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How to Make a SweepWidget Photo Voting Contest

In this article, we will show you how to make a stunning photo contest with SweepWidget! You will learn how to let photographers upload a photo or video. Then, you’ll see how your audience can view, sort, and vote on their favorites. Once the contest concludes, you can either have the person with the most votes be considered the winner. Or, you can have it so you randomly or manually selected the winner from a judging panel. Let’s start!

View a live example photo voting contest

Create the photo contest

First, you’ll need to click on the New Photo Contest link in the left nav bar of your SweepWidget account.

Next, you’ll start with the Entry Form Info and fill out the basic details for your contest e.g. title, description, start/end date, rules, prizes, language.

After that, click on the Photo/Video Upload Options tab. From here, you’ll select Upload a File From Device button.

Next, you can say what the photographer must upload e.g. a picture of mountain, a photo from an event, a picture of their cat, etc.

Supported file types and limits: You can accept photos (JPG, PNG, GIF) and videos (MP4, MOV, AVI) up to 100MB in size. This ensures high-quality submissions while maintaining fast loading times for your gallery.

After that, you can optionally set custom form fields for the photographer to enter in the Login Fields tab e.g. address, age, etc.

In the Design tab, you can also customize the style of the widget. Match your brand colors, fonts, and layout to create a seamless experience for your participants.

Gallery Settings

In the Gallery Settings tab, you can customize how your photo gallery displays:

  • Choose between grid, masonry, or slideshow layouts
  • Enable or disable sorting options (Top Voted, Most Recent, Random)
  • Show or hide vote counts
  • Customize thumbnail sizes

Voting Settings

The next important step you’ll want to do is click on the Voting Settings tab. In here, you can customize the settings for the people who will vote on the photos/videos.

Key voting options include:

  • Votes per person: Set how many times each person can vote (once per day, once per contest, unlimited, etc.)
  • Authentication required: Require voters to log in via Google, Facebook, or X to prevent duplicate votes and fraud
  • Public vs. Private voting: Choose whether vote counts are visible to participants
  • Voting period: Set custom start and end dates for the voting phase

Media Approval Workflow

One of the most powerful features is the Media Approval system. This allows you to review all photo and video submissions before they appear in your public gallery.

To enable media approval, go to the Security Settings tab and check the box for “Require media approval before publishing.”

Once enabled, all submissions will go to your approval queue where you can:

  • Review each submission for quality and appropriateness
  • Approve submissions to make them visible in the gallery
  • Reject inappropriate or low-quality submissions
  • Contact submitters if needed

This feature is essential for maintaining quality control and ensuring your contest gallery only displays appropriate content.

Judge Panel

For professional contests, you can set up a Judge Panel to review submissions privately. This is perfect for photography competitions where experts need to score entries.

To set up judges:

  1. Go to the Judge Panel tab
  2. Add judge email addresses
  3. Set scoring criteria (1-10 scale, custom criteria, etc.)
  4. Judges will receive a private link to review and score submissions

Lastly, you can also customize additional security settings in the Security Settings tab, including IP blocking, CAPTCHA, and entry limits.

Embed Your Photo Contest

Once your contest is created, you have multiple options to share it:

  • Hosted Landing Page: SweepWidget provides a free hosted landing page at a unique URL
  • Embed on Your Website: Copy the embed code and paste it into any page on your website
  • WordPress Plugin: Use our WordPress plugin for easy integration
  • Shopify App: Install our Shopify app to embed contests in your store

Enter the live photo contest

Now that the contest is live, you can view it! Here’s an example of how the landing page might look.

You’ll notice an Upload a Photo button in the top right. This is for photographers to click on so they can upload their photo or video.

From here, they can enter their name/email and upload their photo or video.

How do people vote?

For people who want to vote, they can simply click on any image in the gallery and vote! They’ll be required to log in via Google, Facebook, or X. You can set how many times each person is allowed to vote and if social media authentication is required (this is recommended to prevent cheating / duplicate entries from the same people).

Voters can also sort and filter the gallery by:

  • Top Voted: See the entries with the most votes
  • Most Recent: View the newest submissions first
  • Random: Browse entries in random order

Winner Selection

When your contest ends, you have several options for selecting winners:

1. Based on Votes

Automatically select the entry with the most votes as the winner. You can choose top 1, 3, 5, or any number of winners.

2. Random Selection

Randomly select winners from all approved entries. This is fair when you want to give everyone an equal chance regardless of votes.

3. Judge Scores

If you used a judge panel, winners are selected based on the highest average scores from your judges.

4. Manual Selection

You can also manually select specific entries as winners from the reporting dashboard.

Analytics & Reporting

Throughout your contest, you can track important metrics in the reporting dashboard:

  • Total submissions
  • Total votes cast
  • Entry trends over time
  • Top voted entries
  • Voter engagement
  • Export all data to CSV

This data helps you understand your contest performance and plan future campaigns.

Best Practices for Photo Contests

  • Enable media approval to ensure quality and appropriate content
  • Require social login for voting to prevent fraud and duplicate votes
  • Set clear submission guidelines in your contest description
  • Promote across multiple channels – social media, email, website
  • Engage with participants by commenting on submissions and sharing top entries
  • Offer attractive prizes to encourage high-quality submissions
  • Run for 2-4 weeks to give people time to submit and vote

That’s the complete guide! We hope you enjoy the SweepWidget photo contest tool and run successful campaigns for your brand, organization, or community!

Learn more about photo contest features | Start your free photo contest