2009 Planning Guide - My Gift To You!A Look Back at the Cowpetition
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Well the contest is officially over and yes according to the rules of the game we were victorous.. but that is not what this post is about. Instead we wanted to step back and take a look at the whole thing and talk about a few things.
1. First of all congratulations to Grace Santas for being the winning bidder! We received payment already and the money will be getting donated (we will show the transaction) to WorldVision later this week. We have everything packaged up and as of Monday morning everything will be transferred over to Grace.
2. Garry Conn: Garry is a damn good blogger and one heck of a smart guy. We did not know him from a hole in the ground before this started and he has become a friend and someone we have grown to respect. He is a family man who loves his family and puts them in the place of his life that is most important, which is something we cherish ourselves.
In the COWpetition, Garry did a fantastic job of building a blog with an extremely small budget and used what he had to create a pretty darn good blog… heck we actually bought it (yup.. we paid $850 for it and think it is worth every penny… and we have some good plans for it too) and no Garry did not know we were going to do that 
So look for some changes over on that blog over the next little while and make sure to check out Garry’s blog at http://www.garryconn.com
3. Training Provided: Overall the feedback has been fantastic in regards to the material that was provided during those 4 weeks but sadly there were a small few who actually complained. They said it was a farse and that it was not realistic because it was not focused on the newbie. Well first of all read the original outline, the entire purpose was to build a blog using whatever means we had with the end goal selling it for the most amount of money possible. We mentioned upfront that we were going to talk about the tools we used and not try to make up stories of free tools that we do not use just to appease someone. If you say you can not get anything from the material provided we truly feel you are being closed minded and making that decision with out stepping back and looking at the big picture.
4. Rules of the Contest: We wanted to make sure everyone understands this very clear. The rules of the contest were not whose blog made the most money from affiliate sales or adsense, who had the most opt ins or any other metric like that. There was one single goal and that was who sold the blog for the most amount of money on sitepoint. This goal is what directed to build our blog the way we did… if it would have been about affiliate sales we would have done things different.
5. Bidding on Sitepoint: This was actually a huge eye opener and it always amazes me how much speculation and distrust there is in this industry. We are not sure why it always shocks us, since we have been doing this for a long time now, but it does. We received emails, PMs and comments from people saying it was a scam, having the private bidding was shady and more.
It was even funnier when we openly asked if it would be ok to buy our own site and donate the money to the charity and when people said no we listened and kept it how it was originally laid out but after that a few people then mentioned that they think we are doing something shady behind the scenes. If we were going to do that, why would we have first asked permission.
So please let us lay this out for you…
i. We did private bidding because some people do not like to bid open… we do not know why but that is their own concern. We did not buy our own site, did not have someone we know buy or get someone to buy it… why the heck would we risk ruining our reputation for a single website. The lady that bought the site is someone we have never met or heard of and purchased it on her own will… we asked for a name and picture to be put on this site and she said no to the picture (which is no issue) but her name is Grace Santos and here was the conversation we had over sitepoint PM…
ii. We had an individual out right call us shady in the comments of sitepoint and our response to the was “LOL whatever”
The purpose of that response was that if they are going to outright label us as scamming (which is what shady really means) then we are not going to even bother responding. A PM that would allow us to explain would have been more appropriate and then we get a PM from them saying we were unprofessional. Well talk about being a hypocrite… they call our actions shady because someone outbid them and then say we are in the wrong… people need to look in the mirror.
We believe in giving everyone respect but plain and simply do not be an ass and assume things and make comments and expect us to be appreciative of it. Maybe next time, take the time to ask us personally and keep the accusations until you are educated.
6. The Prizes: We are very thankful to all our sponsors who donated prizes and we also want to apologize to a few of the winners. We failed to mention a turn around time and did a poor job of updating some of you on this. The majority of the prizes were delivered right away because they were digital but a few were physical products and take time to get processed. We PROMISE all prizes will be delivered
7. So would we do it again? Absolutely yes… we of course would do a few thing different but being through this once opened our eyes to a few things and we loved it.
Last of All THANK YOU! We truly mean that… THANK YOU TO ALL OUT LOYAL READERS… There are so many of you that have emailed and commented on how the cowpetition was a great learning experiance for you and all we can say is THANKS!
So overall what was your opinion of the whole thing, good or bad… but we prefer the good 
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Wow thats really great. Good for you that you donated all of it aswell…
I learned a lot during this competition and wanted to thank you and Garry Conn for walking us through the process.
Gaje Masters last blog post..Google Adsense referrals gone
You have been reading my blog for a super long time. You are like one of my original readers.
Thanks so much for following my writing and being such a wonderful long term reader.
