One Man's Blog » Contests

My Woopra is Bigger Than Yours

John P. — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:36:08 +0000

I’m launching the first ever (un)official Woopra Live users contest. If you’ve got Woopra, and you click on the Live tab up on the top right, you can see the number of current users on your site at any give time. I’m kicking it off with the current record. So, lets see who can beat 1,352 simultaneous users!!!

The prize for beating me will be one crisp new US Dollar. Good luck!

Lisa Marie Mary Wins the Bose Headphones!

John P. — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 04:26:44 +0000

Sorry it took me way, way too long to get around to doing the drawing for the October contest for the Bose Tri-port headphones. I’m like 5 weeks overdue because of travel and other schedule inhibitors. However, having just arrived home from Hawaii I spent a couple of hours administering the prize drawing in the same manner as the previous prize, and lo and behold Lisa was the winner!

Congrats to her for all her contributions as well as just being a subscriber. I’ve also got a couple of other rather large announcements coming up, so I’m going to suspend the monthly contest for December just to thin out my schedule a bit until I figure out a far less time intensive method of doing this. I’m sure I’ll be back with the contest in January, and I’ll try to make it something extra special!

OMB – Best Blog of All Time?

John P. — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:26:17 +0000

“You like me… You really like me!”

Ok. I received word that one of my “biggest fans” has nominated One Man’s Blog for a Blogger’s Choice Award! In fact, OMB was nominated as the Best Blog of All Time! I don’t know about all that… but thank you very much for the nomination.

Funny thing is, there are only a few hundred votes for the other blogs which are nominated (it’s not that huge of a contest I guess), so it is theoretically possible that if ALL of my subscribers were to take a minute to go over there and vote I could actually win (”…he wrote, while laughing at the thought this would happen…”).

Of course, to make matters worse, it looks like the voting – which has been going on all year – ends in a little over a week!

Sooo, if you are operating under the delusion that you’d like to see me crowned “King of the World” or something like that, then mosey on over and load up the votes! But remember, you’ve only got about a week to get ‘er done.

October 2007 Member of the Month Contest

John P. — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:45:32 +0000

This month we’ve got a brand new, shiny, pair of Bose TriPort OE studio headphones. These babies go for $179.00 right now on Amazon, and sound amazing.

They fold up and come with a little travel case, so you can toss them in your bag and use them with an iPod, laptop, or whatever. Frankly this is one of those items that most people normally wouldn’t drop this kind of change on, so naturally it makes for a perfect prize here on OMB!

We’re going to run this by the same rules as last month for now. You can do either (or both) of the following to qualify for an entry into this contest:

Subscribe for e-mail updates (form on the right side of the page). This makes sure that I have your e-mail so I can contact you if you win, and it allows my readers that donâ€™t have Web sites to still have a chance at winning. NOTE: if you aren’t receiving daily e-mail updates then you are NOT confirmed and need to sign up again.
Create a post with at least one link back to any OMB article during the contest month. Please make sure to leave a trackback on the post you link, or drop me an e-mail, so I can keep track.

Details:

If you win I’ll ship anywhere in the world. I don’t care where you are! So, everyone is eligible.
Winners will be chosen by a random drawing which I’ll have my wife select while blindfolded (or at least not looking).
If you do something spectacular to help promote this site it will earn you extra entries. (Like start a Digg, Stumble, or Reddit storm, create graphics or improve my theme – or anything else generally kick ass.)
The rules may be changed a little here and there to keep things fair if I’ve forgotten anything. Please ask questions if you see glaring holes in the plan.

If you’re going to enter via a blog article, how about helping spread the love about this contest? And if you don’t have a Web site but are a regular reader, perhaps it’s time to get an e-mail subscription (top right of the page) so I can include you too? See my privacy policy if you have any concerns.

Now… since handing out just one prize at the end of the month doesn’t seem all that fun to me. There will probably be a few smaller mystery prizes as well. I don’t know about you guys, but to me it just seems more fun if more people win stuff!

