First of all allow me to apologize or the delay in following up on this post. As you know we are launching our new service called SyndicateKahuna and with everything else going on, there just does not seem to be enough time in the day! Ya, ya,ya… I know.. stop my whining and excuses!

In the previous lesson of this series I talked about how to “Protect Yourself Before You Start a Contest“, today I am going to get into setting up the rules of the contest.

I also have a cool new plugin that is almost complete that I am going to be giving all of you for free that will help organize contests… I hope to have this to you by Friday but Hurricane IKE has caused some delays with our Houston office.

Setting Up the Rules:

This is certainly one area that I am learning from each and every time I run a contest. Each time there seems to be someone that finds some loophole and puts us into a scramble. The main issue arises from the fact that the internet is “world wide” (hmmmm could that be why it is called the “World Wide Web”?) and if you have any physical products that you are giving as prizes, this can really turn into a nightmare.

This is not really an issue if you do not already own the prize you are giving away, as you can offer a cash alternative… but this is not always possible and often times you can get discounts on prizes or get them for free because of the contest will promote them and having to give a cash alternative will be a revenue loss for you.

It is not always possible to give cash as well, many countries still struggle with things like PayPal and there for you will end up having to do wires or something like that.. and this can be a pain.. especially when you consider the return on investment if those countries provide next to no traffic to your site.

The following are the Top 6 questions to ask yourself about setting up your rules for the Prize Awarding?

1. Who is your target audience and where are they located?

If you target only customers in the USA for example… well then this makes it easy. Simply set the rules that participants must live in the USA. If however you have customers and readers from all over the world, then it changes this dramatically.

2. Is Shipping Required?

If the prizes are physical, then you need to consider how you are going to ship the prizes to the winners. One option is to have the winner pay the shipping and handling … which is not uncommon but will frustrate some people so MAKE SURE to clearly communicate this. If the product needs to be shipped then you need to understand if you are willing to pay the international shipping costs or not.

3. Can a Cash Alternative Be Given?

Often times if the prizes have not been donated or bought already, you can offer a cash alternative. You need to make it clear how the cash alternative will be given, make sure to specify that it will only be given that way and there are no exceptions. You also need to state what the cash alternative is, just because it is a cash alternative, you do not need to give the equivalent value in cash… its your rules and you can set them how you feel makes sense and just make sure you set them clear.

4. Is There a Time Limit?

Whether it be spam filters, natural disasters or just bad luck (which really is the first two as well), the fact is that some people will not find out that they won until months later… and then they want to claim the prize. You need to clearly state whether or not there is a time limit for accepting the prize and if there is then make it clear. I personally think 4 weeks is more than fair enough but do not leave it open ended… you do not want a surprise email 6 months later

You also need to state whether a new winner will be selected or will the prize be kept for a new draw.. or just not given away! Its your call but just make sure you are clear and up front about everything.

5. Whats the Delivery Time?

This one has bit me in the behind more than once. People want their prizes NOW and if you do not tell them the estimated time for delivery up front, then you are going to create a very frustrating situation. Even if the prize is cash via PayPal… give yourself some breathing room. You are going to want to give at minimum a 7 day delivery window and if it is a physical product then a 4 to 5 week window is appropriate. If the person gets it earlier then you will make them even happier

6. Who is Responsible for Delivering the Prizes?

This is very important to make clear as well. If you are delivering the prizes then tell them that and give them a way to contact you about it. If however someone else sponsored the prizes and they will be handling the delivery, then get the contact info off them that the winner needs. Make it clear that you are not handling the prizes and who it is they need to contact. Obviously they can still contact you if after a certain amount of time they have not heard back from the person.

IMPORTANT –> You also need to pay attention to any sponsor additions that are donated and clarify with the sponsor all the same criteria.

So there you have it.. the 6 important questions you need to ask yourself before setting the rules for the prize delivery. In the next lesson I am going to cover setting up the contest criteria for people to actually participate.

For the contest we are going to hold at http://www.anaudlife.com, the prizes are going to be physical prizes that can only be shipped within Canada and the USA however, the audience is world wide and so there will be a cash alternative based on the exact cost for the product that we would have to pay.. minus the shipping. This does not include any extra sponsored gifts that might get added by others… only the initial prizes.

