How I won Shoemoney’s Affiliate Summit Contest

A lot of people (especially non-technical ones) have asked me how I managed to win such a kick ass prize/trip.

I actually worked really hard at this and tried to work every angle I could.  Below is a detailed explanation of how I used social media, the power of friendship, creativity, and elbow grease to win this thing.  I’ve also highlighted mistakes I made along the way.

Write the blog post/entry

I tried to write a blog post that proved I would be fun and could be made fun of, briefly addressed why it would be good for me professionally, and addressed all the judges personally demonstrating I was somewhat familiar with them or had at least taken the time to look them up if I wasn’t.

I spent a lot of time linking and making the post complete.

I didn’t go too crazy or exaggerate, I mean there are 7 judges, some are married, and one is female.  Some of the other entries were really over the top and I just couldn’t picture everyone relating.

My Mistake:

I posted a little too early and my format (specifically the way I addressed the judges) was copied by almost every entry – I don’t even think it was the best way to do it but I digress.

Once selected it came down to voting.

The initial email

I sent an email to a group of my closest friends (they all knew I had entered the contest).  I explained that I was a finalist and asked them to vote right away and forward onto their contacts adding a personal note to the recipients.  I called my friends and asked them to reply all as our group of friends feeds off of each other’s energy.

Twitter

I let some of the people I have developed real relationships with know what was going on and they tweeted right away and a few retweets followed.

After a few days Shoemoney posted an update on Twitter and the race was close.  It seemed like the votes we could drive were going to have a large effect on the end result.

This meant it was time to get creative:

Video Time

I decided I was going to add some video to the entry thinking the casual visitors might check it out and vote for me.  I wanted it to be fun so I explained why viewers should vote for me and then I shot gunned a beer.  I caught up with @Kritsy on gTalk and she was kind enough to give me some honest feedback.  The concept was solid, parts were great, but I dragged throughout the middle and really wasn’t being myself.  She told me to it again and as bonus I’d get to have another drink.

At precisely the same time the light bulb went off for both of us, do a bunch of takes and then post them all rather than just best one.  And so I worked at it, drink after drink and take after take.

It proved to be a valuable exercise as the videos received a fair amount attention of Twitter and Facebook.

Enter John Chow

I’ve been following John and Jeremy for a long time.  I’ve watched them compete against each other (to see who cold get the most RSS subscribers in an allotted time frame) and promote ZK in the Internet Marketer of the year contest.

It only seemed natural I enlist the services of John Chow and so I contacted him about the possibility of a sponsored post.  It seemed like a good fit, the Shoemoney and Johnchow audience is similar and John Chow has a big following (71000 RSS subscriber and 51000 twitter followers).

I felt it would be a solid investment as it would likely bring in a lot of votes.  I figured if I lost there would still be some value in the links from John Chow and some of the attention it generated.

Five bills later I had a post up on John Chow promoting me and I was feeling pretty good.

I almost when onto sponsored tweets and tried to buy a tweet from Shoemoney himself but I assumed he would decline in for conflict of interest reasons.  Probably should have done it for the potential attention/linkbait anyway.

A wider Audience

I sent a variation of my initial email to a wider audience asking for more votes.  I reminded a few people close to me to bug their friends.  I reminded my friends to vote from their work computers as well.

A twitter update from Shoemoney showed me widening the gap and I was started to feeling comfortable but @spryd who helped a lot reminded me not become complacent.

Facebook Chat

Facebook chat was the money maker.  I have personally met everyone on my friends list so when I asked for a 3 second favor everyone was quick to respond.  I am guessing some loved the idea of helping but most were curious what I needed. For two days straight (and I mean morning, noon, evening, and middle of night) I kept Facebook chat open and hit every single friend that logged on for a vote.  I’d say 95% said no problem and quickly voted.

Facebook Messages

A lot of people choose to “appear offline” so I decided I would send them Facebook messages.  I started by sending messages to groups of friends, basically selecting everyone in alphabetical order.  I knew this was the lazy approach but I was tired.  I thought about and decided it wasn’t a time to be lazy.  I started sending individual notes to anyone I thought would be a good “lead” I went in alphabetical order for a few hours.  At one point I received a message from Facebook saying my behavior was suspicious and may be annoying to users.  At that point I decided to slow down.  Some people I had contacted through chat thought the message might be spam/spyware and so I did my best to proactively convince readers the message was not spam.

Facebook Wall Posting

I posted the link on my wall and asked a few others to do the same.  Before I knew it my story was started to take the Facebook stream by storm, especially within my group of high school friends (in the 28 years I’ve been alive I’ve lived within 5 kilometers of the house I was born in so my junior high and high school relationships have been lifelong).

Here are a few screen shots:

Blastomycosis.ca

A few years ago my dog was diagnosed with a rare but often fatal disease called blastomycosis.  When she was sick I spent a fair amount of time on a very small forum seeking help and helping others.  I reached out to the community for votes and they helped out.  This worked because the community is small, my name was familiar, and we all have shared a common struggle and frequently do what we can to help each other.   In most forums posting that message would have been a recipe for a banning.

The Last Push

Finally I sent a text message to about 30 of my friends and asked them to vote on the smart phones and to forward the text on even if they had already voted on their computers.

And there you have it, I worked very hard, and I worked many angles from twitter, to chat, to forums, to text messages, to telephone calls, and the list goes on.  In the end it was worth it the links are great, the prize is huge, and the contacts that will be made are golden!

Again, a huge thanks to everyone who mentioned me on Twitter and Facebook.

Oh, one lesson for us all, there seemed to be a correlation between the input (effort) and output (votes).  I wonder if the same formula could be applied to Website Monetization input (effort) might equal output (cash).