MONEY!!!

At any cost, sorry, you all brought it on yourselves.

Admin Reply: Sorry doesn’t mesh well with me at all.

Go read Atlas Shrugged it might give you some perception on what Money actually is, its a currency to which you are paid for using your brain to create something or do something that others were not able to yet or as payment for a service which you do extremely well. It is excersising your own god given ability to use your brain for the benefit of others.

God gave you a unique ability given to no other species on earth (if you are inclined to believe in god), that ability is to think and create using your mind and to be rewarded for it without guilt. Perhaps you should check your premise and decide if you are making the most out of what God has given you.

The nice thing is, if you can show results and compare the results to the cost of ppc ads on the page for which your page rank’s due to using AMA, then it would be easy to see the value in joining AMA as a paid member.

The main reason people haven’t joined yet is simply the unknown. What does one have to “do” in order to attain ranking results using AMA?

I like to keep it simple.

The competition should be who can rank for more #1 keywords that get some volume of traffic than the next guy. This will actually require two skills. One is to find keywords that are longtail (so that they are more easily rankable) and get at least some traffic. The other skill is to use AMA to build the proper anchor text links to the page you want to get ranked.

All contestants must signup and use google analytics, so that the results can be seen for the time period in question.

The smarter contest will pick easier keywords to rank for. All you need to do is be creative and put a good competition & competition rating example forward on what would be a really nice competition you would have fun being part off.

The winner should be getting a lot of traffic at that point? The reward for winning the contest should be one-on-one consultation to take their business to the next level. Whatever the next level is for that person.

Thanks for the opportunity Marc.

- Eric

The free article submission period should last for about a week or two, depending on the financial capacity of the site. This will give ample time for everyone and encourage more people to participate and. This will also provide time for advertisement or letting people know that such free submission period/promo exists.

With this free-article submission period, I will be gathering data about the most popular articles and write some of my own high quality articles to submit to AMA. This is a great way to get my websites ranked high in search engines for the website and goes a long way for my long-tern goals. This would also improve the quality of articles that AMA receives and would be submitting better quality articles to registered websites.

2. Do you think we should do a mini competition?

Definitely YES! I love doing competitions. Having a competition will also boost additional popularity to the website. Since article marketing is already being considered as the most successful form of internet advertising, having a competition will not hurt the website when it comes to long-term goals. Since Internet is a very powerful medium, word regarding a competition or contest will boost or increase your membership following.

3. If so what should the reward be and what should the competition be?

One competition I have gave deep thought to would be article writing regarding a product or service that has seen so much speculation already but has not been officially released yet. With this kind of article writing, you would be seeing how writers will use their ingenuity in coming up with an article worth reading by just basing it on research and their own creativity. With the kind of judging that you will have, you would definitely be getting the cream of the crop- exceptional writers with mass appeal. It would also give the product amazing amount of recognition before the product is even released to the market.

Here is a cool (ahem) chart I have created of how this kind of competition could work:
http://www.baldwinkoo.com/images/New_Product.gif

Another competition idea I have came up with is that you give one topic and will give the interested participants limited time to write only one article regarding the subject matter. Your criteria should be very specific (example: 600 words, focusing in only two or three features, benefits, advantages one gets when getting this product or service, etc.), you shortlist like 10 entries and have 2 ways of judging- 50% coming from a panel of judges, and 50% coming from loyal readers. It is both a popularity and quality contest. Your contestants will then be promoting the website as well and and their traffic will increase significantly.

Since more generated traffic means more traffic/leads/sales for those people who utilized the submission directory winners, the winner will be determined by checking the amount of traffic or sales that they have reached during the promo/contest period. There could be ways to check the veracity of results. It could either be by checking who ranks high in Google, or other ways through the use of Google Analytics. Although this may take some time, it would definitly show how much the people behind the competition care.

Best reward will always be monetary and a recognition on the website and a link of the winner’s website. In that way, you are killing two birds with one stone. You are increasing your membership following and at the same time, marketing the winning writer’s website as well.

This would cement your reputation as a very reputable membership website and you are guaranteed a stable traffic for your website. The prize for existing members will likewise be free use of the site’s services. This could be free renewal of membership or extension of membership.

4. Who can get the fastest results through AMA?

The people who use AMA will get the fastest results! The website that is linked to the articles submitted will get fastest result through Automatic Marketing Automation. It is a very cost effective way to promote your service, website, or client; build your traffic and establish your reputation.

I will use the free article submission period to boost some of my stagnant sites with a view to getting more quality backlinks. I will then sell the sites having enhanced their value.

A mini competition is an excellent idea. I think it should be kept simple and run over a relatively short time period.

Competition Details

1. The competition will be open to all users of AMA.

2. Pick a Christmas-related niche and identify 4 keyword phrases to target, each with global broad match competition of 30,000 to 50,000, to allow search engine rankings in the relatively short time. One niche per entrant.

3. Set up one new self-hosted WordPress blog, optimised for one or more of the 4 keyword phrases.

4. Register the site url and keyword phrases with AMA. AMA will verify that each site is newly-registered with reference to domaintools.com.

5. Get content and backlinks for each blog using AMA - no new submissions after 13.00 EST 24th December 2009.

6. On New Year’s Eve, at a time to be confirmed, AMA will check the global rankings of all registered sites for the registered keywords (broad match and phrase match) on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

7. Points will be awarded as follows for sites ranking in the top 10 of each of Google, Yahoo! and Bing:

1st Position Broad Match = 20
2nd Position Broad Match = 18
3rd Position Broad Match = 16
…
9th Position Broad Match = 4
10th Position Broad Match = 2

Phrase Match Positions will receive half the number of points of their respective broad match positions.

