Million Dollar PortfolioReal Strategies for Making Money Online

It’s August 1st, 2008 and it’s time to announce the winners of my July contest.

Background

On July 5th I turned 36 years old. I’ve been running this blog for over a year now and really didn’t know what to expect when I started blogging about making money online. Originally this blog was a personal blog and I wrote about pretty much anything. It’s since morphed into a blog about using the internet to make a second income.

Several years ago I learned that you should never trust any company you work for to take care of you long term. I’ve worked for small and large companies and when you get down to it, you as an employee are expendable. There’s a reason your employment is called “at will”. It means at any given time you or the company you work for can decide arbitrarily that you no longer need to work there. To help protect yourself from this situation, you want to build multiple streams of income.

To that end, this blog serves as a soap box for me to talk about what has worked for me. I make no guarantees you will have the same success, but I like to lead by example and I like to be transparent about it which is why I make my monthly blog income reports. They aren’t meant as a bragging point but instead are meant to inspire you to find your own system that works so you can make money online.

The Contest

On to the good stuff right?

This was my first big contest and I tried to make it easy to enter, but some people had trouble following the rules. To recap, the rules were:

1. Comment on the blog post = 1 entry
2. Subscribe to my RSS feed either via email or your favorite RSS reader = 2 entries
3. Blog about the contest on your own site and link to the contest post using the keywords “Million Dollar Portfolio” = 5 entries

I gave the most points for blogging using my keywords because one of the keys to generating traffic is to get organic traffic from search engines. Keywords play an important role in how users find your site. Thus, I had you creating quality backlinks with my keywords. Contests serve more than one purpose, you know.

The Prizes

To make this a worthwhile contest, I reached out to others in the blogging community. Thor Schrock graciously donated a coupon code worth 1 year of unlimited music downloads from Rhapsody. Pro Blogineer kindly donated 2x 125×125 sidebar ads($60 value) 1x 468×60 banner in everypost ($50 value) 1x 125×125 banner in every post and first 2 on homepage ($35 value) totaling $180 for advertising on his blog.

And of course, my “big” prize if you will, a Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black).

So who won already?

I’m getting there!

In order to make this fair I am using Random.org. There were 48 entrants totalling 175 entries. The first prize is the Rhapsody coupon. I should note that everyone has the same chances of winning all prizes. Drumroll……

Eva! Congratulations Eva. Please use the contact me link and send me your email address so I can let Thor know you have won.

And next, we have the winners of the advertising on Pro Blogineer. For these, one Random.org roll will show the winners in order.

Congratulations are in order for the following people who have won free advertising for one month on Pro Blogineer:

• Indocontest – 1 125×125 banner
• Angad Sodhi – 1 125×125 banner
• David(daily dollar report) – 1 468×60 banner in every post and the first 2 posts on the home page.

And now for the final prize. I really want to thank all of you for entering this contest. By subscribing to my RSS feed you will be able to keep up with all my new posts about making money online and anything else that happens on this blog. By blogging about it you let others know about my blog and grow my readership which means I can have more contests and give away bigger prizes.

Congratulations go to Esoomllub who wins the  Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black)!

All winners, please use the contact me button at the top of this blog and send me your email address if you won advertising or the Rhapsody coupon. Esoomllub, please use the contact me form and send me your postal address so I can get your Flip Ultra to you.

Congratulations to everyone who won and thank you all for entering.

This month I am going to try and secure an even bigger prize from a sponsor. My plan is to hold an affiliate challenge. I like the idea of making you guys compete for your prize. I’ll let you know when that happens. Until then, keep blogging and keep your RSS subscription so you can stay up to date on all that is happening at Million Dollar Portfolio.

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