Sponsored contest at TGC

I had the idea that I might be able to run a giveaway on The Game Crafter for Dr. Esker's Notebook. I have used TGC for nearly all of my game prototype production and boardgame publishing since I first heard of them in 2009, and I'm a huge fan of the site. I contacted them, and it turned out Tavis (one of the founders, and their marketing guy) was about to do a contest celebrating their adding their 2000th game piece type to their inventory.

I came up with ten clues to ten of their many, many parts, and Tavis and I developed the contest from there. I also sponsored up to ten copies of Dr. Esker's Notebook as prizes. If you want to give it a try, the link is here:

TGC Esker Contest Link

Tavis' video intro is here:

I had fun doing this, and I think it will potentially end up generating some exposure for me. I'm not sure how much I'll end up spending on the sponsorship - high-end case, it would probably be around $170 if all the winners win games and all of them are overseas, but I think it will probably be more like $40-$60 in games and postage. If I sell 5-7 games from the publicity, I make that back, but it will be hard (or impossible) to know if anybody buys for that reason. 

The contest has been live for 14 hours, and there are already 338 participants, so that's pretty good. I'll keep following it to see how it goes.