Garry Conns last blog post..What Is A Viral Video?
Cowpetition was just superb,
I have an idea though.Why don’t you try another one , this time with John Chow
Johnys last blog post..A Month of Free Advertising at JohnyCow.com
He would totally kill John Chow. If you followed John Chow on Top Affiliate Challenge he failed miserably but said that he did it on purpose. The whole purpose to the challenge was to see which of the three teams could make more money on a day to day basis. He lost his butt off and eventually got kicked off the show.
I don’t know… I could be wrong about it. But my money would be on John COW and not John CHOW. In fact, if John COW decided to go up against CHOW, I am totally making it official right here in this comment that I would personally team up with COW towards working together at knocking CHOW out.. TKO!!!
I personally don’t believe that if CHOW and COW were put into a situation where they each had to start over from scratch and both build brand new blogs that CHOW could duplicate his success. I don’t mean nothing bad against him, I think John Chow is great. He is very entertaining, has an awesome personality and seems like the type of guy that you’d have fun hanging out with. However, when it comes to making money online from the ground up (so to speak) I don’t see him being able to duplicate what he already built or be able to build something different.
Keep in mind, what he has built kinda in many ways came already handed to him from another business source. His other business source fed traffic to his personal blog for quite awhile. In fact, his blog originally wasn’t about making money online until he realized that he could make money online.
But to be honest… who in their right mind couldn’t make money online if they had traffic? My 10 year old son could take over John Chow dot Com today and continue to make money from it. Running his blog isn’t difficult one bit.
Ok… [end rant] LOL!!!!
Garry Conns last blog post..What Is A Viral Video?
I totally agree with you Garry.
Sorry… I don’t mean to overtake the comments here. I’ll shut up… but too, I am glad that you totally see my point of view on this.
Garry Conns last blog post..ClickHereToOrderBook.com
Wow… thats all i got… wow
COWpetition was great and greater was idea to put that together to come up with first cowbook. The ways you explained “keywords search” show your abilities in the field. I have completly changed my approach to start a project online after reading the book.
I used to jump in designing the site and then some content and then promotion. But the idea for keyword search and then designing during that and KILLER CONTENT in the process, link bait etc and THEN promotion is my new way.
Also you explaination of how google likes “content written in natural way” rocks but excuse me to use “thank you” as keyword here (i know a bad approach)
thank you for cowpetition, thank you for book, thank you for great writings, thank you for this blog, thank you for everything
You are very welcome and thanks for saying THANKS
Very good competition, I really loved it.
You should have another sometime soon
Ironbloggers last blog post..The IronBlogger Theme
Isn’t it one of the great mysteries about people that we tend to resent those who give us things?
Hey it was a cool competition with some great real world take aways. Actually nice to see the processes behind an ebook unfolding.
Kudos from me for whatever they might be worth.
Dane Morgans last blog post..Are They Forgotten?
Hi Cow! Congrats on the double WIN actually. For those who weren’t glued at their computer clicking the refresh button at the last few minutes of the auction, Cow man swooped in and placed a bid like within the last 10 minutes of the auction. At first I had mixed emotions about it… I am kind of paranoid at times and thought that he was pulling a trick of some kind, but within a few minutes later, the bid really did make sense and you know what, good for him.
Over the course of these last two months, DebtConsolidationBook.com really started to grow on me. Really, is a pretty snazzy looking site if you asked me. Part of me really hated to part with the site. So, really it’s kind of cool to see it now in the Cow mans
handshoofs.Congrats again and I look forward to watching the site grow and continue its path towards success.
Best Regards,
Garry Conn
Garry Conns last blog post..Does Google Still Do It For You?
lol.. well hopefully you will learn to fully trust me eventually Garry
In my own opinion.. the competition was really awesome. it was a great opener for me to finally consider my blog as a business if i truly want to gain financially from it. in fact, i am not trying to plan of ways to monetize it. Thanks cow!
I was very tempted to join in at the last minute and swoop on this. The only thing I was scared off was having the motivation to keep it upto date, I’m a big time gamer with every console going (going back 18 years). But I can also be a lazy git. Perhaps if I hadn’t just got back from holiday and was feeling more energetic I might have took it
As for the comp as a whole, it provided some of the best content seen in the MMO niche for a long time.
Great competition. It actually motivated me to start my own site. http://www.debteducationalliance.com. Hopefully I can take some of the info provided and put it to good use.
Congratulations John on winning the bid race! Hats off to you again on your skills.
I learned a lot of things from the Cowpetition and it has encouraged me on hosting a competition on my blog too. Halfway on getting sponsors for it. Almost done.
Must say, you are one of those rare pro-bloggers of the blogosphere.