Archive for August, 2008
Skydive Charity Competition
I’m doing a tandem skydive jump for Charity within the next couple of months. I need to raise $1000 this month and so i’ve called on the help of my blogging comrades and webmasters across the net to put up some cool prizes and help me launch a massive competition.
Up for grabs are some fantastic prizes… the value of each prize is in red font. Here are the CONFIRMED prizes so far (i’ll be adding more throughout the month)…
- $50 Cash (Courtesy of me) $50
- $50 Cash (Courtesy of me) $50
- $50 Cash (Courtesy of CollinLahay.com) $50
- $50 Cash (Courtesy of Walsho.net) $50
- 3 x Estibot Domainer Pro Yearly Memberships (Courtesy of estibot.com) $449.85
- 1 x Revolution Theme – single use (Courtesy of Brian Gardner) $79.95
- 125 x 125 button ad for 1 year on jonlee.ca (Courtesy Jonlee.ca) $600
- 10 x 1 hour consultations with TheUniversityKid (Courtesy of TheUniversityKid.com) $750
- 1 paid blog on TheUniversityKid.com (Courtesy of TheUniversityKid.com) $85
- 2 x 1 hour blog consultations from TheNetFool.com (Courtesy of TheNetFool.com) $150
- 5 x 1 copies of “Site Flip Guide” (courtesy of siteflipguide.com) $50
- 4 x 1 copies of “Work Smart, Get Rich” (courtesy of ebook-rich.com) $60
- 4 x 1 monthly buttons ads on smemon.com (courtesy of me) $80
- 1 review on smemon.com (courtesy of me) $35
Total value of prizes so far = $2539
To enter this competition, all you gotta do is donate at least $1 to my Charity Skydive fund. You can do so using the ‘chipin’ widget on the sidebar or here. That will get you one ticket in to the draw to win some of those fantastic prizes above.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to donate or can’t afford to, you can blog about this competition, linking back to this post and that will also get you one ticket 
If you donate at least $1 AND blog about this competition, you will get THREE tickets in to the competition which takes place on October 1st.
So please help me out and donate if you can 
By the end of the month, i expect to have lots more prizes and unlike a lot of competitions, this one is actually for a great cause, helping the Blind in Ireland (ncbi.ie) and if more than $1k is raise, i’ll be helping to fund as many entrepreneurs on KIVA.org as possible.
There’ll be pictures and video of the event going up, but i won’t be able to do it without YOUR help 
Some notes;
- If you blog about this event, please send me a quick email with the blog post’s url just to make sure i count you in. Use contact form or email sean [at] smemon [dot] com
- If you blog & donate, please send me your paypal email address & the blog posts url so i can confirm and you’ll get 3 tickets in to the draw.
- If you simply donate cash, there’s no need to contact me, i’ll notify you if you have won any prizes using your paypal email address.
- Draw will take place on October 1st and winners will be notified ASAP.
If you want to sponsor a prize, contact me. All sponsors will get their site’s logo on my custom designed t-shirt which will be worn for the skydive.
I’ve joined a group of 5 web entrepreneurs to compete in siteflipu’s ‘Blogging Flipping Gone Wild‘ contest. The aim of the competition is to see who can flip a blog for the largest amount of cash within 45 days.
It’s costs $25 per team to enter and the team that wins gets to keep all the $25 entry fees, the amount they get from their blog flip + 10% of all the other teams sales.
There’s some pretty decent bloggers in this who’ve flipped blogs for 5 figures… (not in 45 days mind you). I believe we can win it or if not, come close…
I’ll let you guys know who’s in my team and what our blog will be about at a later date. There’s one blog idea that i’ve had for a while – i know it has profit written all over it and i’ve pitched the idea to the guys…
We should be looking at selling a blog for $2k+ and i’ll do my best to make sure that happens… even if we lose, we’ll get 90% of that $2k… so $1800 split 5 ways = $360. Not a huge amount of cash but at the same time not something you’d say no to
The real rewards from this though will be more exposure within the blogosphere and more contacts… hopefully, if all goes well, i can continue partnerships for future projects.
On Wednesday, i tried ringing my college literally 10 times throughout the day and couldn’t get through at all… so i sent them an email. The problem i had was about registration for 2nd year. Other people had gotten their letters and dates – i got nothing. Some people were even registering Thursday and Friday (today) which meant i had to get in touch with the college quickly! Time to panic 
Still no sign of an email or any post on Thursday so again, i tried ringing several times and eventually got through. I was told i couldn’t register until i had gotten the results of my repeat maths exam on September 10th.
Damn, not only could i not register, i’d have to miss 2 days of college. So i’d be playing catch up instantly plus i could guarantee there’d be a big mix up when i show up for classes not on the books and not having registered…
So then Sean from Leateds scanned and emailed me a copy of his registration letter… he failed the same subject as me, he’s in the same class etc… and he got a registration letter… WTF!
So this morning, Friday, i rang back AGAIN… for the third successive day and after a bit of explaining eventually i was told to call in today and register. Great – a nice two hour round drive that i didn’t want I got sorted eventually and i’m all signed up for year 2. I go back on September 9th so next week will be my last week of freedom
On the way up, some guy in a merc overtook me at what must have been 150km/hr+ on a fairly dangerous stretch of road… totally blind and i could see him shooting up behind me in my rearview mirror. Pure luck that nothing was coming in the oncoming direction. Northern reg plates, and he continued leap frogging cars in front on white lines and coming up to junctions… almost suicidal driving!
I was hoping i’d see him lying in a ditch later up the road… no excuses for that. People like that end up as statistics and sympathy headlines in newspapers. I’ve no sympathy for clowns who drive like maniacs and end up killing themselves – better them than innocent people they could potentially take with them.
At the minute, i’m toying around with advertising placements and setups on the site so if some ads look messed up, don’t worry it’s just a temporary thing.
I’ve decided to automate ad sales which means it’ll save me some work down the line. I’ll dedicate a full blog post to why and how i’m doing this over the next few days… Although i haven’t sold many ads, i’ve had a few enquiries lately and with this competition launching shortly (next week), i’m expecting some clever clogs to snap up some ads as they’ll know i’ll have to promote this competition hard for it to be a success
I’ll hopefully get everything sorted tomorrow and we’ll be good to go for the big day on Monday when this competition gets off the ground. At the minute, i’ve over $2,000 worth of prizes confirmed. I’ll continue to look for more prizes as the competition goes on….
Thus far, i’ve only approached people directly and privately but i’m hoping that once it starts spreading, people will start coming to me
Throughout the competition i’ll be having a ‘donation’ section in the sidebar of the blog and i’ll also be changing the blog’s background to help promote it. Be sure to check back on Monday to see what sort of job i do
I’ll also be keeping a close eye on traffic and general statistics this month and by the end of it all i’ll be able to tell you exactly what sort effect this has had on the blog. Although i expect to see a significant rise in traffic and subscribers next month, it will be scant consolation if i don’t hit the $1000 target i need.
Did you know you can add up to 8 email addresses to the one paypal account? I certainly didn’t! For this skydive contest i figured i’d set up a paypal account as it looks a bit unprofessional if people are sending donations to my personal account. It’s also handier to keep track of all competition related expenses / donations.
So after some digging around i came across a way to add more email addresses to your paypal account;
- Login
- Click ‘Profile’
- Under ‘Account Information’ click on ‘Email’
- Click ‘Add’
- Enter email, click ‘Save’
You’ll then get an email to your main account’s email address asking you to confirm you want to add a new address.
Pretty simple and it just makes things look a bit more professional
