It’s been a long time since the last time Noobpreneur.com held a contest – so, let’s do it again, shall we? Okay – here’s a background story…
Contest background story
Noobpreneur.com exists today thanks to you, the readers. Since its humble beginning, Noobpreneur.com is set to be a place where entrepreneurs and everyone interested in entrepreneurship can learn a thing or two about small business ownership.
This website was originally established to share my view about small business ownership. At that time, I was a franchisee of a leading local business service center. I shared my experience with Noobpreneur.com reader – the ups and downs of franchise ownership. Unfortunately, things went wrong – I lost the two franchise units I have, and my franchisor also hit the ground, hard – “thanks” to the mis-management; to rub salt on the open wound, the recession hit hard.
I blog about my trials and tribulations, even published several blog posts on my business failure. It was a difficult time for me, but I believe that my experience will benefit others in similar situation.
Now, “just build it and they will come” won’t work with blogging. Noobpreneur.com gains readership not only because we offer useful blog posts, but also because others think we are useful, so they share the link to Noobpreneur.com, even blog about it (I am indebted to all of the people helping us to get off the ground – thanks you…)
At that time, I never thought about SEO. Links we are getting are uber-natural; no link building, no off-site optimization, no article marketing, no video marketing; we just created great content that are worth linking to.
Then I discover about SEO. Then we start targeting our main keywords. Then, we over-do it. Then, we are procrastinating. We publish lower quality blog posts. We build links the unnatural way. The eye opener: We are hit by Google Panda and Penguin update.
I am fed up with SEO and admit that following experts’ advice on SEO that I should target our main keywords is probably the biggest strategic mistake in building Noobpreneur.com as a business. We suffer the consequences: We lost 60% of traffic – partly because we are no longer interesting.
So, I am on a mission; I want to rejuvenate Noobpreneur.com and bring it back to its root: Offering useful tips, ideas, and advice worth mentioning.
In the past 2 weeks, it’s a work in progress. I have made changes and I think we are getting better – I truly hope you, our valued readers, see things that way to (and I hope Google does that, too.)
So, I need your help. We need your feedback on what we are doing. Are we on the right track? Are we offering value? Are we doing the right thing? Please let us know!
Here’s a contest to sweeten the deal…
Okay, so we need your review on Noobpreneur.com. Bloggers and blog owners: We need you to help us gain exposure. We would like to request for your review – please blog about Noobpreneur.com; please tell your readers about Noobpreneur.com; what you honestly think about Noobpreneur.com.
Here’s the contest part: To sweeten a deal, we will present you with a $25 Kiva Cards delivered right to your email address. Yes, we will give a Kiva Card for every review published.
What’s more at the end of the contest period, we will offer what we think the best review of all an additional $50 Kiva Card – for one winner only.
If you haven’t heard about Kiva – it’s a place where you can lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. For just $25, you can help budding entrepreneurs establishing a business.
Sounds good? Here’s some simple rules to follow…
- Please write a review – 400 words minimum – on Noobpreneur.com
- Please include a link back to https://noobpreneur.com to tell your readers how to go to Noobpreneur.com
- Quality, original content only, please – no rewritten, no spun, no spam.
- Only 1 review / blog / blogger, please…
- That’s all!
The contest will start as this blog post is published and will end on September 30th, 2012 02:00 GMT+0 or when our budget of $250 runs out – whichever comes first.
Good luck and many thanks in advance!
Ivan Widjaya
Contests rock!