AMA Site Smackdown Competition - Over $8000 in Prizes
Hey AMA’niens (yes I made that up we are now our own classification),
I have to tell you, the AMA network has been exploding, not just in terms of size, but in terms of results for members…
That’s not why I wanted to chat to you today though, we have put together a “little” competition for members of AMA, and it’s as simple as this, who can add the highest number of sites into the system.
The results of the AMA network are driven by 2 things, it’s size and strength… now we are adding our own sites into the network here as well, but we can’t be including ourselves in the competition that would be cheating 
Now, it’s my birthday tomorrow, and it happens to be Marcs wifes birthday too, so we were going to have this competition and give away a bunch of PLRPro memberships and AMA memberships and stuff that is fantastic, but it isn’t… real… not like cash is anyway.
So Marc and I kicked around the idea of putting up $3k in cash and prizes for grabs.
Its time to lay down the rules for the AMA Site Smackdown Competition.
Here’s the really cool points.
1. Free & Paid members can compete
2. There are some really cool prizes
3. All you need to do is add your sites into the network to get prizes.
For every site you add into the system you will receive 1 point, if that site is on a unique ip address you will receive 5 points.
The top 10 point winners will win the goodies.
Click Here To Register a FREE Account on AMA
So lets lay down the prizes.
Prize #1 - $1000 USD in cold hard cash to help you with your Internet Empire + 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) + 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
Prize #2 - Sony PS3 + 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
Prize #3 - 8GB Ipod Nano with $100 in Itunes vouchers + 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
Prize #4 - $200 in cash + 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
Prize #5 - $100 in cash + 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
Prizes #6 - #10 1 Year FREE PLRPro Membership Valued At $1164 (includes AMA FREE Also) 1 Pro Version Traffic Travis + 1 WP SEO Sniper Professional WordPress plugin
You can see the top 15 people via points in the sidebar, so you know how close you are to nabbing a top 10 position.
Competition End Date is Midnight, EST (New York time), on October 10th 2008, so you have 14 days to go nuts adding sites.
Click Here To Register a FREE Account on AMA
Remember a unique IP is worth 5 points.
Mark Ling & the guys over at http://www.traffictravis.com have also donated 10 copies of their latest SEO software valued at $99.95 per copy.
Dewald Pretorius over at http://www.wpseosniper.com donated 10 copies of his WordPress SEO plugin software valued at $97.00 per copy.
Good Luck…Have Fun & Win some prizes
AMA Team
Update: Site points are recalculated once every day.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:14 am
First holidays in 1 year, going sunday to Fiji with my wife and kid. Returning the 13th of October. I can’t believe I will miss this great opportunity.
anyway, thanks guys for a great product. I’m a very happy paid customer
September 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Hey Marc and Daniel
This is a fantastic idea and a great membership I am getting quality content for my sites and already seeing the benefits in the SE’s
Cant wait to join PLRPro.
Alan
September 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Are there any other rules? E.g. is it OK if they are on subdomains? How about the default theme (eek)?
September 25th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Is this open to UK residents too?
September 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am
just to make sure we all understand the definitions …
“For every site you add into the system you will receive 1 point”
Site meaning unique domain? or do sub-domains count as a site? What about folders within a site?
http://www.some-site.com
http://sub-domain.some-site.com
http://www.some-site.com/folder
September 25th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Great…I was planning to do this but this will get me in higher gear:)
September 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
G’day Guys and I hope the sites we have already added will be counted in this?
I must say - that this total program is the end of every other PLR package program available ANYWHERE else in the world.
Not only do you pump the basic articles in - but after spinning - you pump them out again. Brilliant!
But wait there’s more - you can also get content from others…
What a great concept.
Hope I get in among the winners
Dave
September 25th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
I want to build more blog myself. Apart from bloger and Tumblr, are there any other free blog services which support your automatic articles publish?
September 26th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Brilliant idea, and I simply love the system so far!
I have a minor note about the competition though.. Since I only heard about this site about 4-5 days ago, I am hopelessly behind in adding sites, and it seems like the members who have heard about it for a long time ago (not sure when this system started actually) have an unfair advantage simply by having had time to add sites for a longer time?
Oh well, not meaning to be negative, I love what you are doing for your members, and its a great competition. I want to rack up some more sites for this competition, and eventually smack out the monthly fee for the full membership.
Side note: On the prices, you mention AMA FREE, is that to mean that part of every price is a free membership to AMA? Which we already have if we participate in this competition? Or do you mean a FREE membership to the full AMA?
Thanks again, and have a nice day!
