Two weeks ago I started a contest over at http://www.5dollarformula.com/giveaway/ where the 1st place winner will receive a brand new iPod Touch. Well, there it is in the picture. I bought it yesterday. Now for the winner

And the winner is … Glenna Andree of http://gandree.info/

Congrats, Glenna! I’ll be contacting you within the hour regarding shipment details.

The winning entry was from her blog post at http://gandree.info/enter-josh-spauldings-contest-for-a-chance-at-an-ipod-touch/

If you read the giveaway page, you’ll have also noticed that I mentioned this: “… and two other individuals will win a “secret” prize on the day of the drawing as well!” I know you just wanted the iPod but I think the 2nd and 3rd place winners will still be delighted.

2nd prize winner: FowlVisions (not sure of the actual name) Twitter account http://twitter.com/FowlVisions
Prize: Lifetime membership to CoachingWithJosh.com

3rd prize winner: Tanuj Lakhina
Prize: Free copies of “Article Marketing Domination” and “The Ultimate Link Building Report”

How I Picked the Winners

I’ll tell you, this contest turned out to be a HUGE time investment on my part in order to keep it fair. I manually added each additional entry for the retweets and blog posts and went through the entire list for each to ensure there were no duplicates. BUT luckily I decided early to do it all as they came in, so it wasn’t too hard.

So once that was done each person who simply entered their name and email had one entry, each person who entered their name and email plus retweeted got 2 entries, each person who entered their name and blogged about it got 3 entries and each person who did all three options got 5 entries. It was a nightmare keeping it all straight, but in the end it all worked out perfectly!

My buddy Mark Sierra helped out a bunch by telling me about http://random.org/lists/ which is what actually picked the winners once I had the list complied.

So Congrats to the winners and thanks for taking part in this contest. If you didn’t win, you still can in another way. You downloaded the $5 Mini-Site Formula and it has huge income potential, so take action on that!

I will be attempting to contact all winners. If you are one of the 3 winners and you have not heard from me, please contact me ASAP at joshspaulding1 at gmail.com

oh, and who knows, I may do more contests in the future with even cooler prizes So be sure to subscribe to my feed to keep up with me.

Caroline Middlebrook is currently running an “Easter Egg hunt” over at her blog and she’s giving away free copies of her upcoming StumbleUpon Traffic Course.

There are several reasons why I like this:

1. (most important) I know for a fact she is very proficient in leveraging the enormous SU audience into site visitors. She is one of the very few individuals I would recommend you follow if you’re interested in getting loads of SU traffic and she’s giving away free copies of her blueprint to the winners! Very cool!

2. It’s fun

3. It’s excellent link bait Not only that, but everyone wins! She gets deep links to her blog, you have fun and may very well get a free copy of a report that has the potential to drive thousands of visitors to your site/blog!

Very cool contest though and I’ll up the “anti” “ante” (is that how that’s spelled?) If a reader of my blog wins the contest I’ll send them $50 cash into their PayPal account. If you win just contact me through my support desk at http://www.askjoshspaulding.com/ with your PayPal email and if you’re subscribed to my RSS feed I’ll send it over. *edit* To ensure the prize money goes to my loyal readers and not people who are subscribing just for the cash, you must have been previously subscribed to my RSS feed prior to this contest being run.

I’m not going to participate in this one because I’ll find them all and you’ll have more competition…I’m always keeping my readers in mind

>>Enter the Contest Here< <

Good Luck!

First I’d like to thank you all for participating. All of your answers were extremely interesting to me and I didn’t read one answer that was necessarily “bad.”

Before I announce the winners (it’s not like you can’t just scroll down eh?) I want to answer the questions with my own answers and explain what I was looking for in your answers.

If you had $10,000 to invest in your Business, what would you invest it in? This could be one thing or any number of things.

- I’d invest in a pre-established Website that is already making money. Why build an empire when you can buy one, preferably one that is somewhat automated. Just look at all the celebrities who are now making more money off their clothing lines and restaurants then they ever made as actors etc. Did they build it? hello no, they bought it all. I’ve purchased several pre-established Websites in the past which have paid for themselves many times over.

