First Post of 2008 – Time To Give Away Some Cash
Well, my first contest has come to a close, and I’ve learned quite a few things from it. Back in late November I had 750 comments, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. So to entice some more readers to leave some meaningful feedback on my posts, I held a contest. Taking part was quite easy, as all you had to do was leave a comment, and I managed to score over 100 comments in the last 35 days. Not quite the 1,000 I was aiming for, but certainly one of the best 35 day periods I can recall in recent months.
So, since I can’t award commenter 1000 with some Canadian cash, I’ll do the next best thing. The last person to leave a comment (number 860 if anyone’s interested) was Nick Ramsay from LongCountdown.com. Congrats Nick, you’re a cool $25 CDN richer. That should help buy some diapers or maybe a single movie pass at the Kakamigahara Jusco theatres 
The second award was awarded to a random commenter. Anyone who’s left a comment previously could win, and Ms Danielle is the lucky winner of the second $25 CDN prize. I don’t think she even knew the contest was running … but who can complain with a free monetary gift?
Congrats to both of you. I’ll be sending you an email shortly to request your PayPal email addy 
“What about the third award”, you ask? I’m glad you did. The third award was for the best comment left on this site. Considering how I have 860 comments on here, not including trackbacks (which don’t count, anyways), it might take me a few days to award this one. I’ve been reading through a few of the early comments and there are some great ones by a few of the regular commenters, but I haven’t had the opportunity to pick one as the absolute best. Because of this, I’ll ask for a few extra days in deciding which one should be crowned “Best Comment of 2007″ (since every comment thus far was left in 2007, despite this site’s existence since October of 2006).
For anyone curious about how I chose the random comment, I had MySQL choose the winner from the database. I’ve included screenshots of both winners to show that I’m not playing favourites, and you can use the very same SQL query on your own WordPress databases to get a random comment from your own system.
Thanks to everyone that left a comment, whether it was for the contest or not. I’ve learned that it’s a really bad idea to get deathly sick when running a contest as these things don’t promote themselves, and it’s probably not a good idea to have cash as a prize, since nobody really cares about such things. I think the next time I run a contest I’ll be including something far more tangible … like an autographed copy of my book (still a work in progress) or a Japanese games console. Everyone could use a Japanese DS Lite, right?
Okay, the monks are ringing the bells, my clock just rolled over to 12:00 AM. It’s time to hit publish.
Happy 2008, everyone!
Comments (4)
Yeah!!! Thanks Jason, but you know I’d be commenting even without the incentive of a prize. How about that Ms Danielle, eh? She has more luck than a bowl of Lucky Charms!
Ms Danielle seems to be winning things left right and center! Congrats to both of you!
Yeah, when I saw MsDanielle’s name on my screen after the SQL query I wondered if perhaps the stars are in perfect alignment for her. In the last year she seems to have won more contests than anyone else in the blogosphere.
If I only had half as much luck with contests …
[...] Happy New Year everybody! And what a great start… I won the Nenmatsu Jumbo lottery! Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie, but I did win $25 from Jason in his post, Time to Give Away Some Cash. Whoo-hoo! [...]