September 26th, 2008 at 9:19 am
@Jackie Winn, the competition is open to everyone, regardless of where you live.
@richard, Any site counts as 1 point. That includes sites on subdomains and in subfolders. Every unique IP address that you contribute to the network counts as an additional 5 points.
@lars, It means free membership to the full AMA, which includes unrestricted access to the services that other folks pay for.
@searchengineexpert, you can add any site that has an XML-RPC remote publishing API. There’s a long list on the home page of this site (unrelated to AMA): http://www.postlater.com. AMA obviously doesn’t support the microblogging services that are mentioned on that site.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Hi guys/support, etc. I’m pleased with AMA so far, so much so that I cancelled my membership with another network.
Here’s a small request that I’m putting out there that may help other people or other people may be interested in:
1) CAN YOU SET UP A FORUM?
Rather than answering the same questions over and over yourself, it’s very likely that we the members can learn from each other. Not only does this ENHANCE THE VALUE OF MEMBERSHIP it can also reduce your CUSTOMER SUPPORT COSTS
2) SETTING UP A PAUSE BUTTON FOR CAMPAIGNS WHERE WE BETTER CONTROL OUR LINK BUILDING
Since I recently joined AMA I’ve seen a trajectory where my rankings have gone up then gone down a bit due to over aggressive link building (even though I am spinning anchor texts). In such cases it may be best to pause one’s link building for a while. Rather than simply deleting all my articles it would be great to simple pause a campaign for a while then restart. Thanks!
September 26th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Happy Birthday to both of you!!!!
Thanks for sharing your birthday ‘pressies’ with all of us!
This was the best and IS the best system available. You two guys are awesome and I just want to say thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for teaching us how to be successful too!
Now back to submitting my sites!
September 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Thanks for all of this and a great product.
Just realised you are just down the road from me at Robina, I’m near Chevron Island - small world
September 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I don’t get it, this contest doesn’t make sense.
Basically I can set up a ton of crappy blogs and submit them.
I think you guys need to establish some guidelines or give extra points for things such as higher PR, main domain (instead of subdomain or subdir) etc.
There’s going to be a flood of CRAPPY blogs into your system that will further bring down the quality of the network.
Why wasn’t Lars’ other question answered? What about the sites already in the system? Are they being counted? This means some people have a huge (unfair) head-start?
I participated in TrafficKahuna’s Blog Domination Contest and they had a nice list of requirements and optional bonus points which would increase the quality of the blog. I won’t go into details but the AMA contest really needs some extra’s or as said you’re going to end up with mainly junk in your network.
I can set up wordpress blogs with a unique theme and a bunch of plr articles in 15 minutes, do this all day, do it on seperate IPs and walk away with the big prize but it means you’ll end up with a ton of junk in your system which I doubt is going to please any members.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
@charleshaanelstudent, To pause the distribution of an article, check the Published count of the article in your list of articles. Then edit the article and set its distribution limit equal to that published count (or less than will also work). That effectively pauses the distribution of the article without deleting it. To restart distribution, just increase that number again, or set it to zero.
@lars We felt that 14 days would be a reasonable time for everyone to add as many sites as they have. It’s a snap to add a site. Takes less than a minute.
@Jay you seem to equate new blog with crappy blog. That is not necessarily true. What is a new blog now is a 6-month old blog in 6 month’s time. The sites being added range from new to well-established with good PR. We don’t discriminate because we’ll be in business for a long time to come. New blogs being added now will be well-established blogs soon enough. And as they become more well established over time, the value of the links published on them will increase, which will benefit you without you having to do any additional work.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
This is not true. I can add a blog today and never touch it again and it will still be a relatively crappy blog in 6 months or 12 months. The only thing it’s gaining is domain age, that’s it.
Shouldn’t people that decide to add their high traffic high quality PR5 blog to the network be awarded more points than a fresh new blog?
Or shouldn’t a person that submits an article to ezine linking to his blog, a squidoo page, some article directory submissions etc. get more points than someone that sets up a blog and doesn’t do ANY link building? What is to stop someone from setting up 200 crappy blogs just to walk away with #1 prize?
September 28th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Brilliant idea, and I simply love the system so far
September 28th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Hi Jay
A few thoughts:
If you publish an article on, say, EzineArticles it can get picked up and used anywhere. There’s no quality control once it has left their site. Which means it can get used on spam blogs. It also means that some less-than scrupulous site owners remove all your links and bio, so you’ve let them scrape a free article for no benefit.
If someone does set up a couple hundred “crappy blogs” and lets them get drip-fed reasonable quality articles, there’s at least a chance that they’ll turn into “OK blogs”. Especially if the majority of article writers are spinning their articles.