There are many different business models and we all do things differently, so obviously I couldn’t say whether or not your answer was “good” or “bad.” But, some answers stood out among others.

What is your breaking point? In other words, what would cause you to quit trying to create a full-time income online.

- Nothing!

The answers to this question weighed heavily on my decision, although it wasn’t the only deciding factor. I was looking for those who will honestly never quit. If it makes you happy to see something get difficult then you’re on the verge of success, or you’re already there. Things that are easy very rarely yield quality results. For this question I was looking for those who realize that!

What are your three main priorities in life? (most important to least important)

- a) Taking care of my Family and making them happy.
- b) Being a good person. I’m far from perfect, but I believe very strongly that we should all continuously strive to be good people. Just imagine how great the World would be if we all at least tried to do the right thing all the time. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done some bad things and regrettably I still do from time to time, but I continuously try to do what’s right and correct what I’ve done wrong.
- c) Business/Finance – This ties into #1 because although it’s true money doesn’t buy happiness, a lack thereof creates all sorts of bad mojo!

Friends would be a close 4th.

There are alot of variables here as well. However, I believe family/loved-ones and being a good person should always be up at the top.

The Winners

It was incredibly hard to decide the winners and I can tell several of you are on your way to success already and won’t need my help, whether you realize that or not.

1st Prize – Bud from http://www.BudCalabrese.com/

Bud, please send your mailing address and PayPal email to joshspaulding1 at gmail dot com and let me know which book you’ve chosen.

2nd Prize – Angela from http://www.StarVA.com/

Angela, please send your mailing address and PayPal email to joshspaulding1 at gmail dot com

3rd Prize – Eartha from http://www.TryingFitness.com/

Eartha, please forward your PayPal email address my way.

Congrats to the winners and thanks again for taking part. I’m going to try and run more contests in the future, so if you didn’t win this time maybe you will next time

photo credits: randombassist

**This Contest has ended. I’d like to thank everyone who participated. The winners will be announced in just a few minutes **

I’m waiting on a few projects that I’ve outsourced to be completed, so I figured why not give away some cash and prizes while I wait.

I have $350 and a few good books (“Purple Cow” by Seth Godin and “Hypnotic Writing” by Joe Vitale) sitting here that I’m going to give away. I’m also going to give 2 lucky readers free coaching for the rest of the month.

This is a very easy contest, there are just 2 things to do (only one for many of you:)

How to Enter the Contest

1. Be a subscriber. It would be like spitting in the face of my regular readers if I ended up giving away all this stuff to someone who just stopped by, so I’m requiring that you’re subscribed to the blogs RSS feed. You can do so by clicking the big orange RSS button in the sidebar (top in the new theme, in case I have it up in the next day or so) or if you don’t use a feed reader you can subscribe via email, which is underneath the feed count chicklet in the sidebar.

2. Answer the following questions (comment below:)

- If you had $10,000 to invest in your Business, what would you invest it in? This could be one thing or any number of things.

- What is your breaking point? In other words, what would cause you to quit trying to create a full-time income online.

- What are your three main priorities in life? (most important to least important)

Who will Win?

The 3 winners will be determined by the best answers, as determined myself. There are no right or wrong answers, but there are a few things, which I will not announce, that I’m looking for here.

Prizes (Winners must be able to receive money either through PayPal or Ikobo)

1st Prize
- $200.00 Cash
- Your choice of either “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin (hard-back) or “Hypnotic Writing” by Joe Vitale (soft-back)
- Free Coaching via email by myself until March 1, 2008. I’ll answer every question you can come up with. If I don’t know I’ll send you in the right direction.

————————————————————————————————————————

2nd Prize
- $100.00 Cash
- Remaining Book
- Free Coaching via email by myself until March 1, 2008. I’ll answer every question you can come up with. If I don’t know I’ll send you in the right direction.