So good luck, and keep reading! :-)

September Contest Winner

John P. — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:52:41 +0000

OK. Who loves ya baby! Damn right, I do! I spent about 4 hours just preparing all of the entries for this month’s contest which numbered in the hundreds. Yikes, we’ve got to do something about that for next month!

Anyway, as previously mentioned, you only had to do one of two “no obligation” things in order to be eligible to win the Sony Camcorder. Be an e-mail subscriber to OMB updates, or link to any article from your blog. (Both allow me to at least hunt down the winners.) Well, the results are in, and we have a winner!

First, the methodology… Because I don’t want anyone worrying about how the winner was chosen.

I gathered all of the inbound links showing on Technorati into a collection and printed them all out.
I cleaned up the e-mail subscriber list and printed all of the current subscribers out.
I checked those lists against the e-mails and comments from the contest post to make sure I had everyone.
I tossed in a few extra entries for things that some readers did which deserved extra entries.
I then manually cut each and every entry into strips and placed them in a big bowl.
My wife looked in the other direction and then selected a winner from among the group!

And the lucky winner of the Sony DCR-SR60 Hard Drive Camcorder is Mark Rayner! Mark’s entry came courtesy of the link he provided to the 150 Monty Python sketches article. So I wonder, did Mark even know that he had become eligible for the drawing as a result of the link? Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough.

Now, in case Mark is unable to fulfill the duties of the One Man’s Blog contest – namely to make contact with me fairly quickly, we did draw a runner-up. And lo and behold to my surprise it was Lorelle VanFossen! Yep, the very Lorelle who I filmed at WordCamp. So, just in case Mark got run over by a bus or something, the camcorder will go to Lorelle (but personally I wouldn’t count on it).

Congrats to Mark, and don’t despair if you weren’t the winner this month. I will announce next month’s prize and associated rules tomorrow… So stay tuned!

OMB’s New Member of the Month Contest!

John P. — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:26:51 +0000

Well, One Man’s Blog has continued to grow in every category I tend to measure, be it Technorati, Alexa, Feedburner or simply traffic stats. As a result, the advertising that I’ve placed on the site has been generating excess cash beyond what’s required to keep my dedicated servers running, and I’ve decided the best thing to do is give some back!

So, I’m happy to announce the implementation of the OMB Member of the Month Contest! Here is the deal… At the beginning of each month I’m going to announce the OMB Member of the Month winner along with the prize for the upcoming month. You can do either (or both) of the following to qualify:

Subscribe for e-mail updates. This makes sure that I have your e-mail so I can contact you if you win, and it allows my readers that don’t have Web sites to still have a chance at winning.
Create a post with at least one link back to any OMB article during the contest month. Please make sure to leave a trackback on the post you link, or drop me an e-mail, so I can keep track.

To make sure we start out with a bang, the first ever prize is going to be a Sony DCR-SR60 Hard Drive Camcorder with a retail value of $599. Great for video blogging because there is no tape! Record to hard drive, then USB it right into your computer for uploading!

I bought this as an evaluation unit and it’s been opened and tested one time only.

Now, I’m not promising that every month will be a $600 prize, but I will tell you that every prize will be something that I would personally love to receive. And as most of you probably know by now I’ve got some tasty toys.

Details I’ve already thought through:

If you win I’ll ship anywhere in the world. I don’t care where you are! So, everyone is eligible.
Winners will be chosen by a random drawing which I’ll have my wife select while blindfolded (or at least not looking).
If you do something spectacular to help promote this site it will earn you extra entries. (Like start a Digg, Stumble, or Reddit storm, create graphics or improve my theme – or anything else generally kick ass.)
The rules may be changed a little here and there to keep things fair if I’ve forgotten anything. Please ask questions if you see glaring holes in the plan.

Thanks to all of you for continuing to read and contribute at One Man’s Blog. You guys are the reason I keep going!