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How to Promote & Run a Contest – A Case Study of An Aud Life dot Com

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:00:12 +0000

If you have been a reader of JohnCow for a while now, you will know that we are constantly holding contests here. Contests are fantastic ways to get a good amount of exposure, gain readers and more.

One of the huge advantages of us having a well established blog (along with lots of business contacts) is we have been able to sponsor some pretty sweet contests that have not cost us a single penny. This however does not mean that if you are just starting out and have few (if any) contacts that you can not hold a successful contest. What it does mean however is you are going to have to work a little harder to get some buzz going for it and you may have to spend some of your own money on the prizes.

Over the next week or so I am going to put together a case study for promoting a new blog which includes how to hold a contest and we are going to lay out every step of the process here in a blog series so you can learn first hand how to do it. The blog I am going to use for this is a blog that my beautful wife of 12+ years just created at http://www.anaudlife.com

Since I first got into running a business online, my wife has had 0 interest in any part of it. She did not like computers, had no interest in running a business and had not a clue as to how to describe to others what it was I did. The only part that she had any interest in was spending the money that it generated

As a stay at home mother (raising our two daughters) she has recently started to show an interest in blogging and getting involved with some forums and places like FaceBook and about 2 months ago asked if she could have her own blog. After about 10 minutes of laughing (because I thought she was joking), when I could tell from the look on her face that at that moment she thought I was a jackass… I then said in disbelief…

“Are You Serous?”

Well, she was serious and so immediately it popped into my mind… “What a great opportunity for a case study for my readers!”

So the first thing I had her do was list the top 5 things she was passionate about and loved to research on the internet. Number 2 on her list (after shopping for clothes) was rheumatoid arthritis. You see my wife was diagnosed three years ago at the age of 30 with rheumatoid arthritis and in fact it had gotten so bad that she had to use a cane full time. Once she knew what the cause of the pain was, she immediately began researching and testing treatments and everything else related to this condition. She has since eliminated the need for a cane completely and has become very physically active (our dog cant even keep up with her anymore).

As soon I saw this on her list –> BINGO!

You see, having a niche that you are 100% passionate about is a niche you want to be in. You can write with passion, relate to your readers and best of all it encourages you to learn even more about the topic so you can have stuff to write about.

Over the past 4 weeks Audrey has started to piece together a blog that is pretty darn good and she has done it by herself…

She has wanted to learn how to do it and so alI I have done (other then a little graphics help from some of my office staff) is provided some direction. It is a definite learning curve for her (little things like how to write a title, researching keywords, using forums for ideas and so) but I am very proud of how well she has done so far.

She is now at the stage of starting the promotion for her blog and this is the part that I am going to get a little more involved in and this is also the part that I am going to completely share with all of you. You will see first hand what we are going to do and the first part of this is going to be planning out the promotion strategy and organizing a contest.

So, you are going to want to get your pen and paper ready (you will want to jot down ideas that pop in your head) and get ready for some fun learning. I also recommend, if you have not done so already, that you subscribe to our blog so you can keep up with us… we will also be putting this into an ebook form for all our readers after it is done.

PS – One of my good online buddies is putting together a wicked contest for you all that will be hosted here on JohnCow starting next week, so stay tuned!

So out of curiosity…

[poll id="8"]

Part 1 – Planning Your Promotion Strategy
Part 2 – Understanting the How and Where of Your Promotion Strategy
Part 3 – Planning the Subscriber Traffic Strategy
Part 4 – Planning a Contest to Get the Buzz Going
Part 5 – Planning the Contest Criteria

Announcing the WINNERS

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:11:25 +0000

TIme too announce the winners of Giveaway.

We have had almost 3000 people enter this giveaway!

The way the winners were selected is I exported the list of names for everyone that has downloaded the ebook and then listed them in order.

I then used the random number generator at…

http://www.mathgoodies.com

…and selected the winners. I only have the name and email of the winners and so I can only enter the name below. You will receive an email today if you are a winner.

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Grand Prize: – Dan
- Flat screen and a bunch of other stuff
2nd prize: – Scott of Flower Mound Texas
- iPod touch – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)
3rd Prize: Alex Newell
- 3 Months of TrafficKahuna
4th prize: Erica
- Flip Mino – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)
5th prize: Kacey
- $250 Amex Gift Card – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)
6th prize: adibakri
- Copy of Content Composer
7th prize: Rory Devlin
- Copy of Video Post Robot
8th prize: Ron
- 2 GB USB pen – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around) – and “JohnCow.com Fan Club. Charter member. ” t-shirt
9th prize: TJ
-1970s Disco Party Mac Daddy Pimp Costume

I will post the full names and locations once they respond to the emails.

Congratulations to all the winners!

We also have another SUPER COOL Contest planned for next week, so stay tuned.

Want to also thank MarketLeverage for their generous donations! Please check them out… they are a fantastic CPA system!

