The winner will be chosen through a random drawing, so just get an entry and you have a chance. Here’s how you can gain some entries:

• Subscribe to his feed (required)
• Sign up for MarketLeverage under his link
• Make some money with MarketLeverage
• Blog about the contest
• If you have over 100 followers on Twitter, you can gain 2 entries a day by Twitter posting about MarketLeverage
• Following MLTV and MarketLeverage on Twitter
• Referring people to the contest

Head over to Syed’s blog to enter the contest, and make sure to browse around the rest of his blog as there is a goldmine of information to be found.

The contest ends on 22 March 2009.

There are no prize packs, just single prizes, which means that there is a much higher chance for you to win a prize just by participating.

Good luck!!!

Prizes

WordPress Themes

• 1 x Arthemia Premium Developer Pack License ($240) from ColorLabsProject
• 1 x Wp Realtor Theme Single License ($79.99) from Plug And Press
• 1 x ContentPress Theme Single License ($75) from Wordpress Themes Market
• 1 x Ultimate Blogging Theme Single License With 3 Colour Schemes ($67) from Ultimate Blogging Theme
• 1 x Arras Theme Gaming Edition Single License ($50) from Zy

Scripts/Platforms

• 1 x OIOPublisher ($47) from OIOPublisher

Consultation Time

• 1 Hour Blog Consultation With Yan Susanto ($50) from Blog Setup
• 1 Hour Consultation Time With Robin Haney ($40) from IronBlogger
• 1 Hour Consultation With Desmond Ong ($29) from Desmond Blog

Reviews

• 1 x Blog Review ($80) from Balkhis
• 1 x Blog Review ($40) from Masters Of SEO
• 1 x Blog Review ($25) from Frogstr
• 1 x Blog Review ($20) from SplitStack

Logo And Banner Designs

• 1 x Custom Logo Design ($50) from Mr Javo
• 1 x Custom Banner Design ($21) from DatMoney
• 1 x 125 x 125 Animated Banner Creation ($15) from The Random Forest

Article Writing

• 2 x 500 Unique Articles On Any Topic By U.S Writers ($35.94) from Get Me Content

Cash

• $25 Cash ($25) from SplitStack

E-Books

• 1 x Blog Comment Blueprint ($9.99) from Blog Comment Blueprint

Ad Spots

• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($25) from I Blog To Blog
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($20) from Blog Smartly
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($15) from Desmond Blog
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($15) from Desmond Blog
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($10) from SplitStack
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($10) from Hussein
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($10) from Hussein
• 125 x 125 Ad Spot – 30 Days ($10) from Make Money Online
  

Text Links

• 30 Day Text Link Ad ($10) from DatMoney
• 30 Day Text Link Ad ($10) from DatMoney
• 30 Day Text Link Ad ($10) from I Blog To Blog
• 30 Day Text Link Ad ($10) from I Blog To Blog

How To Win

To gain entries, participants must (COMPULSORY):

• Subscribe to my feed by email (2 points)
• Subscribe to my email newsletter (2 points)

• Write a blog post about the contest, linking to all sponsors (8 points)
• Publish a review of any sponsor (6 points)
• Publish a review of otooo.com (6 points)
• Link to any sponsor in their blogroll until the contest ends (3 points)
• Link to otooo.com in their blogroll until the contest ends (3 points)
• Add my blog to your Technorati favourites (3 points)
• Stumble and review this post (2 points)
• Publish my banner on their blog linking back to my blog until the contest ends – click here for banner source (4 points)

Once you have your points, leave a comment on this post telling me what you have done or send me an email at: simonj[remove]spurr[at]gmail[dot]com (remove brackets and all inside) with all proofs of points (e.g. link to post, StumbleUpon username, link to blog, Technorati username etc).

Rules

• Sponsors may enter the contest; however, they are not eligible to win any of the prizes that they sponsored.
• Winners will be drawn randomly through random.org. Each ticket gained by each participant is assigned a number and then numbers will be chosen at random.org, with the corresponding emtrant of the matching number being awarded a prize.
• Prizes will be drawn by value in descending order. (First drawn receives prize of most value, second drawn receives prize of second most value etc)
• One prize per winner.
• Entries will close at 9:00pm Perth, Western Australian time on Wednesday 24th December 2008. Winners will be drawn and announced on this blog by 26th December 2008.
• If writing a blog post about the contest, a review about a sponsor or linking to a sponsor’s website you must use the same anchor text that is used in this post.

Disclaimer:

• I accept no responsibility should the sponsor/s not follow through and award the prize to the winner after the drawing of the contest.
• I reserve the right to alter the rules at any time.

Good luck!!!

