skydive

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.

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off to a good start

When i first agreed to do a skydive, little did i think it would turn in to an online competition and eat up all of my time online - but that’s exactly what’s happening.

I’ve spent the past 24 hours preparing banners, trying to find sponsors, trying to clear up the rules and how things will work plus getting myself organized with excel spreadsheets.

Feedback has been good so far, i’ve had a few people put up some pretty useful prizes and hopefully that will continue I won’t start naming names or prizes just yet as i want to bombard you guys with a whole bunch of weird and wonderful prizes to get us off to a flying start on September 1st.

Over the past few days i’ve been having a look at how other online competitions have gone and generally, they seem to go down well for everyone bar advertisers/sponsors. Although i can’t offer floods of traffic just yet, i haven’t seen anyone do something as creative as this…

All my sponsors who donate prizes get their logo on a t-shirt which i’ll wear during the skydive. Whilst the logo may be small and not clickable i’ll be sure to give the t-shirt plenty of coverage and make sure the videos and pictures of the event are seen by plenty of people.

Digg, Stumble, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Bebo, Facebook, Forum Sigs etc…. possibly even offline coverage (college newsletter perhaps..)… it’ll go far beyond the walls of this blog

Charity Skydive Competition

Bit by bit, i’ve been putting together plans for a charity skydive these past few weeks. I’m now fully committed to it and definitely going ahead with the skydive - most likely in October, but i have to raise $1000 to do it first.

In order to raise the cash, i’m trying to think outside the box and play to my strengths… i do call myself an ‘entrepreneur’ after all… so i’ve come up with an online competition which will be running on this blog for the entire month of September.

September is just one week away now, so i have to get some sponsors on board and get those all important prizes in order to get people entering this competition.

Potential Sponsors

Why should you sponsor prizes?

• If you put forward a prize, you’ll get your site’s logo printed on the t-shirt i’ll wear on the day.
• I’ll be posting pictures and video of the event (and the t-shirt - giving you some ‘unique’ exposure) on this blog and across all of my social networking profiles.
• You’ll also receive several backlinks from smemon.com throughout the competition & after it.
• The cash raised is going to charity (helping the blind - if i raise more than $1,000 it’ll be spent helping entrepreneurs on KIVA.org).

If you’re feeling generous, please get in touch and i’ll be delighted to add more prizes to the list and another logo to the tshirt

Potential Entrants

How do you enter?

• On September 1st the competition will be officially launched and will run until 30th September.
• To enter you must either donate cash (min $1) to the cause OR blog about the competition. Either of those will earn you one ticket.
• Do BOTH (donate cash and blog) and you’ll get 3 tickets.

Why should you enter?

• You’ll get to see me falling out of an airplane at 10,000 feet.
• You can win some great prizes (i.e. $100 cash - more prizes will be announced next week)
• All cash raised will be going to a good cause (i won’t be profiting from this).

Other Stuff

• Once you donate cash & blog about the event i’ll need confirmation, so please contact me or email me directly giving me your paypal address and blog link url so i can confirm.
• Minimum amount you can donate is $1, there is no maximum. However, if you donate more than $1, you will not get any more tickets i.e. $10 donation will still only get you 1 ticket.
• Maximum number of tickets per person is 3.
• I am not profiting from any of this and have put up cash and other prizes to the value of $200. I’ll be posting screenshots to confirm how much has been raised and where it’s all going.
• If i do not raise $1000, the skydive will still go ahead.
• Payapl address used for receiving/sending funds related to this competition will be skydive@smemon.com
• All entrants must be over 18 - just to keep things all above board and cover my ass

another big week ahead

This week is another biggie… i have to find sponsors for my skydive charity competition, finalize exactly how the competition will operate (how to enter, when it closes, where the money is going etc..). I’m hoping to kick things off on september 1st and run the competition until september 30th, then do the skydive sometime in mid-october.

The competition really hinges on how good the prizes are (otherwise people won’t bother entering), so i’m hoping putting up $100 in cash prizes myself plus some other stuff will get things off to a good start…

It’ll all be pretty hectic and be over in a flash but i know i’m doing a good thing and i won’t regret it.

I’m determined to do this thing and do it right. It’s all for a great cause, it means i’ll get to skydive and there really is no negative points to doing it - the only negative is the sheer amount of time and organization it will take.

I’m also hoping to flip a few sites this week - it’s been a while since i’ve done that and it’s a nice habit to get in to - flipping sites on a weekly basis

At some stage i’ll have to go up to college to register for the coming year, so that’ll be fun - it should give me a chance to see my college friends after being away from them all summer.

If i get a chance i’m hoping to launch another yesnoblog.com type site and i’m also hoping to get a few new posts on yesnoblog.com itself. Busy times ahead…

competition definitely going ahead…

As most of you will know i’m trying to put together a charity skydive event and come up with something unique and creative online to raise the cash. I’ve come across some really quality sites and organizations….

KIVA.org for example - i came across these guys a while back but just forgot the url. KIVA is a website designed to help entrepreneurs primarily in developing economies to fulfill their dreams of starting or maintaining a business. This is one of my favorite charity websites and i’ve decided that should i raise over $1k, i’ll use the rest to fund as many people as possible on KIVA.

The problem i have with charity donations is that there’s just so many nowadays. LITERALLY every weekend in town there’ll be some crowd who just take over. Traffic lights, every corner, outside shops… it’s ridiculous and it’s something that annoys me. That’s just here in Monaghan, don’t get me started on Dublin - it’s a 7 day a week thing there and i often joke about whether Concern will have a 4-4-2 formation out today or a 4-3-3 (making reference to the seemingly strategic placement of these ‘chuggers‘).

Ok, most people who collect are innocent, good people trying to help a worthy cause (anyone with a clipboard is getting paid) but if there’s no creativity in the approach then i see it as a form of begging. If it’s a charity walk or swim or marathon or something it’s not so bad - at least you have reason to give.

It’s the idea and the thought that counts and that’s why anything different will always be more successful than the norm because people like me like something fun or new or creative.

For my skydive, i was going to set up an account with mycharity.ie or justgiving.com - but then i thought that’s not gonna work because i’m technically running a contest online… - people aren’t just donating to charity out of goodwill. Mycharity.ie have a 3% charge on transactions whereas paypal is free (with a personal a/c) if people send money funded by their balance. So that’s another small reason.

Also, i know a lot of my readers and people that may be interested in the competition aren’t Irish so if they see .ie links everywhere and Irish only charities it somewhat freezes them out…. so that’s where KIVA comes in. Should i get more than what i need, i’ll be funded people from all over the world with the remaining cash.

• $1,000 = pays for skydive + charity payment
• Any more than $1k = KIVA.org
• Any less than $1k = EPIC fail

No, if i should raise less than $1k, i’ll be going ahead with it but i might need some more time just to raise cash doing other stuff.

At the minute, i’m looking at about late-October for the skydive jump. All depends of how quickly i can get things organized. I’ll be looking for sponsors starting next week with a view to running a competition for the entire month of september, but i’m trying to put the shoe on the other foot and give sponsors more incentive to donate prizes, so that’s what i’m doing as we speak - fine tuning my pitch to potential sponsors