Update: Thanks to all that entered! The contest was a great success and really fun to run. To see the benefits this site received, check out What a Contest Can Do for You and congrats again to our winner, Jason Peck!

One of the latest crazes to sweep across the blogosphere has been offering contests on your blog. In fact, it’s become such a common practice that niche blogs have sprouted up devoted solely to covering the countless contests going on! Now, while I have nothing against blog contests in practice (in fact, the reason they are so popular is that they are very effective marketing tools), I must say, I’ve been disappointed in many of the contests I’ve seen lately. The problem? The prizes.

I’ve seen sites give away iPods, Microsoft Zunes, 24 inch plasma displays, and countless other gadgets and gizmos. To me though, that’s all just stuff. It’s not going to help me become a better blogger and it’s not going to help my site.

That’s where this contest is different.

The Complete Blogging Package (the Prize):
I designed the prize as a sort of all-in-one blogging package. I wanted it to be something useful, something that would benefit the winner over the long run. To that end, for the first part of the prize, you’ll receive a 3 month subscription to the very popular, very successful Blog Mastermind Mentoring program (a $231 value). The program takes you through the entire process from starting a blog to making it a success. Yaro graciously agreed to donate this prize for which I’m quite grateful. He certainly takes care of his students and you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Next, you’ll receive a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book (a $79 value). If you could only read one book about SEO, you’d have to choose this one. Not only is it a fantastic value, but Wall also includes updates in the cost of the book so you never have to worry about it becoming obsolete or out of date. The information in this book will help even the greenest blogger get more out of their blog when it comes to the search engines.

So, we’ve covered the process of creating a blog and optimizing it; all that’s left is to generate some serious buzz. Luckily, Chris Garrett of chrisg.com and the authority blogger forum has generously agreed to give the winner a free blog critique! Chris’ site has nearly 4 thousand RSS subscribers, has a Google PageRank of 5, and is in the top 3k of sites on Technorati with an authority of 859.

Basically, this prize package is everything you need to either launch a brand new blog or catapult an existing blog to the next level. Bottom line, it’s useful.

The Rules:
The rules are fairly simple, especially if you’re familiar with any of the other countless blog contests out there. To enter, you simply have to link to the Blogging Experiment home page with the anchor text “make money blogging” or any variant (how to make money blogging, blogging to make money, etc.). This can be either in a post, your blogroll, whatever. I don’t like people telling me what to post on my blog and I’m not going to tell you what to write on yours. As long as there’s a link that’s followed with the proper anchor text, you’ll be entered. Then email me (blogex[at]bloggingexperiment.com) with the URL where your link is found and your name will be entered into the drawing. Since the prize package will include outbound links on both this site and chrisg.com, sites with objectionable content (adult sites, pill sites, and any site deemed as spam) will not be eligible to win. I will notify you ASAP if your entry has been rejected for any reason.

The Twist:
However, there is one twist: For the prize to be awarded, Feedburner must report at least 150 subscribers to this site when the contest ends at 12 p.m. CST (I believe that’s GMT -6 but double check me on that) on September 1st. If it’s at 149, there’s no winner. Now wait, before you start writing an angry comment or email, realize that’s less than 6 new subscribers per day and it’s been growing at pretty good clip without me promoting a contest.

The Challenge:
Not only that, but I’ll issue a challenge as well. IF on September 1st, the feed count is above 250, I’ll also throw in $100 in text links from Text Link Ads (in addition to the $125 dollars in links you can get for only $25 when you sign up).

IF on September 1st, the feed count is above 500, I’ll throw in the $100 in text links, as well as two pages from the Million Dollar Wiki (a $200 value).

And, last but not least, IF the feed count is above 1,000 subscribers when the contest ends (which would be quite an amazing accomplishment) I’ll pay for a ReviewMe review of your site on JohnChow.com (a $400 value). Then you’ll get to experience the JohnChow.com effect for yourself.

How’s that for a prize package?

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