The votes are in…
After five days of voting, we finally have a winner of the Pepperjam Network Store Builder contest! The contest required affiliates to integrate the Store Builder into their sites. Each affiliate that submitted an entry was given a $10 bonus and was given a chance to win the grand prize of $1,000. We mulled over hundreds of Store Builder entries, but decided upon seven finalists.
The finalists were:
The finalists sites were posted on the Pepperjam Network blog and readers were asked to vote for their favorite entry, based on the affiliate’s use of creativity, programming and web design
964 votes later, we have a winner….Drum roll please…………………………………….
The Store Builder contest winner is….
A Taste of Christmas with 37% of the votes!
Congratulations to A Taste of Christmas! A Taste of Christmas is owned by Pepperjam Network affiliates Forest Parks and Neal Bicker. If you would like to learn more about Forest and Neal you can visit their blogs at www.therandomforest.com and www.notabeneconsulting.com.
Congrats to everyone else who entered the Store Builder contest!
December 15th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Congrats guys, good job!
December 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Forest gloats at his blog with the headline “Using Your Friends For Campaign Success”. That says it all. It is very clear this contest was about him spending 2 minutes of cut and pasting Store Builder html code on his homepage and spending hours of rallying friends for votes, not who had done the BEST job of using Store Builder.
Wirelesscellaccessories.com hands down spent more hours building a top-notch website around Pepperjam’s Store Builder than rallying friends to OBTAIN money.
To top it all of the Pepperjam email notifying everyone of the winner states: “In addition, Forest intends to share the various strategies he and Neil used to win this contest so you’ll want to bookmark his blog and check it often!” The only lesson learned there is when your website ranking is at at 1% and your competition is at 49% rally your friends together! How insightful.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Congratulation man!!.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Collin – thanks for being a good sport and building a great store!
Scott – thanks for your opinion. I don’t know about others but I’m looking forward to Forest and Neal sharing their strategies for not only building a great store using PJN Store Builder, but also rallying enough people to win the contest.
Thanks to all contestants for participating.
Kris
December 16th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Scott – thank you very much for your support. I to am very interested in learning the secrets behind his win.
I always thought 1- this was an affiliate marketing contest based around the store builder product PJN has made for affiliates. if it wasn’t, then why did the contest only be released to us. If the secrets behind the win reveal that family and off line friends were sent to vote – what good does that do pepperjam, None of them are ever going to use the system and none of them will ever see it again (nope, I was wrong there – if I do my job right they will see it..lmao)
I thought the idea was to drive possible new affiliates to pepperjam (which is why I used my aff link to send traffic here) and old affiliates to see how the system works and how to possibly make more money. Personally I love the store builder system and I can’t wait to see more offers come on board but I was thinking of PJN when I sent my traffic. My Mom and Dad would not of done any good here nor would I of wanted to win that way either.
I guess we will all have to wait and see how it was won right?
I want to congratulate Clarke with the watch store he built. Before the finals went live I was really worried about your site, you did one hell of a job dude.
Once again, Forest, great job pulling in votes and have a Merry Christmas.
PS
If you need any Christmas supplies I know a site you can get some from.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Collin – Thanks so much for the kind words about my site. I feel the say way about your site and I was pretty nervous going up against you because you put out a very nice site as well.
I did put a descent of time into the design, content, and overall optimization of the site so it was somewhat disappointing that those weren’t more decisive factors in choosing the ultimate winner of the contest. However I do feel that I’ve got a great store built as a result of this hard work and I look forward to the revenue it brings in down the road.
Congratulations to Forest for winning and to all of the other contestants that participated as well!
December 16th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I will take my time to respond to some of the comments here, as so not to provide a knee jerk reaction to the expected negativity I read above. Firstly, thanks to Kris, and all the folks at Pepperjam, for providing us with another great tool in the Pepperjam Store Builder. A super contest and well done to everyone who entered and voted!
The competition was about finding people, based on creativity, programming and web design that did the best job integrating the Store Builder into their site. It was not about who spent the most time on their site, or who has the most friends – I think, Scott, you are very misguided in both your character assessment of Forest and your assumption of the effort on his part! We all know the saying ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, and there was always going to be differing opinions as to whose store was the “best”. Tell the truth, if we are honest with ourselves, all of the finalists could improve on their efforts. That being said, there were some great entries and this is proving to be a valuable tool.
So, what did we do to win? Well, it is (as is the case with most things) not rocket science, we got proactive!
Having seen the support that was being given to Wireless accessories – namely John Chow and Garry Conn – it was a given that we were up against it. 40,000+ Subscribers can’t be wrong, eh? There is a lesson to be learnt there too – you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink – it is all well and good putting posts on your blogs, but you have to really work to get action sometimes. If you noticed, Forest did not put up a post until quite late on in the competition and I dare say that only counted for a few extra votes along the way.
