That’s right, Darin from the Search Engine Marketing blog held a contest for a 2GB USB Drive, and I won! All you had to do to enter is leave a comment on the post, and he chose someone at random.

Contests are a great way to get some links back from bloggers wanting to win stuff, and get some readers as well. Tech products like this tend to do the best on “blogger blogs,” but if you decide to do a contest from your blog, make sure to give away something related to your subject matter.

I didn’t write this post to gloat, but to prove that if you’re serious about blogging, it always pays off to stay active in the online communities. Even if you don’t win contests, the simple act of visiting other blogs and commenting brings tons of traffic to your site. And in Darin’s case, brings a PR6 backlink to your site from the winner too

This couldn’t have come at a better time; my 1GB SanDisk Micro just crapped out on me, and all I have left is a 512MB Sandisk Cruzer that barely holds the apps that I run on it.

Be sure to keep an eye out on Darin.cc, as he plans to run more contests in the future.