Contest rules and risk check: what to read before you promote an entry

In what order should you read a contest's rules?

Read in an order that lets you stop early: eligibility first, then outside promotion, then voting, then dates and prizes, then platform terms. If the first two fail, nothing after them matters.

Save the pages before you start. Rules change, and the page you saw on registration day may differ from the page in the final week. Keep each document as a PDF or a screenshot with the date, and note the link.

What to open

• The official rules or terms and conditions, which are the binding text.
• The FAQ or help page, which often holds the only sentence on outside promotion.
• The voting page itself, because the steps a voter sees are part of the rules.
• Any entry guidelines or participant code of conduct.
• The terms of the platform where the contest runs and of any platform where you plan to advertise.

Mark every line

Use three marks while reading: go for clearly allowed, ask for unclear and stop for forbidden. A set of rules rarely has more than a handful of asks, and each one becomes a question in the email at the end of this guide.

Does the contest allow outside promotion, and in what form?

Look for the sentence that deals with promotion, canvassing, solicitation, advertising, sharing or campaigning. That sentence decides whether anything else in this guide is worth doing.

Words that look harmless and are not

A public vote does not automatically mean public campaigning. Fair-play clauses often forbid incentives for votes, vote swaps and groups that vote for each other. The word organic usually means no paid reach. Read each in context, and ask when unsure.

When the answer is stop, CoinMarketing Pro says so and declines the project. The page on projects we decline explains the cases.

How is voting protected, and what will each supporter have to do?

Write the protection down as the list of steps a supporter will meet. Every step costs you some supporters, and your message has to name it.

• Email confirmation by link or code: email verification.
• An account on the contest site: registration and login, or social login.
• A challenge on the form: captcha-protected voting.
• One vote per network or device: IP and device limits.
• A code sent to a phone: phone or SMS verification.
• One vote per voter per day: daily vote limits.
• Voting only inside a mobile app: app voting.
• A jury score combined with the public vote: jury and public vote.

Decision rule

Count the steps. With each added step, the ask must say what is coming, and reminders must prompt people to finish. Then read what the organizer says about suspicious votes. Most reserve the right to remove them, so your campaign has to show ordinary people arriving through ads, posts and personal messages.

We never help anyone get around a protection. A contest that only works if you do is a stop.

Who can enter, who can vote, and who is excluded?

Check three groups: entrants, voters and people who are excluded. An ineligible entry that is promoted wastes the whole budget, and the organizer can remove it at the end.

Entrants

• Age limits and residency or country restrictions.
• Whether a company, a team or only an individual may enter.
• Whether the work must be original and unpublished.
• The rule for minors: a parent or guardian usually has to agree. See kids, pets and school contests.

Voters

• Who may vote, and whether voters must be adults or residents.
• Whether you may vote for your own entry.
• Whether the organizer's staff, relatives or sponsors are excluded.

Rights over your entry

Look for a license clause. Many contests take permission to display, reproduce or promote the entry. Check how long it lasts and whether it covers use in advertising, because your ad creative may reuse the same images.

For wallet-based competitions the same questions apply to wallets; see crypto, NFT and Web3 contests. Any doubt about whether you may enter is an ask, and it comes before spending, not after.

Which dates, prizes and fees change how you plan the campaign?

Dates set the shape of the campaign, and prizes and fees tell you what the entry is worth to the organizer and to you. Read them in this order.

Questions this table raises

Is there any stage after the public vote? If so, a public campaign is only part of the plan, and the rules and consulting service covers the rest. Does the contest announce results in a specific channel? Put the date in your calendar, and use the 7, 14 and 30 day calendar to place reminders before the close.

What do platform and community terms add to the contest's own rules?

They add a second set of rules that is easy to miss, and when the two differ, the stricter one wins.

• Ad policies. Each advertising platform reviews ads against its own policies and may restrict some topics, such as crypto or anything involving minors. Read the policy of every platform you plan to use. Our pages on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok show how we plan around them.
• Promotion guidelines. Platforms that host a contest on their own features publish guidelines for promotions run there. If the contest lives on a platform, read them.
• Community rules. Groups, subreddits and channels set their own limits on asking for votes. A post that is welcome in one place gets removed in another, so read the rules of the community, and ask the admins if they are not clear. See Reddit and Telegram.

Decision rule

If a platform's rule forbids the format you had in mind, change the format, not the rule. Ask for a different channel before you ask the platform for an exception.

How do you turn your marks into a decision and a record?

Apply one rule: any single stop means stop. Two or more asks about promotion mean write before you spend anything. When everything is a go, you can plan the campaign.

Keep the decision on a single sheet so you and anyone helping you can see it.

Contest and organizer:
Rules saved on (date) and link:
Eligible to enter (go / ask / stop):
Outside promotion allowed (go / ask / stop):
Paid ads mentioned (go / ask / stop):
Voting steps a supporter must complete:
Deadline and time zone:
Stages after the public vote:
Prize conditions to confirm:
Platform and community rules to read:
Questions for the organizer:
Decision and date:

For every ask, send the organizer a short email and keep the answer.

Hello, I am entering [ENTRY NAME] in [CONTEST NAME]. Before I share it, could you confirm whether outside promotion, including advertising that links to the entry page, is allowed under the rules? Please also tell me which voting steps a voter must complete. Thank you, [YOUR NAME]

If you would rather not do this alone, send the rules through the free contest analysis and we return the marked sheet with a plan.

How it works

1. Save the rulesDownload or screenshot the rules, FAQ and voting page with the date and link.
2. Mark promotion and eligibilityFind the sentence on outside promotion and the eligibility clauses, and mark each go, ask or stop.
3. List the voting stepsWrite down every check a supporter must pass, from email confirmation to app voting.
4. Check dates, prizes and platform termsNote the deadline with its time zone, later stages, prize conditions and the policies of each platform.
5. Ask, decide and recordEmail the organizer about every ask, then record the decision and the reply.