DisregardMe

Just a quick heads up to people that this domain name and possibly this blog are for sale. 

Don't think of this as a failure, but rather a smart time management decision.

Why?  Well basically while I thought the idea of this blog would be fun I didn't realize the work it takes to track the contests.  When do they end, who won, did they get my entry?  Plus my other projects are taking a lot of my time.  I would much rather put my efforts towards some more rewarding (for me) projects.  No reason to continue just for the sake of it if you know what I mean.

This isn't to say the idea is bad.  On the contrary many are having fun with it and getting some good traffic.  Cheers to them! 

So if you are interested, send a note through my contact form.  Tell me what you want and how much.  If you can't answer both of those terms I will just ignore it.  In other words if you send me a stupid email saying "how much you want for your domain name" I am not going to answer.  You make the offer if you want it.  Otherwise I will probably just use it for another project in the future.  Sorry if that sounds mean, but its amazing  how many people can't follow basic instructions.

Thanks for all the support and readership!  And be sure to check out my main blog.

Joshua

Contest Blogger has posted the list of the top 23 contest blogs and we came in number 3!  I would have liked to hit number two, but hey being in the top 5 is pretty good for this relatively new blog.  Within just a few minutes of his post we have received two bloggers submitting their contests to us, which is great.

Thanks Phil!  We will try to hit number two next time.

I am indeed back, but my personal computer has died. :-(  I should have the new CPU fan I need by Monday afternoon.  At which time I can be back in business and able to post from my own machine, etc.

I have a long to do list:

• Catch up on all those contests.
• Find a Guest Blogger or Two
• Find out why Text Link Ads thinks my blog is too new.  Get them to let me in anyway.
• Up my readership and subscriber count.
• Win at least one contest.
• Find way to make small bit of $$ on my blog. 
• Start a contest of my own.

Anything I am missing?  Any suggestions?

Update: Its tuesday afternoon and so far no word on the fan.   damn!

We are back!  Been too long we know.  Wow look at all those contests for us to enter.  I am sure you have been keeping track, but just in case Contest Blogger has been doing a great job alerting us all to the latest contests in the bloggosphere.

We plan on reviewing them all and entering where appropriate. 

As for the vacation it was great!  Super!  Very not relaxing, but in a good way.

In other news SweetHacks is back.  Apparently they took a bit of offense to us considering their contest a failure when the day of the contest announcement (and a few days afterwards) their site was down, etc.  But hey, we all have issues from time to time and may need some time to regroup.  They got themselves together (for the second time now) and have proven true to their contest giveaway and also sponsored other contests.  Yay for them.  Hopefully this is just the beginning of great things.

Yes, again!  Soon I will be cruising the Mediterranean.  Spending most of my time in Italy.  Should be a fantastic trip and as always I will take lots of pictures and post them for those interested.

If you are aware of any upcoming contests, please let me know.  I will certainly add them when I get back.

Here are my pics from my Yellowstone vacation.  These are just shown randomly, there are a few hundred to see if you visit the flickr page.

What a great vacation!  You really should visit Yellowstone if you haven't done so already.  Plus just before I left John Cow did a nice link love promotion in which my blog was included.  I come back to find my technorati ranking skyrocketing and 10x the number of subscribers!  Sweet!  I wish more people would favorite my blog, but hey I should not be picky.

Over all my blog is doing better than I expected.  It hasn't been a month yet and it has already come close to some of my other sites in subscribers and traffic.  I have people contacting me directly now for contest promotion and actually reading and commenting on my posts.  Life is good.  Thanks everyone!

Just when I have all kinds of traffic on the blog I go on vacation.  Off to Idaho, then Yellowstone.  One of the most beautiful places in America.

If I were a smarter man I would have planed for this and booked a guest blogger.  Ah well.  Live and learn. 

In the mean time post a comment here if you have a hot tip on a new contest or link back program.  I will check email from time to time and will try to get them posted.

Be good while I am gone.  Don't mess up the house too bad.

As if there were not enough, here is a fun 5 second video to watch.

Maybe I need a rumble.  Maybe I am just bored.  Or maybe, just maybe I desperately need attention...

What ever the reason I figured I would get in on the feu rumble going on with a couple of contest blogs. 

If you don't already know by now there are LOTS of blogs like this one.  Many of them, like mine, started recently.  Of those blogs there are well known sites such as Contest Blogger.  Others such as RevieWow and PrizeBlog.  I just learned today that there is Ryan Contest Blog. 

Ryan decided to respond to Contest Blogger's post about why they are the best.  All in fun of course.  But nobody included me in the game.  So I am inserting myself.

Why is DisregardMe worth reading?  Cuz we sometimes have the scoop on new contests.  We have an aggregation of many contest blogs so you can instantly find out about the latest and greatest.  We allow comments.  Plus our blog has a fun name. 

Let me just say that if you follow the blog contests out there, it is a good idea to follow many of the blogs.  You will maximize your options and it spreads the love between many worthy blogs.  Make sure you subscribe to all our RSS feeds!

So I have completed my first full week of blogging on contests and linkbacks.  Its been busy!

My goal was to see what kind of traffic I could get on this blog just by submitting to contests and linkback promotions.  So far I have 8 RSS subscribers, and some of my entries have had 150+ visitors.  Not bad for the first week.  I screwed up my google analytics code though, and so I am missing 2 days worth of valuable data.  Damn.

So what have I learned about contests thus far?

1. Make your rules very clear.
2. Make your prize clear.
3. Make sure it is clear when the end date is.
4. If your contest is about the most comments, expect comment spam.
5. Submit your contest to all the contest blog sites such as mine.  Here is a handy list of other sites to submit to.  My site isn't on there, but we are new... maybe they will add us.

Have I won anything?  Nope.  At least I don't think so.  It isn't easy to go back and keep track of what I have entered and when it ends, etc.  Kind of a pain really.  Same for linkbacks.  I have a few incoming links now, but the bulk of my traffic is from stumble upon (keep submitting my pages when I post your contest) and links from comments when I tell bloggers I entered their contest and post the review.

Bottom line, the traffic thus far is pretty one sided.  Good for the person hosting the promotion, not so great for me.  Yet.  Those bloggers who see my review and add it to stumble upon guarantee 50-150 people see the review, so I recommend more people do that. Maybe this will turn out to be a long tail scenario where I get lots of traffic over time?

As a reminder, subscribe to my RSS feed to know about contests right away.  Or subscribe to my aggregation feeds to get info from other blogs in one handy feed.