1. Neopets Beauty Contest Trophy
2. Neopets Beauty Contest

Basics for newbies
A new BC starts every Friday at 3:15 or 4:15 NST depending on whether it is daylight savings time or not.
Make sure you have entered a pic of your neopet under the 25kb file size limit.
When time comes put a link in your signature and get yourself out there.

BC entries are submitted here:

• This was my first beauty contest entry and I was trying only for the avatar. I didn't realize that you couldn't post in your siggy and on boards for votes. I received a warning and it said my pet would be removed from the BC. My pet still shows up in the search for the entries. Will my pet be removed?
• Oct 19, 2013 The Beauty Contest is perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of Neopets. The victim of much criticism and scorn, its entrants berate it harshly for its alleged unfairness, and outsiders complain about the advertising required to place.
• See a recent post on Tumblr from @blondebrainpower about beauty-contest. Discover more posts about beauty-contest.
• Users were encouraged to enter their pets in sitewide beauty and caption contests, submit articles to the ad hoc newspaper (The Neopian Times), and pitch ideas for new pet species.

The Beauty Contest is a weekly art competition that began on February 21, 2000. Users submit pictures of their Neopet to be voted on by other players. A new round begins every Friday at 4:15 PM NST (or 3:15 PM DST).

Your pet’s link

There are voting terms people on the neoboard commonly refer to. Here is a list of them and their definitions:

NSV: non-silent voting, when a person will let you know on their board if they voted for you.
SV: silent voting, when a person will look at your entry but not tell you whether they voted or not. this is usually to avoid making anyone feel bad about not being voted for.
MV: manual voting, when a person looks at every entry in a category before deciding a winner. They usually vote for what they think is the best, though sometimes they will be swayed to vote for you if they have seen you advertising (if your entry is good).
Competition: anyone entering a pet the same species as you in the same week. Make sure they don’t get more votes than you!

Important rules to remember-Only you can advertise your entry, and only with the account the pet is on.

-It is supposed to be completely yours and original, with no help from others.

-2D drawings only, no photographs. Photos of 2D drawings are ok.

-It has to look like it was based off a neopet. Not a normal human with cat ears or some shit.
No gorgeous drawing of a bluejay. This is the most common way people get rejected before the contest starts.
ALSO no blank image if your pet is invisible….

-No copyright symbols or other copyright characters.

if the judge finds otherwise, your entry will be rejected, or you may be disqualified during the contest if someone chooses to report you. 😡

Species

There are 54 species of neopets, some are much more popular and therefore more competitive than others.

Below is a list of them, and a very rough average of the number of votes that recent past winners in each category have gotten. It is by no means complete and its not guaranteed that you will win by submitting this number of votes. Every week is different, it may be as hard as how determined your competition is, and how willing people are to vote for your pet.

However, I made it to give you a good idea of a general least number of votes to aim for on a regular week, as well as to help you compare the general toughness between the categories. I’ll continue to update this as weeks go by.

General tips

Advertising:

-Entering good art will make your job easier contrary to popular belief. Voters on any board can choose to SV rather than vote for the first entry they see. Also, there is a fairly decent number of people who do manual vote. I myself have entered a few times with zero advertising and ended up with 100+ manual votes.

-Try to post more than just “good luck, spare a vote” when you can. The PC gossips about how they vote every now and then, and some tend to vote for those who have something relevant to say, or help with bumping more than once.

Neopets Beauty Contest Trophy

-Likewise, READ the topic before you spam. If they say they don’t vote BC, don’t just leave a bump. It makes you look bad, and they might get pissed enough to report you for spamming. 😡

-Its also a good idea to post the entry and link on your lookup and the pets petpage so that people lurking will see, if they weren’t paying attention to your sig before.

Different ways to obtain votes:
-Posting a ton in different places so that as many people as possible see your entry. The busier boards (like the PC) are the best because people need bumping to keep their own boards up.
Less competitive entries can usually get away with just advertising on the BC board itself.

Neopets Beauty Contest

-Guildbacking, where if you are part of a large guild, you get a link put up so that everyone in the guild will see your entry.

-Voting for yourself on as many accounts as possible. Of course this will raise suspicion afterwards if no one has seen you posting, so make sure you at least advertise a little, or even join a private guild so they can assume you’re guildbacked.

Placing in the BC will give your pet a trophy on its lookup, which is great for account building, or pet trading for some. Entering your own work will also help you figure out where your strong points are and what you need to work on. Above all, it is an opportunity to shove your beautiful or not so beautiful creation into as many faces as possible. BOOM.

An Update From Calic0Paws

First, let me know that I love your site, and I’ve used it many times and its great. But recently, I’ve just read an article, “Winning The Beauty Contest” by Neofrog140. I have a great suspicion that this article was written before the “great change” in the Beauty Contest when Neopets changed. If you don’t remember, Neopets once was able to show the “winning” neopets that currently had the most votes, and how much votes your pets currently has. But not very long ago, neopets took that feature off. Now there is no page showing the winning pets and does not show the owner or the entry viewer how many votes that pet has. This was to discourage trading votes. Before the great change, the neopets Beauty contest boards were filled with topics on trading votes, where the traders would trade by their pets vote numbers. Now, Neopets very very strictly prohibit the trading of votes, and now there is absolutely no vote trading going on in the boards. Unlike the writing of the article said, trading votes are BAD, not good. Another problem that I especially disliked, was when the author told the reader to “get a friend who can actually draw” to make your entry for you. This goes against every single code an artist has, and ever since Neopets created any art contests there was a rule that did now allow people to submit another’s picture. Although no one can really tell who drew the original picture, telling people that it is ok makes things a lot worse. I recently checked the author of this article on neopets (if his/her username is indeed Neofrog140) and he or she was not present. Either his/her username is not Neofrog140 or he/she had been long frozen by the neopets staff.