That contest I was just mentioning... I've got a personal request. Let's all link the term "v7ndotcom elursrebmem" over to Michael Gray's Wolf-Howl website. Why?
Rather than win the money myself I would like to donate this money to St Jude's Center for Children to help Children with Cancer. So if you would like to help St. Jude's win any money please copy the link below and post it to your blog or website:
<a href='https://www.wolf-howl.com/v7n/' >The v7ndotcom elursrebmem information</a><br>How you can help kids with cancer.
In addition, you can help out by digging the story here and tagging it at del.icio.us. I'm really glad someone took this angle. I'll see about getting a few more web properties of ours to link to Michael. I see no reason to link anywhere else.
Seems his website is down. Someone didnt want him to win?
Great to know, Greg. That should help lessen people's fears about what will happen with the funds.
For the record, If the winner is promoting a charity on their page, and their page complires with our rules, we will pay our money directly to the charity on the winner's behalf.
I absolutely trust that GW will do as he says, but I'm sure we will see some more charity sites pop up. And some will be from people I know nothing about, so the best thing to do is to pay the money directly to the charity.
I think it was just down for a minute - it's back up for me.
Rand, I dont think the "blowback" as you say is doubting that the money will go to charity, rather that people will simply use the charities as link bait to win the contest. Sure, they will donate the money but they still get the publicity of having won the contest. That publicity could easily be worth more than the 7G the contest winner gets.
I have waited to commit, but you've got my link(s) gray-wolf.
Sorry for not posting sooner, it's all about taking a negative and turning it into a positive. For anyone who's concerned the link will be used for something they don't approve of later on please remove it after the contest.
St Jude's is a charity we as a family donate to every year. Having two children I can't imagine how truly horrible it would be for families and children who have to go through something like that.
I can see why people would question the motives of someone using a charity as link bait. With all the corruption over the past few years, there is a lot of cynicism abound. I give Wolf-Hound the benefit of the doubt (even though I don’t know him), and I actually queued up a link on my v7ndotcom Elursrebmem blog not too long after his PPC ad went up yesterday.
That said, I do see some relative value in this contest. For one, I think it will be interesting to watch how quickly/comprehensively the different search engines index sites, and to see how well spammy tactics work in MSN and Yahoo.
For example, Google showed results the fastest, but one day later, Yahoo is much more comprehensive than Google. The sites that immediately ranked in Google? Almost all were blogs, forums, or from Google Base. I’ll be cataloging my observations on these issues in our main blog.
There is another charity site up at https://www.watching-paint-dry.com/v7ndotcom-elursrebmem/.Anything won will go to Celiac Disease research at the University of Maryland (they are on board and have a page up about the contest). If you are busy tagging, tag both and try to get at least one of the charities to win.
I'm going to be sick, that's dispicable. Sorry Rand, I know you think this guy has good intentions, but from where I stand it looks like this guy is using children with cancer as link bait. Unless you tell me this guy is a huge philanthopist... no he's a professional internet marketer, so why would his motives be anything but that. He came up with this idea during a brainstorming session that asked the question, "how can I win this competition", if I'm wrong let me know.
I have no doubt that St. Jude is a very worthy cause and that Michael has no alternating motives, but having spent a lot of time in hospital with my kid I get a very bad feeling when someone uses sick children as link bait.
I would encourage everybody to ignore this competition and not to link to Michael's site. If everybody could just go to the St. Jude web site and make a direct donation (e.g. one hour salary) I am sure we could raise much more than the $7000 price money. To help a good cause I would encourage everybody to give away free ad space to a charity and to make regular donations. In some countries this is even tax deductible. My favorite charity is Unicef.
I'm with ya on this one Rand. Another SEO contest is a terrible idea to begin with, and I like Michael's approach.
I'll wait a day or so to give the story a bump. Great idea supporting him, and something better than just winning cash and giving away techniques to the SE's.
>If I'm wrong let me know You are wrong. Michael is a professional internet marketer, and a philanthropist. You raise a good point of concern, but knowing GW personally, this is not his intention. I'm as much in support of the idea because it says "seo contests are a bad idea" as I am because it is for a good cause.
If anything, I'm willing to bet he chose to donate the money not as linkbait to win, but to raise attention to what a horrible idea these contests are.
I'm not really sure why there's blowback on this - if the links don't point to him, and someone else wins, that money certainly is not going to St. Jude's.
And while I have causes of my own that I support financially, I think this is a great way to point the money from the contest in a good direction.
I know Michael well and there's absolutely no reason to think that he'll do anything but get the funds to St. Jude's. I'm not sure what he's done to warrant being questioned on this... If you know a good reason, please do post.
I guess I could see how it might leave a bad taste in the mouth, but, link bait or not, it's still the best option I see. I loved Donna's post on it, too, but I think it would be very cool if, after all the fighting that's been done by folks re: this contest, it came out with a great conclusion like Michael's.
There's absolutely no question that the money would in fact go to the charity. But my knee jerk reaction was that he was not doing it out of any goodness in his heart, but rather with the concept of link bait on his mind.
Good on yer Michael and Rand - youve certainly got my links...!