————————————————————————————————————————

3rd Prize
$50.00 Cash

I’ll also be stumbling random posts on the blogs of those who comment. There is no guarantee I’ll stumble any of your posts, but I’ll definitely be looking at the blogs of those who comment.

This Contest Ends on Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 at 3 P.M. (CST)

Good Luck!

Shortly after posting the original blog contest, I wrote a new post stating that I had only one participant. Well, the contest still didn’t live up to my expectations, but I learned a thing or two about running a successful contest by running an unsuccessful one

Actually I can’t say it was unsuccessful. There weren’t many participants, but I did get some great ideas!!

Every idea submitted was excellent and it was extremely hard to select one, so I selected two

Both ideas were actually pretty simple, but I believe simple contests are the ones that do the best so that’s what I went with.

Since there are two winners I’m going to offer the 1st prize to both. The only problem is I only have one of each book. So the first of the two winners to email me at joshspaulding1@gmail.com or to leave a comment here will get first choice of the books.

The two winners are Chuck Brown and Cecilia who didn’t leave a link. Cecial, if you want a link just let me know and I’ll place one here.

Chuck and Cecilia, please send me an email telling me your PayPal email and your shipping address.

Here are the winning ideas:

by Chuck Brown

How about a “best creative idea for” contest(s)? Like…

- best cheap way to get 20 one-way inbound links
- best creative tip for increasing blog subscriptions
- best way to make a few extra bucks a day with your blog or web site that most people don’t know about or stop to think through
- best little-known resource for outsourcing stuff that takes me too much time (article writing/submission, directory submission, link building)

by Cecilia

Or you could just keep it random. With each person submitting a comment for an entry. (My suggestion)…Give an extra entry for a person that posts about your giveaway on their own blog. The contestant leaves the link under the comment section. Thus they would have 2 entries. One for the comment, and a second for the link. Or if email entry is used, they could include the link in their email.

Chuck and Cecilia will both receive one of the 4 books and the other two will be given away in two separate contests. The contests will of course be similar to their suggestions and will be run sometime in the next 7-14 days.

It’s been up for almost 48 hours and so far only one participant. I figure the reason it flopped was one of 3 things:

1. People don’t like the books. Highly unlikely though, they are all very popular informative books.
2. You guys and gals think it’s too hard or too much trouble. Could be due to the following point though.
3. It wasn’t clear as to what you need to do in order to win. I have a feeling this is it, but if you feel otherwise please let me know!!

So to be clear, to claim the book of your choice + a copy of “article marketing domination” (ebook) + $20 via PayPal all you have to do is come up with a contest, that’s it.

If you’ve participated or noticed a contest elsewhere you really liked you can even explain how it worked. If I like it the best you win!

That’s it, imagine you have 3 awesome books to give away, how would you do it via a blog contest?

The winning idea will be used to give away the other 3 books.

I just went across the street to Borders to get a book and ended up with four My plan was to get a damn good book and offer it as the prize for a blog contest, but there were too many to choose from so I just got the 4 best. But now with 4 books I’m struggling to come up with 4 good contests.

So instead of coming up with 4 contests, one per book, I’ve decided to think of one contest and you think of the other three contests.

First I’ll announce the books:

The winner of the following contest will choose one of the 4 books as their prize. They will also win a copy of my Article Marketing Ebook “Article Marketing Domination” and $20 via PayPal.

So to win the contest you have to come up with a contest If you had 3 books to give away via a contest, a series of contests etc. how would you do it? Comment on this post with your ideas. I’m not setting a time limit on this, but bet on it only lasting a few days. Once I choose the blog contest/contest series/idea that I like the most I’ll announce it in a new post.

FYI: Here are a few things I would like to increase as a result of this/these contest(s) It doesn’t have to be focused on all or even multiple points, but if the contest can increase one or more of the following the more likely you are to win:

1. RSS subscribers
2. Unique blog visitors
3. Blog Comments in general
4. Trackbacks and links pointing to the blog
5. Money in my pocket not nearly as important as the first 4 though

Good Luck!!