competition

Am I the the greatest SEO in Ireland?

Maybe but that’s a question i’ll be able to answer shortly. I’ve just heard about an SEO competition which i’m definitely entering - i let far too many of these competitions pass me by and it’s about time i got stuck in.

I have until December 1st at 3pm to rank no.1 on google.ie for the phrase: geansai gorm. To all my international readers, that translates as ‘blue jumper’.

Here are the rules (taken from mulley.net);

• Entries open to all Irish individuals and Irish businesses.
• Search is to be performed on google.ie. Without Pages From Ireland selected, with personalisation off and from an Irish IP address.
• The domain to rank must be a new domain. Must not contain the keywords in the domain name at all and no ccTLD domains are to be used.
• Only want the homepage to rank, not other non-useful pages.
• 301 redirects are not permitted.
• Keywords as gaeilge instead of english but copy can be in English

Fair enough, it means we’re all on a level playing field. I’ve just over 5 weeks until D Day so i’ll have to act quickly and get the thinking cap on. As the rules state, this has to be a brand new site. The reward at the end of it all, will be to see where i’m at against the rest in terms of SEO.

I have managed to topple wikipedia & government sites with theleavingcert.com in the past without any real ‘deliberate’ SEO work so it’ll be interesting to see how i get on with this. 5 weeks isn’t much time though for me… i guess the good thing about that is that everyone else is in the same boat.

Let the games begin

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Drumroll

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve just drawn the winners for my Skydive Competition today. I’m having problems uploading the video/screencast so i may not get it live until tomorrow when i’ve a bit more time to investigate what’s up.

There are two or three of you who will be pretty pleased with your haul The way i worked the competition was simple…

I choose 37 random integers between 1 and 970 using random.org. Why 37? Because i’d 37 prizes to give away!

I listed prizes from 1-37 and participants/entrants from 1 to 970. Once i got random numbers, i matched the first random number to prize number 1.

The first number drawn was 479, so 479 got prize no.1 which was $50 cash. 479 happened to be ‘dlowry’. I still have to hear back from a few advertisers just to confirm everything and as it’s the weekend, but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me until next week - i am pretty busy myself too

All winners will be contacted over the next few days and you can contact me if you have questions. Tomorrow, i’ll write up a full list of winners and their prizes and i’ll also upload that screencast for all to see

Apologies for being a bit behind my self-imposed schedule

Competition Over!

It’s been one month since i launched my charity skydive competition. The aim was to raise $1000. I raised just over $200 online so it means i hit 20% of my target which isn’t bad at all.

The actual skydive will now not be taking place until the spring time. Why? Well, firstly the money is needed and although i could scoop the rest together in a month or two, it just means more work for me on top of everything else i have like college, BeerChief and other online stuff. Plus the friend i’m doing this with also needs more time to gather the cash! Secondly, we have the weather.

Skydives can only take place in reasonably good weather. Given our unpredictable weather in Ireland, not many skydives take place from October - March and the last thing i want to do is take a day off college, arrive there and then be told to come back another day…

So i’ll now be doing this skydive probably around March 2009 which gives me loads of time to reach the $1000 target. I’ll probably run one or two more competitions to tie in with this and i’ll be much better prepared next time around… this competition has taught me a lot

So anyway, like i said before, to ensure total transparacy, i’ll reveal the entrants and their lucky numbers. I’ve just added nicknames to an excel spreadsheet and applied the different weights (30 tickets for blogging, 100 for donating etc…). You can check it out here and if it doesn’t make sense, it will later on.

21 entrants in total which means everyone is guaranteed something I’ll try to publish a screencast tomorrow showing me picking the winners and prizes. If i don’t get it up tomorrow (i’m extremely busy this week), it’ll be up on Friday and i’ll send out emails then too.

Last chance to win something!

We’re now in to the last few days of my charity skydiving contest. It’s flown by and although i’m nowhere near my $1000 target, i have raised over $200 thus far which is respectable.

This was just one idea i had and i’ve learned a lot from it all. My strength was in finding people to sponsor prizes… the fact i’ll be printing a t-shirt with my sponsor’s logos on it went down well - that helped secure prizes.

Actually getting people to donate cash was / is the hard part. Not as easy. I wasn’t overly aggressive marketing this but then again it is all for charity and the last thing i want to do is (a) spend all of my time focusing on this (b) get to the point where i push it so much, it damages my rep.

But i’ll not be simply ‘giving up’ here… i may not actually be completing the skydive until next spring due to a variety of reasons (i’ll go into them once the competition ends), but i’ll certainly be flexing my creative muscles online again for more fun and games in relation to this skydive.

As things stand there are about 25 entries in to this competition with over 35 prizes so if you’re not in, you’re missing out 4 x $50 cash prizes up for grabs remember + a whole bunch of other webmaster goodies.

All you gotta do is comment on this post to have a chance of winning something! If you’re feeling extra generous, why not donate a $1 or two

The competition draws to a close on Tuesday September 30th and on October 1st i’ll be revealing a full list of entrants and their assigned numbers. On October 2nd i’ll record a screencast of me generating random numbers and assigning the prizes to people - no catches - all above board

$2500+ competition, FREE entry!

So far, i’ve raised $174 out of $1000 for my charity skydive. Whilst i’m sure that’s $174 more than what some of you thought i would get i think there’s room for improvement.

What i need now is just pure exposure to get traffic in and get eyes on the competition. So what i’m going to do is open up more FREE ways of gaining entry in to the competition and review the current rules so here are the updated contest rules (anyone already entered will have their entries adjusted accordingly);

• Comment on this post = 10 entries
• Blog about this competition = 30 entries
• Donate a cash amount above $1 = 100 entries
• Do all 3 = 200 entries

In total, there are over 35 prizes valued at over $2500 including;

4 x $50 Cash (Value = $200)

• $100 (2 x $50) sponsored by me.
• $50 sponsored by Collin Lahay.
• $50 sponsored by Walsho.

3 x Estibot Pro Yearly Memberships (Value = 449.85)

• Sponsored by Estibot.com

Revolution Theme (Value = $79.95)

• Sponsored by Brian Gardner

1 Year Button Ad on JonLee.ca (Value = $600)

• Sponsored by JonLee.ca

10 x 1 hour consultations with TUK (Value = $750)

• Sponsored by The University Kid

Paid Plug on The University Kid (Value $85)

• Sponsored by The University Kid

2 x 1 hour consultations from The Net Fool (Value = $150)

• Sponsored by TheNetFool.com

Other Stuff

• 5 x 1 copies of “Site Flip Guide” (courtesy of siteflipguide.com)
• 4 x 1 copies of “Work Smart, Get Rich” (courtesy of ebook-rich.com)
• 4 x 1 monthly buttons ads on smemon.com (courtesy of me)
• 1 review on smemon.com (courtesy of me)

To spice things up a bit, i’m going to be 100% transparent and draw up a full list of entrants and the amount of entries each person has. Basically a huge database in which you’ll be assigned your ‘lucky numbers’.

I’ll make that available to you guys on October 1st and then on October 2nd i’ll make a screencast of myself using random.org to choose the winners.

That ensures everything is 100% transparent and all of the prizes and winners are genuine - i can’t do much more than that. Some people have suggested that people who don’t know me may think winners could be rigged etc… to save me cash or gain friends and i hear that. So in response, i’m going to be as open as i can

For those of you who don’t know me, rest assured the prizes are legit, the winners will be legit and any ‘profits’ are all going to Charity, every single cent To cap it all off you’ll be helping to push me out of a plane at 10,000 feet - so what are you waiting for? Comment or blog or donate cash NOW