The deliver will be 4 weeks and the winners will have exactly 30 days to redeem the prize. The 30 days is not to the minute… if we receive it within a few days of the 30 we may award it but we will make it clear that it is 30 days. If however 7 days later or more.. then NO, the prize will not be awarded and a new winner will be selected. Last of all, we will be responsible for the delivery of the prizes and we will create a separate email address to handle this issue.

Anything you think I overlooked?

• 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
• Part 6 – Protect Yourself Before You Start a Contest
• Part 7 – Rule of the Contest Prize Delivery

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

In the previous post “Planning a Contest to Get the Buzz Going” we talked about deciding on what the best prizes would be for your market and today we are going to talk about planning the criteria that participants are required to perfrom to be entered to win.

One of the challenges of holding a contest is how do you make it viral so it gets loads of attention. People that enter the contest usually do not want to talk about it with others since it will decrease their chances of winning. With http://www.anaudlife.com, my goal of the contest is to get exposure for the blog and in order to do that I want the contest to encourage participants to talk about the contest in other places and personally I am a fan of the “Ticket” system for allowing participants the opportunity to earn more chances to win by spreading the word.

There are many people who are not big fans of the multi ‘Ticket’ system but the problem is if you have a new blog and you do not already have a significant reader base, having a contest or giveaway that is just a simple “subscribe”, is not going to get you any extra exposure.

Now do not get me wrong, contests with simple one step registrations can be very successful but you need to already have lots of traffic coming to your site to take advantage of it.

For our case study blog we are going to use the multi ‘Ticket’ system and now we need to plan out the criteria.

This can prove to be somewhat of a challenge for people, especially in non “IM” (internet marketing) related niches. One of the great things about the IM niche is you can be pretty sure that most people in the market own a website or blog, have accounts at social networks, know what digg, twitter and squidoo are and the list goes on and on.

You need to be able to take advantage of systems that the sites market will be familiar with and it can not be done in such a way that would appear to be spamming someone. One thing you will want to consider is providing small little video instructions of each criteria that your readers may not be familiar with, this way you can help those that want to participate but do not know how.

Criteria 1: Subscribe to RSS feed via email: This is the top thing that I want people to do. Getting someone opted in to the sites list means repeat traffic. It is important that you also mention that they must remain opted into the list in order to win.

Possible optional criteria:

The optional criteria are the extra things the participant can do to get more chances to win. You will want to award points based on effort and so something that is very easy to do would earn a few points but something that is more difficult would earn more points. Before you worry about the points however, you need to figure out what optional steps to use. Some ideas for our case study blog is…

• Vote for Video on YouTube: We would need to create a video about the site but most people know what Youtube is and it would be easy to make a quick video about how to vote the video up and comment on it.

• Facebook and or Myspace: You can be pretty sure that a lot of people are familiar with these sites and have accounts at one or both of them. You can create a group or page and have them join and write on their wall about the contest.

• Content Creation: Some people love to write and you could have them create content for you that you can use. Ask them to write a 400 word article about your contest and blog, you can then submit this article to a site like ezinearticles.com to get some exposure. You can even offer to link to their site with the article as well, this way you both get a good quality backlink.

• Link to Your Blog: I can guarantee you that the majority of your readers will not own a blog but a lot of them will have some way of adding a link to your blog. It never hurts to ask.

• Stumble the Page: This is one of those things that a lot of people will not have accounts with but you can provide instructions and hope for the best.

• Comment on Other Blog: This one you need to be careful with and provide detailed instructions but is an easy way to get some links via comments. Explain that the comments must be worthwhile and relate directly to the post they are commenting on and are not to enter a link in the comment but simply enter your sites name and url in the asked for comment fields. Make sure that the blog they comment on is at least remotely related to your market.

Cow Brained Idea –> Hmmm…. thinking outside the box here but maybe you could get a little script made that you prefill with blogs you would like them to comment on and the post randomly shows one for them to comment on. Damn I think I am going to get that made… it is freakin genius bwa hahahaha.

Once you have decided on the criteria you are going to use, you will then need to figure out the point values.

Your Help is Wanted –> What other ideas do you have… please comment below and share other possible ideas you have for a non IM “arthritis” blog.

In the next post of this series, I am going to about protecting yourself with your contest.

• 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
• Part 6 – Protect Yourself Before You Start a Contest
• Part 7 – Rule of the Contest Prize Delivery

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

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

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

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!

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

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! Name: Email: 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???

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

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

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved

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

Click Here Now to Download “How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog” for FREE and Learn the Right Way to Make Money Online! – Copyright JohnCow.com – All Rights Reserved