WIN Big Time with the Unveiling of John Cow

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:33:49 +0000

Well today is the day.. no more clues, no more tricks… we are fulling coming out with who is behind John Cow and in celebration of this liberating moment (for me especially), we are going to make this fun… LOTS OF FUN!

Before I get into talking about the cool prizes however, I want to introduce ourselves. Now a few people have mentioned lately that we did not do a good job disguising ourselves in the last email we sent out… well that was the point. For over three months we have had people guessing at who we were and very few figured it out (personally i do not blame them.. I am sure you all have more productive things to do) and so we tried to make it a lot more obvious.

Now one thing I want to make very clear… one of the concerns we had with uncovering John Cow is we did not want the readers to be worried this was going to become another product pimp blog. We promise that this blog will only continue to improve in quality and we have lots of amazing things planned for the coming months.

So who are we… well a few days ago we mentioned that the owner of Johncow.com was a company named Archon Media (which is based in Houston TX)… but the owners of Archon Media are….

Jason Katzenback (the voice of John Cow for the past 3 months)
Jason Potash
Marc Quarles

We are also the owners of such products and memberships as TrafficKahuna, CommentKahuna, Video Post Robot, Orwell Pro, Content Rover, PortalFeeder and more. We also have a huge number of non internet marketing blogs, websites and products that are focused on everything from health issues to GPS and over the past 4 years we have been able to build an online business that generates a healthy 7 figure a year income.

I am telling you that not to brag but the ensure you that we truly know what we are talking about. You see the original owner of John Cow was barely making a living online, not that he did not do a fantastic job with getting this blog initially off the ground (and I am sure he will be very successful) but this was not truly a “Learn to Make Money Online” blog because the old owner really did not know much about the topic. Well we do and over the past few years we have had a lot of bumps and bruises… and each time we have been able to learn from our mistakes and have been able to turn them into helping our business succeed even further.

Our goal with John Cow is to give back to the internet marketing community as a way of saying thanks!

Now for our current customers, please do not worry that we are going to be sharing all those strategies and tools that you pay to have access to. While we will share lots of strategies and tips here, obviously our first priority needs to be ensuring our paying customers are taking care of and that means that you have nothing to worry about…. you are our number 1 priority! Also, you will get behind the scenes access to exactly what we are doing with Johncow.com so you can learn from this real life example

WOW… does that feel good to get off my chest… you have no idea how frustrating it has been not being able to be completely open with everyone as to who we are.

Now onto the GiveAway…

FIRST OF ALL CHECK THESE PRIZES OUT…

Grand Prize:
-26” LCD TV that can be used as monitor
-A FREE Copy of the brand new version of TrafficTravis (it is totally improved and being released next week)
-A FREE copy of Affiliate Elite
-A FREE 3 month Membership to TrafficKahuna
-A FREE copy of TrafficTravis
-A FREE copy of Video Post Robot
-A one hour One on One phone call with just you and me to review your current business and brain storm ways to improve it.
-A contest on JohnCow that will include YOUR SITE as the main registration criteria for entering (lots of traffic to you

2nd prize: iPod touch – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)

3rd Prize: 3 Months of TrafficKahuna

4th prize: Flip Mino – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)

5th prize: Copy of Content Composer

6th prize: Copy of Video Post Robot

7th prize: $250 ML Amex gift card – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around)

8th prize: 2 GB USB pen – Sponsored by Market Leverage (the best affiliate CPA network around) – and “JohnCow.com Fan Club. Charter member. ” t-shirt

9th prize: 1970s Disco Party Mac Daddy Pimp Costume

To help us celebrate this special event (for us anyway), we have put together a cool little giveaway that I hope you are going to love and registering for the giveaway is SUPER EASY!

As you know… a few months ago we had a little competition here on JohnCow called the COWPetition. This was a little contest between a fellow blogger named Garry Conn and ourselves. The point was to take a brand new domain and in 30 days build a blog and sell it on sitepoint.com for the most amount of money. Well we detailed every step and put it together into a 132 page FREE ebook that if you “Click Here” you can read some awesome testimonials. This ebook is not a cheap report to get you to buy something else… it is a full start to finish case study and we have been told over and over that we were nuts to be giving it away for free.

OK, so why am i telling you this?

Because all you need to do to register for this giveaway is simply register to download the FREE ebook (which is extremely valuable by itself) and you will automatically be entered into the draw. The only stipulation is the winners must still be registered when we draw the prizes.

If you are already on the list and have downloaded the eBook… you do not have to do anything

HOW TO REGISTER TO WIN –> Simply register to download our eBook below and thats it. (How easy is that )

Download “Building a Business NOT a Blog” and be Entered to WIN!

SECURE & CONFIDENTIAL Your email address will NEVER be rented, traded or sold. WE GUARANTEE YOUR CONFIDENTIALITY because we HATE spam as much as you do.

Winners will be selected by random draw on Thursday July 31st at 12:00pm EST

We also want the give another HUGE THANK YOU to Market Leverage for Donating the Cool Prizes!

So what are your comments… Cool Giveaway or What???