There’s also almost no footprint with this system - and the more blogs out there, the less any possible footprint is likely to be.
Even a “crappy” blog is likely to be at least kind of targeted - it’s unlikely it would cover (say) weight loss, debt management, copywriting, travel and science in the same blog, for instance,
OK, that doesn’t get over your quality score issue so, sure, they could end up a prize winner. But as AMA staff said, none of us have a crystal ball so we’ve no idea whether the “crappy” blog will still be that in 6 months. So long as it’s being fed articles by this system, it will be much more alive than most blogs out there.
Just my 2 cents,
Trevor
September 28th, 2008 at 9:03 am
@Jay, this is the first competition we’re doing. It’s not the last by any stretch of the imagination. Determining the current “quality” of a blog is a complex effort. It’s not as easy as checking the Google rankings and PR when a site is submitted, unless we want Google to ban our IP address for making too many requests.
@Trevor, if people submit properly rewritten articles with no author boxes, then our system leaves no footprint at all. None.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:50 am
When this contest first started, the list of top 15 showed their blog count. Now it does not. Why?
On the one hand, knowing that Ed has a few hundred blogs might discourage me, but at the same time, knowing that 10th place has 150 and I have 110 might encourage me to try harder.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Jay we plan to do regular incentives for people to build & promote their websites.
I’m sorry to tell you mate… but I have seen some very very crappy blog networks that are private… totally kill it in search engine rankings.
I’m not promoting a crappy network… I’m just stating facts.
There will be many competitions, perhaps one every month for different things.
We will also be adding incentives & bonus’s for those who do add or continue to increase the “quality” of their sites.
You can bet your bottom dollar that we are doing everything we can to make this the most kick ass network around.
Thanks
Marc
October 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Just a quick note (lol) about the points raised by Jay:
Yes, obviously somebody can add a bunch of sites purpose built for this competition and I expect that this is part of the reason for the comp!
If somebody wants to put in the effort to create such sites and then leave them to rot - more fool them! The efforts involved in setting up a blog farm can be immense so to create one just for a few $ is silly!
Furthermore there is very much to be said for “crappy” sites as they are showing on the front page of the big three search engines more and more often. Ever since PR died it’s natural death (as the rights belong to the university and NOT Google) such sites have a far better chance of hitting the top spot. I know because I do it often.
Today the search engines are looking for dead on accurate and focused sites which match a given search as closely as possible. Most folk assume that this has always been the case but all good SEO guys know how easy it has been in the past to distort such results.
Now, when we look at this competition we see a SOLUTION to a problem AND a great opportunity:
1. The articles submitted should ALL be made spinnable - if you don’t understand why, and why adding a plain unspinnable article to the network is a waste of your time and could do harm to the network, I suggest you spend some time investigating before you submit any more rubbish.
If all the articles submitted are at least 30% different then each site accepting articles has a very good chance of doing well on Google. Thus the links contained in such articles are then far more important.
In this case the more links the better!
2. You need a good mix of good quality sites and poor quality sites - a simple fact overlooked by many! Google is clever they know what you are up to - think about it
3. The opportunity here is to build a blog farm and enter it into a competition and possibly win a prize BUT you are missing the biggest opportunity if you think that is the end.
When the competition is over anybody who has created blogs just for the comp should promote those blogs as they will be perfectly set up to do well on Google - that is if you have a focused blog.
With a little care and attention, the right plugins, a few 100% unique article here and there, and you will have a winner
Finally
Thanks guys, your competition made me sit up and knuckle down to something I have been meaning to get “around to” for far too long.
Thanks for the motivation
WickermanXXX
October 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Is the list being updated automatically? If not when can we bank on it being upgraded? Like how regularly?
October 7th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Oh and what time will the contest end? 12pm Est.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hi Marc,
What is the EXACT TIME for Competition End?
thanks a lot!
Haiming
October 9th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
The contest ends at midnight EST.
The list is updated once per day.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Is midnight the beginning of the day of the 10th or the end of the day?
October 10th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Is it me or was this site experancing horrid slow down during the last 2 days of the competition. so much so that at times it was difficult or slow in the site submission process.
I noticed today that CAPTCHA check was put in place - good call.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Is that it then?????
Whose won?
October 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Tom, some folks were hammering the AMA site with automated scripts to add thousands of spammy sites.
We got rid of them all, and implemented CAPTCHA to prevent further attempts at abusing the system.
What some people won’t try to do for a $1,000 prize. Needless to say, we know who they are.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
When will the winners be announced?
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Yeah who won? How high did they score?
October 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am
?????