The big contest kicks off tomorrow – had to make this post first! 
You guys probably remember the competition I had with four other bloggers starting a month ago - I faced off against Thomas Sinfield, Ian Fernando, Internet Babel and Slyvisions. First off, let me thank the four – it ended up being a friendly, good natured contest and the best thing is that all of us gained subscribers, traffic and most important a buzz in the blogosphere, something that we were looking for at the beginning. A joint contest was an interesting one as it was my first, and the others doing well gave me motivation – without them, there’s no way in hell that I would have written so many guest posts nor devoted so much time to this 
What was the end result? You can see for yourself here. Hover over each number to see whose it was.
The end result for TUK was an increase of 137 RSS subscribers, more than double what we started off with. Internet Babel did well too, pushing me all the way and landing up with an increase of 129.
Tallies
Slyvisions 32
Ian Fernando 61
Thomas Sinfield 82
Internet Babel 129
The University Kid 137
As you can see, relatively good results all around.
What did I do to win the RSS competition?
Guest Post - ones on John Cow, Tyler Cruz, Super Blogging Tips and Bloggin-Ads definitely helped drive traffic and subscribers, and increase exposure at the very least. I will be following up in a week and ranking how good guest posting was on each of those blogs, so that others who want to guest post have something to base their decisions on.
Entrecard URL change: I generally get around 20 – 40 visitors from Entrecard daily; what I did was change the URL for my profile there to link directly to the contest post. It helps 
Constantly, constantly remind my readers about it - you can check out ways to boost RSS feed count and 5 Reasons you should subscribe to my feed for more about that
Joining Bloggeries – a sweet forum by bloggers, for bloggers – check it out as it has some good debate. Sent a decent amount of traffic.
Comment on other blogs – I didn’t leave many, but the ones I leave I tried to be either extremely helpful or extremely controversial. Guess which type sent more traffic?
Good luck on running your own contest, and I hope all of you guys will stay around.
Affiliate Marketing
I’m now at around $15 – $25 a day with affiliate marketing, with a combination of pay per click and various other methods of marketing… nothing substantial, but it’s good to have income coming in from additional sources. $20 a day is an additional $600 a month – we’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to look at scaling over the next few days.
Scammers
I announced the winners yesterday for the contest post… and had three people emailing me, all of whom claimed to have win, all of whom which had different Paypal emails. I’ve emailed the winner of the subscription half and will wait for his reply – already got the mail from EGK. Will send out the money to both tomorrow.
I’m also going to expose a vile scammer on here in the next couple of days – I promised I wouldn’t swear much on here but this guy is a complete douchebag. Sometimes you’ve gotta speak up to save the community; he’s a Wordpress designer, something that a few of you use so I’ll be warning you guys to beware. I found out the hard way – $200.00 down the drain 
By the way, I got in through to the next round in BloggerNoobs domain name tourney – head on over and vote
March 5th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
you’re showing terrific growth. very good competition there and congrats to the winner. i think you did a great job guest posting for cow and tyler
bloggernoob’s last blog post..March Madness Domain Tournament Begins!
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March 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Cheater! Cheater! Jason actually paid me tons of money to subscribe 137 times… lol nah, just playing man. Congratz!
But sorry to hear about the scammer bit man…
Jay
DatMoney.com
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March 5th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
This blogs becomes great environment for many people.
Aleks’s last blog post..Hello world!
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March 6th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Sounds good. I’m the “real” winner of the random subscriber bit, and I’m really shocked that people were trying to pass by as me. Quick surprising.
That’s good news about Affiliate Marketing. I’d love to see a post in more detail about affiliate marketing and how you’re making it (begin) to work.
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March 6th, 2008 at 1:49 am
You beat me by 8… you bastard lol!
Was good contest, dam. When I saw all your guest posts I thought… he’s got it now, I was gna go all out at that point but figured it was too late…
Nice going.
Nick Sullivan’s last blog post..Winner of Free Review and Advertising
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March 6th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Congrats on the contest
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March 6th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Congrats Jason! I thought that internet babel had it, guess you pulled through in the clutch… definitely a testiment to fine blogging
Jim’s last blog post..The Net Fool’s Big March Contest – Win Prizes!
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March 6th, 2008 at 3:30 am
Nice job Jason! I know I didn’t win, but next time I have time, it will be me pwning the competition.
Sly from Slyvisions.com’s last blog post..RSS Contest: Slyvisions vs. 4 Other Blogs
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March 6th, 2008 at 3:31 am
Congrats Jason
To increase my RSS count, i too had just opened up a contest in my blog to see how well it goes
Chetan’s last blog post..Yahoo – Cold war with Microsoft and deals with Time Warner
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March 6th, 2008 at 3:32 am
Congratulations for all your success! and your ideas to promote your contest were good enough… by the way are you talking about Mike while you talk about Scammers in blog theme design?
If yes, it seems there are many around who seem to be scammed by him.
Life is Colourful’s last blog post..February 2008 Proved to be One Significant Month of Earnings
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March 6th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Congratulations! I new I was out of the race about half way through, but it was great seeing how you did it!
Thomas Sinfield’s last blog post..Blog Design Preview: InterviewsWith.com
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March 6th, 2008 at 5:16 am
Congrats on winning the contest and increasing your subscribers. Thats pretty crazy about the scammers, some people will try anything!
I too would like more details on the affiliate marketing (even though I am probably too lazy to do anything with the information!). Looking forward to the scammer exposure and the controversy that will inevitably come with that post!
egk’s last blog post..Mercedes-Benz USA General Discussion :: 2008 Mercedes CLK 63 AMG Black Series Pictures
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March 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Funny…
It would be hilarious if you sent the money to the wrong person
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March 6th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Count me in
BobbyT’s last blog post..5 Things To Consider When Guest Blogging
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March 6th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Again Jason, congrats, think I am doing a bit too much of that at the moment!
Looks like your investment in prizes was worth it then eh, you basically paid $2 per subscriber – Not bad at all IMO!
Congrats Jason, and please keep it up!
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March 7th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Congrats Jason. Not only have you gained subscribers, with the quality of your post, you’ll keep them for a long time too. And now with the new competition I am sure you’ll grow even more. In a year time, you’ll be glad you didn’t sell your site.
ForexTrader’s last blog post..How Currency Trading Works
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March 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I think I’ve read about another blogger who got scammed by some Wordpress Designer for $200 as well. Or was it $150. I don’t really remember the name the scammer used. Could be M.S.
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March 9th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Jason,
Congrats on a great contest and keep up the great work!
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March 13th, 2008 at 12:43 am
Gratz Jason, it’s a well deserved win
George’s last blog post..Hm, WP Super-Cache, eh?
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March 13th, 2008 at 2:14 am
[...] now that my RSS numbers are up after the RSS competition with 4 other bloggers (unfortunately, I didn’t win) and my PR is set at 3, I think it’s finally time to make some changes regarding my [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 7:29 am
You know, I wonder how all these contestants’ RSS Feed stats are now and if you’d still have the highest amount of subscribers…
Cheap Banners’s last blog post..By: Focus on Quick Cash or the Long Term Deal? | ‘Another MMO Blog dot Com’
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