You probably know what I am going to say now, as you MUST have heard the saying before … THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST! That’s right, folk’s – Email Marketing. Over the years I have been working online, I have been lucky enough to build a rather substantial list of contacts: people I have done work for, people who have worked for me, people who left comments on my blogs, people I have befriended in forums, the list goes on… Now before you start barking up the wrong tree, we did not send out one mass email and rest on our laurels. We both put time and effort into approaching our networks with a personal message, explaining Pepperjam, the contest and why their vote was important to us; more importantly, we reached out to our network to reach out to their own personal circle. Simple Network Marketing! I am in no doubt that, despite the size of my own list, if it was down to the number of first level voters, we would not have won. The key to winning was getting those second and third level voters … the networks of our networks.
Actively following up by way of gmail chat, skype, email, twitter etc, also ensured that nothing was left to chance and people did actually vote (and not just say that they did). Yes, I did pay a lot of attention the recent Presidential campaign, where Obama rallied enough votes to OBTAIN the Presidency!
Did offline friends vote for me? YES..of course they did! I have a number of colleagues at work that cast a vote for A Taste of Christmas as they are all well aware of my online activities. I am actually teaching a number of them how to build their first blogs and they also use my affiliate links when I ask them to! I see no difference in getting people to use your links to make money online than I do in getting the same people to vote in order to help you win money. Do You?
What good does this do Pepperjam? Well, I might be speaking out of turn here and Kris will no doubt correct me, but you need to think a little bigger than the average mmo mentality. The $10 sign up promotion was a rather more direct way of getting new affiliates to join Pepperjam, in my opinion, this was more about the promotion of the Store Builder … and a little thing called Brand Awareness! It might well be the case that not all of the 964 voters will be as clued in as you or I as to what Affiliate Marketing is, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there now exists a great number of people who now know of Pepperjam Network. It is also true to say that not many of the voters will have signed up as an affiliate but, again, you can bet that when their time comes (and I think that the prospect of winning $1000 might bring in a few more budding mmo enthusiasts) they will know the name Pepperjam! Not only that, but many people have been viewing all seven sites which has generated revenue for affiliates, networks and partners alike.
I’ll conclude by fitting in just a couple more clichés, those being “Horses for courses” and “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. My point being that I think Forest and I did a good job in integrating Store Builder, and in winning this competition, we also unearthed a good way to win this particular one. It may appear that I am being pompous in writing this, but I hope that Pepperjam affiliates will learn something from what I have written. What works for one promotion may not work for another, and just remember to build your lists in all your online activities…you never know when it might pay off.
I am humble in victory, as I would have been gracious in defeat. I look forward to more competitions like this; no doubt the competition will be hotter still next time around.
Merry Christmas, One and All!
December 16th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Nota
I have to call you that simply because I have no clue who you are. That don’t matter though.
I just wanted to give you guys (you and Forest) a tip and this might be what Scott was talking about above.
You guys instead of focusing on Color Schem (which does look very nice btw ) need to work on your SEO. The store builder system as you know is java based which does NOT get indexed by search engines. So as of right now the page on your site from what I can tell will not get search traffic or as much as it should and very easily could. Which is why Clarke and I both have some content above our store builder codes with targeted keywords.
To help bring more traffic to your site, do some keyword research and build pages related to certain products. eg- LED replacement bulbs, ect but have content before the code again. Use my site, and Clarke’s as examples. I have a mentor program going on my blog that is free, if you want I can send you the lessons I have which will help. my blog is at http://www.feedflare.ca, there is also a testimonial from someone I have helped to make money – and he uses mostly the pjn. I want to help as many people as I can so just to show you I am proud of the way you guys won, I want to help you make more cash too.
Your contact page you call, a letter to Santa. Did you know there are affiliate offers that pay you for “A Letter to Santa” which should be on that page instead of the wp contact form. Just a thought!
Its to late this year to make money or any major amount off your site but you can have it ready to kick ass next year, and you WILL make lots off of it if you work at it.
Regarding a list – I was thinking there was one in play. lol….good job! and I really need to build one. one of these days.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Hey Collin,
Thanks for taking the time to read that comment fully. I realised after posting that I’d maybe gotten somewhat carried away.
Thank you also for your response, your input has been duly noted. The additional keyworded text is something that is very reminiscent of the many BANS stores I used to run. I think PJN Store builder is far superior and I need to find some more time to hone my skills. I’m sure you appreciate how it is to have too many projects on the go at once. You are quite right about SEO to that particular page, as of right now, we have over 1500 uniques to the site for the month of September and a little over 21% of that is from google, primarily down to the articles we wrote on the blog page. There is still much more we can do with the site but, again, you are correct in saying that we build for next year with this one!
I subscribed to your blog a while back and it has been good watching your progress. You did build a terrific store too and no doubt that will do well for you, YEAR ROUND! I am never one to turn down the offer of assistance (or constructive criticism) and am always willing to learn additional skills. An email is on the way.
Seriously, get building that list!
Neal