Are Contests Helpful?

Greetings everyone!

I have a lot of friends that ask me to vote for them in various contests for modeling, song writing, photography and other professions.  Hopefully, those of you who know me see me as someone that enjoys giving support whenever I can.  In general, I really focus quite a bit on that.

I do have challenges when it comes to contests, though.  First is time.  My time is very limited these days.  Contests are often not a one-time event.  Many require you to vote daily or offer options for several times in one day and it is rare I can make the time to focus on that, as much as I would love to.

Second, some of them require you to sign up to other websites and provide personal information for marketing purposes.  This doesn’t always make sense since the voter usually isn’t in the profession, just supporting a friend or someone they admire.

This brings me to my third, and most important, point.  I find it rare that any of these contests are actually based on the best piece of work.  They are far more often a popularity contest and, even then, don’t show the true outcome of who has the highest support of their friends.  This causes people to not only be discouraged as artists but also thinking their friends don’t care enough to help.  How is this helpful?  Maybe one person has a day where they have nothing to do and they can sit and vote for their friend for hours and others don’t.  Does that mean another person doesn’t have loving, supportive friends?  Of course not.

Let’s say you win.  Ok, great!  But are you truly winning on artistic merit?  As an artist, can you be proud of winning the prize, however big it is?  I don’t think I could.  I would want to win unless I had the piece that people honestly enjoyed the most, not because I spent the most time online voting and bringing my network of friends together.

There can be benefits to winning.  Exposure, being the biggest.  Some contests, especially in song writing, have a panel of judges and you can pay additional funds into the entry fee to have written feedback sent to you.  The downside being you cannot get clarification.  You get what you get.

If you feel like it could be a benefit, you should enter.  Before you pay the entry fee, I would encourage you to think about what you want to get out of it and how it can help/hurt you.  Be real and honest when you make your decision.  If you just want to win a prize, maybe it doesn’t matter so much how you get to the top.  If you are truly an artist and want to win on artistic merit, realize what you are up against in the reality of how the voting is being run.  Find a strategy that you can hold on to and be free of discouragement.  That is more important than the prize, at least to me.

So why did I choose this topic out of all the things swimming around my brain?  Because I have seen too many friends get down on themselves for something that typically has no relevance to their actual talent.  Get honest feedback on your work.  Not from people that will just pump you up and tell you that you are great but from people that are going to be truly honest and will help you grow as an artist.

Thanks for reading!