I'd almost forgotten about this, but an email notification from answers.com reminded me that I had entered the first-ever answers.com's creative writing challenge a couple of weeks ago.
The rules were simple enough. Take ten words, pre-selected by answers.com, and write a prose, a poem, or an essay in your blog or web page. Hyper-link the words back to answers.com and submit the entry. And so, I decided to post a short story and to enter it in the challenge.
My family liked the story, but of course there's a touch of bias there. Yet surprisingly this past Monday I was chosen by the judges as the runner-up and got a link back to my blog from answers.com's Hall of Fame page, and a $50 Amazon gift certificate to boot.
Of the ten words, the only one I had no idea about was "melissophobia" which means an abnormal fear of bees. That's okay, Word's spell-checker doesn't know that term either. So in the end, the writing challenge was fun, educational, and, considering the $50 gift certificate, profitable.
Answers.com is running another contest now. I may enter again, but better yet, I might ask my kids to take a shot at it. At worst case they will expand their vocabulary and hone their writing skills. Sounds like a win already. Of course, all those backlinks don't hurt answers.com either.
Give a few Sats