Do You Want to Know Who John Cow is?

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:49:23 +0000

Well the day is finally here… and I think about 3, maybe 4 people have been anxiously waiting for us to let the cow out of the bag. Before we get into that however, we have some winners to announce

Winner of the BRAND NEW KINDLE from amazon –> Barbara Baker (http://twitter.com/)

Winner of the FREE ACCOUNT AT WHYPARK.COM –> Silla (http://twitter.com/)

Winner of the CUSTOM BANNER from http://www.therandomforest.com and the 30 DAYS OF ADVERTISING here at JohnCow.com –> Woobie (http://twitter.com/)

Winner of a FREE COPY OF VIDEO POST ROBOT –> Dude World Order (http://twitter.com/)

Congratulations to the WINNERS! You should have received an email from us and if not, contact us via our contact form on this page and we will set you up.

Now that this contest is over we have another good one lined up for you… and this one is 100% sponsored by us the new owners and there is a good reason for this. You see we are darn proud of this here blog and the response from you our fantastic readers is amazing. We love getting emails and seeing posts on other sites mentioning how this is a true MMO blog now!

Of course we realize that there are a few of you, who probably are not reading this right now, that do not care for the change. We have not heard as of why but we accept that we can not be liked by everyone… we do not like it.. but we accept it

Now, as for us telling you who we are, we want you to know that this is a huge relief for us to be able to finally do this. We have loads of things planned for JohnCow dot Com and by having to hide our face was making a few things a little difficult.

Ok… so are you sick of me talking yet.. well too bad

With us coming out there will be a few obvious changes right away, like the fact that I am done using “we” and “us”… this was fun at first but is now a pain in the cow pie hole. So if that is something you are going to miss.. sorry.

Another thing is we are getting a lot more stirct on our paid reviews and please stop requesting us to review your site and not mention it is a review (sorry that is a pet peave).

We also have planned to come out with some cool new toys for the John Cow readers exclusively. We are almost finished a really cool one that will help your keyword research, if you follow along the strategies I taught.

OK OK OK.. sheesh… i can hear you yelling already.

This is too fun… but I have just a couple little bits of info still to share.

1. We did not spend $50 000 on this blog… so those rumors can stop right now. A good rule of thumb is to pay 10x’s the monthly rev a site creates and Bob was not earning 5 grand a month.

2. We are not Garry Conn, John Chow, Shawn Casey, Bob Jones or someone Bob hired (that one was actually insulting)

3. We are actually 3 people that own JohnCow but it is only one of the owners that is the voice of JohnCow

OK, so who is it…….

ARCHON MEDIA from Houston TX

There it is, that is who it is behind JohnCow!

But wait… am I not going to reveal who the actual name is of the owners and who the one owner that is the writer is?

YUP.. but not today…. (oh how i wish you could hear my laugh right now)

But before you get all pissy on me and say that is not fair, we are going to make it very much worth your while.

First of all, for any of you who are our current customers of one of our products or memberships, you just need to look at your email and you could figure this out pretty quick. This was how Andy Beard did it and I was a little surprised more of you did not pick up on this. Of course maybe you did but since there are only 3 or 4 of you that even care about this, you probably just did not get around to saying anything

Here is what is going to happen though.

On Thursday July 24th we are going to mention the names (no tricks this time either) of who the three owners of Archon Media are and who the voice of John Cow is and we are also going to be kicking off our new contest that is focused on our new ebook “How to build a Business not Just a Blog” and the winner will win a free copy of every product we reference in this ebook that we use, which includes…

1. A FREE Copy of the brand new version of TrafficTravis (it is totally improved and being released next week)

2. A FREE copy of Affiliate Elite

3. A FREE 3 month Membership to TrafficKahuna

PLUS –> To show we really do want you to succeed, we are also including…

4. A one hour One on One phone call with just you and me to review your current business and brain storm ways to improve it.

5. A contest on JohnCow that will include YOUR SITE as the main registration criteria for entering (lots of traffic to you)

We will be announcing the new ownership to our business mailing list (which is pretty darn big) and plan to see lots of traffic pounding on these pastures and so this should be fun.

How this is going to work is Thursday we will be making the announcement and then on the following Thursday (one week from then) we are going to be making the draw. The ONLY criteria to be entered into the draw is that you have downloaded the ebook and have an active subscription… there are no other criteria needed.

If you can figure out who we are from the hints I gave, go ahead and comment on it, we will not respond to them though and any of you that know because I have talked to you… would be cool if you could just comment a hint instead of saying who it is.

So there you go.. now lets hear your comments

$2400 Paid to WorldVision Due to COWPetition

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:45:45 +0000

Thanks to everyone who was involved in the COWPetition… we have kept our end of the deal and because we won the contest (woohoo!) we have donated all the winnings to WorldVision (an amazing charity) and we feel pretty darn good about it

Click Here to Enlarge

Remember tomorrow is the BIG DAY that we announce the winners of the COWRoast and announce the owners of JohnCow.com, so stay tuned