Points will be totalled for each entrant.

8. 10 prizes will be awarded of life memberships to AMA, one to each of the highest scoring entrants.

An additional prize of 1 year’s membership to AMA will be awarded to each of the highest scoring new sign-up member (who has not won one of the top 10 prizes), and two other entrants drawn at random (who have not already been awarded a prize).

No entrant may win more than one prize.

Regards.

How about something like the best rejection ratio per a given number of articles.

Or

The best disribution for a given number of articles.

Or

Combine both with best improvement in search results.

Regards,
George

Anyway,

I would try and make the most of the article submission period to improve my sites’ pathetic rankings with the intention that it would eventually at least generate a monthly subscription to AMA. ( perhaps not very ambitious but every journey begins with a small.. etc)

Mini competition - always a good idea, well not always but sometimes, but in this case yes. Good for motivation, fun and publicity.

What should the reward be - well judging by some of the replies 1st prize should be the moon on a stick, 2nd prize a certificate confirming the meaning of life and 3rd prize Marc and Daniel come and sit next to you at your pc for a month to help you out (ok boring myself now).

The level of prize would I guess be dependent on the mini-ness of the competition - membership in AMA makes sense - cold hard cash is always in demand (you can tell that all those marketing ebooks have been well spent). Could have some fun automation related prizes, e.g. a toy robot a la robotsapien, could offer vacuuming robot and some others (I guess postage could be an issue)

What should the competition be? _ this as is obvious from the above comments is more difficult than it might appear. Measuring performance in terms of rankings, page visits, back links or revenue just seems too complicated and open to abuse.

Anyway, all I could come up with was some sort of quantifiable (is SMART still used in planning er circles?) way of assessing your article submissions. So you could have a 2 week period in which to add as many quality articles as possible.

This could be judged by calculating the number of articles times the word length (although this will vary-could just pick one) times the acceptance rate at the end of the 2 weeks. This will reward both the number, length and quality of articles.

Thus AMA=NA*WL*AR, not quite as catchy as E=mc2.

Cheers and happy december everyone (don’t want to offend/exclude) so will embrace the whole of December as a month of peace, love and understanding.

Bob

ps I have a slight cold (ok rabid swine flu) just now which may have affected the ‘quality’ of this comment.

Warm regards,
Lynn

But as far as competition goes, there’s so many directions you could take that!

1) Have a competition for those whose articles get published the most often.

1A) For those that do, make them a featured author somehow, to reward them for their work.

2) See who can rank for the most keyword phrases in their niche.

2A) For those that win, reward them with some robust analytics/ranking software/services for their sites. Something like Raven SEO or a similar product.

3) Have a contest for websites that are brand new and see how quickly they can rank.

3A) Offer a lifetime AMA and/or PLRPRO account.

4) I’d also be curious to see all of the unique ways website owners are using the articles. Once they get an article, what do they do with it? Do they publish it right away or do they schedule it out? Do they add their own links? If so, where? Do they place AdSense ads on their sites? If so, where? How is it working for them?

4A) For the site owner(s) who do publish the articles and have achieved some success with them have them write a report for AMA that gets featured on the site. Helping other website owners who are struggling or who are new.

- Kristine

Thanks for this opportunity. I believe in quality over quantity, so my own use of AMA will concentrate on quality articles, with a high level of rewrites and high acceptance rate.

I also believe any contest should reward quality and results, but recognize that some people have more time than others. So my recommended competition allows people to enter multiple times, but still lets the person who only enters once have an equal chance to win.

1. What will I do with this free article submission period?

I will ramp up my article marketing and backlink building by submitting at least two quality articles per day.

Each article must be rewritten to result in (a) an article title that is at least 100% rewritten for each refresh, and (2) an article body that is at least 80% rewritten for each refresh.

I will aim for an “accept rate” of at least 90%, and tweak any article that does not achieve this until it is reaching this level.

I will review the “ranking” statistics regularly and work towards continuous and steady improvement in ranking for my targeted keyword phrases. I will also check my web stats to find other keyword phrases on which to write new articles.

2. Do you think we should do a mini competition? If so what should the reward be and what should the competition be?

Competitions can be difficult to ensure equity because people have varying levels of time to devote. Any competition should, therefore, focus on quality combined with results.

I think a good competition should be that each individual will pick a keyword or phrase that they’d like to rank for in Google’s top ten results.

The keyword/phrase must have a minimum of XX,000 competing sites (keyword in quotes in Google) — the number to be chosen by Marc.

Individuals can rank either a new domain, a new article (eg. on EZA or another site), a blogger site or other third party site (Wordpress, Hub page, Squidoo), as long as they can evidence the date it was established as after the start date of the competition.

Anyone who earns a top 10 Google ranking for their chosen page/site and keyword after a fixed amount of time (as decided by Marc) will be eligible for a random drawing of a free lifetime AMA membership.

Individuals can enter as many times as they wish (for different keywords and target URLs), as long as they meet the minimum competition criteria and have stated at the outset the keyword they are targeting, and URL they are trying to rank. So those people who have the time to submit a higher quantity of articles, have more chances to win. But even someone who only has time to focus on ranking for one keyword has the same opportunity at the end of the day to be selected to win.

The rankings should be achieved only via AMA article submissions.

I believe that this provides an objective competition for people with all skill levels and time availability.

Cheers,
Susan

PS. After all the great food over the holidays, we may want o have a competition niche for exercise equipment come January 1!

Regards

Tom