3 useful tricks to help you spot genuine poetry contests
Posted by poetrycontests on April 30th, 2021
If poetry is your passion, then you need to try and find means of getting better at it. This may include taking part in competitions or even finding ways of connecting to other poets. You can find fellow poets through social media or even through your local theatre group. They can be of great value in helping you analyze your strengths and leaning how to improve your weak areas. On the other hand, poetry contests allow you to not only meet contestants from all over the world but you also get an opportunity to get feedback from published poets. For these reasons and more, entering a contest can be amazing for your writing career. However, you need to be able to weed out scammers from genuine organizers so that you don’t end up getting duped. Some of the areas you can look at to see if a contest seems too good to be true include:
1. Ownership rights
Your poetry is your intellectual property and should remain as such until you agree on giving away these rights for a form of compensation for a period of time. Thus, if a competition wants you to give up your ownership rights when you take part in it, it is a red flag. You shouldn’t give away your work without any form of compensation. Most free poetry contests that ask you to give up your rights, might end up using your work as their own and make money from your creativity without giving you fair compensation. Before you take part in any contest, read the fine print and if you don’t understand it, ask somebody with knowledge of the law to interpret it for you.
2. Unusual prizes
Most scammers tend to prey on people’s vulnerabilities and greed. This means that they will offer prizes that seem too good to be true. If the contest is claiming partnership with other well-known brands, they may offer you exorbitant gifts such as a brand new expensive car or several years supply of a commodity. The best way to verify such poetry contests is by checking with the mentioned brand to see whether they are really a part of it. Such contests may also offer an unusually large sum of money to the winner while offering numerous outrageous qualifications that you need to meet to qualify. Beware of them and avoid if you can.
3. Hazy details
Any legitimate free poetry contests should offer detailed instructions on how to participate in the competition. The instructions should be easily available and shouldn’t be over complicated either. If you find that you are being provided with hazy details at first with a promise of more after you give a donation for free contests, you are being scammed. You also shouldn’t need to give too many intimate personal information such as credit card numbers and passwords. Most of all, you should be able to easily get in touch with the organizers should you have any questions. If you can’t, you are probably getting scammed.
