contests out there for the concept ever to catch on.