Now, I never win anything, so I was over the moon today when I went and visited Syed’s blog today and saw my name there. I have been a reader of Balkhis for months and months now, ever since I was introduced to his blog through a thread he made on DigitalPoint forums and I subscribed right away. It just goes to show that blog commenting isn’t only good for traffic and link building .

This means that very shortly, Otooo.com is going to have it’s very own custom design. It was just today I was thinking of having a custom design for my site.

Once again, I’d just like to thank Syed for this and encourage you to head over to his blog and check it out.

I personally am aiming to win a theme for this blog or consultation time with some of the big bloggers, but the great thing about this contest is that I have a good shot of winning. There is about 40 different prizes to be won and each person can only win one prize, so I think that if I have as many entries as I can I should be able to win something.

What You Have To Do To Win

There are 6 ways that you can enter, and you can choose to do all (135 points) or one (as small as 5 points).

• Blog about the contest (like what I’m doing. I told you, I want to win something). The post must link back to the competition and be a minimum or 300 words. (50 points)
• Put his banner up on your website for a minimum of 2 weeks. This is a link to the banner. (30 points)
• Subscribe to his RSS feed by email  – This can be found on his post. (30 points)
• Stumble or Digg the post I have given you a link to. (Not sure whether this is 15 points each or 15 points for both)
• Add him on Twitter (5 points) – You can add me on Twitter if you want.
• Drop him a comment on his blog, but don’t spam. (5 points)

As I said, I want to win, so I am going to be doing all of the above for maximum points.

1. The owner of a successful blog.
2. The owner of an unsuccessful blog.

But what is it that is the deciding factor between the two? What have the successful bloggers done that the unsuccessful bloggers haven’t?

I call them:
The Five C’s

• Committment
• Connections/Communication
• Content
• Commenting
• Contests/Competitions

Commitment
Most bloggers are committed (or at least start out to be). They realize that a blog is not just something that they can spend an hour a week posting to. However, after a few weeks of this commitment, they don’t see results and fall away, and so too does the blog. Remember, good things take time. A blog will not become successful over night. To keep yourself motivated, set yourself some goals and track your progress, or get yourself into a routine.
Staying committed is probably the biggest factor in determining a blog’s success, as it entails all of the other factors: frequently writing good content, dropping comments on lots of blog, having contests and establishing connections.

Connections/Communication

Connections

When I was playing around in the world of affiliate marketing (months and months ago now) one major thing seemed to frequently spring to my attention: Each big marketer was constantly scratching the back of other marketers (in other words, they all helped each other grow to be bigger, more powerful marketers). What I have learnt is that bloggers are all the same. Take a look at this example I have for you of big blogs and how they interact. I see this almost everyday: John Chow is promoting Yaro, who is promoting Shoemoney, who is promoting John Chow. See the pattern evolving? Yes, it’s a circle of promotion. No wonder they are all big… they each have a huge force behind them giving them readers. Now I’m not saying to try and push your way into this circle. What I am saying is to take the time to have a conversation with some other bloggers and you might be talked about by them on their blog. Share them a bit of link love and there’s a good chance they will return it.
Honestly, answer yourself this question: Would you still check by John Chow’s blog if he was an unknown? All he talks about is food and blogging expo’s. People follow big bloggers because they are amazed at how big, popular and powerful they are.

Content
Ahh… What can I say. Content Is King. We’re all constantly reminded of this, so there shouldn’t be any excuse for not having quality content. If you don’t know, the reason why you need good content is so that the visitors you obtain from your marketing and promotion will want to stay and read, and become loyal readers. If you get floods of traffic but have low quality, grammatically incorrect content then you are wasting your time marketing your site.

Commenting
In my opinion, commenting is the best way to gain visitors that will actually read your content and comment on it. There are 3 reasons for this:
1. You are commenting on content related to your niche, and therefore visitors are targeted.
2. Most blog owners will check out the blog of someone who leaves a comment on theirs, and try to comment on that person’s blog.
3. You gain great exposure in your niche and establish connections.

Contests

Contests/Competitions
Holding, sponsoring or participating in a contest is a great way to gain short term exposure and many more readers to your blog. You can gain readers by asking them to subscribe in order to have an entry, and the exposure comes from other bloggers posting about it if the contest is big enough or has high value prizes. It’s also a great way to get links.

Before this competition, I had stumbled across BloggerLee. I expected it to be another blogging tips blog, but instead I found a great personal blog with funny content and images, news and a bit of content on how to make money online, such as this article on site flipping.

Luna is a university student, and this is a trend I have noticed emerge on the internet recently (I mean, I’m in highschool). She currently now owns two blogs, which I know can get pretty hectic if you don’t manage your time well, so I congratulate her on that. The second blog is WeblogEngineering.

Luna’s design is simple and refreshing, and really gives it that personal touch which I feel we all need. Go over and check out her blog at bloggerlee.com.