Theme

SEO

In Gerald’s words: “We’re celebrating the launch of MySEOCommunity.com with an awesome guest blogging contest. In addition to cash, you should take part in the contest because it offers … lots of great SEO related prizes, an awesome platform & community for your writing, the ability to network with your fellow SEO pros, an ideal opportunity for increasing RSS subscribers.”

Rules

There are lots of rules, but in a nutshell:

• Register with Myseocommunity.com
• Submit your blog post using your new account there
• Once your post is published for the contest, blog about it on your own blog, taking care to include the sponsors’ information.

See the announcement post for the full list of rules and guidelines.

Prizes

There are over $2000 worth of prizes, including a $1000 cash prize

Submission Deadline

March 5th 2012

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Giving

In Stephan’s words: “The holiday season is just around the corner, and we want your articles, tips, and inspirational stories about giving! Have a great story about why it’s better to give than to receive? … Show the world your expertise, practical tips, feel-good stories, and creative genius.”

Rules

• Register for the contest.
• Create a new guest post on the topic of giving. DO NOT post it on your blog.
• Recommended: link back to the announcement page.
• Submit your entry in Word DOC or DOCX format by emailing it to stephan [at] noomii.com, or sharing it with that email address if it’s a Google Doc.

30 days after your guest post has appeared in the contest, you are allowed to repost it on your own blog, with attribution – a link will do – to your guest post on Noomii.

Prizes

Guest posts will be scored by number of comments, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ shares, and will be given extra points by judges for “creativity, originality, writing style and x-factor.”

The 3 guest posts with the most points will win cash prizes totaling US$1500.

Submission Deadline

Friday, December 9th 16th 2011

Results

Guest posts will start to appear on November 24th and you can follow the scoring via a leaderboard on the announcement page.

The contest ends January 14th, 2012 and the judging will end by January 31st, with the winners announced soon after.

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Thankfulness

In Courtney’s words: “I thought with [US] Thanksgiving coming up just next month, thankfulness would be a great topic for a group writing project.”

Rules

• Write a new blog post on topic.
• Leave a link to your blog post in a comment on the announcement post.

Prize

A random participant will win a free a copy of Creating Christian Content.

Courtney will also compile all the submissions into a special report that you can give away on your blog.

Submission Deadline

Friday October 28, 2011

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Motherhood

In Jordan’s words: “Feel free to write about how you take time for yourself, how you need time for yourself, what you do with time for yourself, and/or anything else that comes to mind. Feel free to go in any direction that appeals to you.”

Rules

1. Your post must relate to the theme
2. You can participate via your blog, vlog, plog, etc. or with a guest post on Mamablogga
3. Your post must be newer than October 10th, 2011

Prize

US$30 gift certificate to Amazon.com

Results

Monday October 17th 2011

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

SEO/Blogging/Internet Marketing/Social Media

In Gerald’s words: “It’s that time of the year when the donkey starts misbehaving. All joking aside, the contest is (now) an annual contest for SEOs and Internet marketers to showcase their awesome guest blogging skills.”

Rules

• Your blog post submission must be completely new and original. Do NOT post it anywhere, not even your own blog.
• See the the announcement post for guidelines about post content.
• To submit your entry, you need to register for a SEM Group user account and submit the post there for review.
• Once you submit your entry, you must blog about the contest on your blog.
• This 2nd post must contain a link back to the announcement post and all the sponsors. There’s html code available for you to copy and paste that does the linking for you.
• Recommended: use the above logo on your own post.

Prizes

There’s a long list of prizes and lots of money to be won, so just check out the announcement post for details.

The winner will be chosen by judges based on the quality of the article and the quality of the article’s promotion.

Submission Deadline

October 7, 2011

However, since you are free to promote until then, the earlier you submit your entry, the more time you have to promote.

Results

Guest posts will start appearing immediately, and the winner will be announced soon after the final submission deadline.

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Blogging/Internet Marketing/Social Media/SEO

Rules

There are so many rules – maybe that’s why it’s called ‘gone crazy’? – it’s just easier to read through the announcement post and the followup.

Prizes

Over $1050 in cash prizes for the Top 5 point-getters.

Submission Deadline

September 15th, 2011

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Job Search

Write a new blog post for JobMob on a topic related to job search.

Some suggestions are:

• Job search success stories (anywhere in the world that you are!)
• Unusual job search experiences
• Your opinion on a specific job search-related topic
• Your most-liked/least-liked job search tools, websites, etc.

Rules

There are actually quite a few rules, so it’s better to just see the announcement post.

Prizes

There are over US$5000 in prizes, including the biggest cash prize I’ve ever offered, and there might be more coming.

There are only 25 slots for contestants, and there are 2 early bird cash prizes for random participants who submit before August 1st, so get your entry in asap.

Submission Deadline

There is no submission deadline, but once the 25th contestant submits their guest post entry, no more submissions will be accepted.

Results

The first guest post will appear on Monday August 1st 2011, and the official contest results will be announced on Wednesday, September 21st, 2011.

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

Five years from now

In Jordan’s words: “feel free to go in any direction that appeals to you.”

Rules

1. Your post must relate to the theme
2. You can participate via your blog, vlog, plog, etc. or with a guest post on Mamablogga
3. Your post must be newer than July 15, 2011
4. Link to the announcement post or the submission form
5. Posts must be submitted through the submission form

Prize

US$30 gift certificate to Amazon.com

Submission Deadline

End of day Friday July 22nd, 2011

Results

Monday, 25 July 2011

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Where I learned about web hosting

I built my first website in 1994 as a first-year Computer Science student at McGill University in Montreal, and while accessible by the public, it was hosted on servers for us students, that were maintained by other students and staff.

This was years before Google. The only people who knew about my site were the ones I had shared it with, and even then, most of my friends didn’t even have Internet access at the time.

Fast forward 5 years later to 2000. As was typical during the Internet boom when people were thrust into all sorts of funny places in the IT industry, I was barely 3 years out of university while working for Amazon.com as the Website Production Manager for Amazon.fr, among things responsible for making sure that website stayed ‘up’ i.e. that the millions of daily visitors could continue shopping non-stop around the clock. Still, with such large, lucrative sites, Amazon had many people supporting the teams like the one I lead, so if there was a problem, it rarely lasted long.

3 years later I moved to a similar but more important role with a smaller French competitor of Amazon’s. Unlike Amazon which ‘self-hosts’ (hosts its websites on its own servers, managed by its own employees), my employer had a large (>1M euro/year) contract with a large hosting company who specialized in large, busy websites. Under this arrangement, my team needed to be in contact with the hosting company on a daily basis, and that was just part of the regular workflow.

3 years after that, in 2006, my entire team and I were laid off and shortly after, I came up with the idea of JobMob while on my post-layoff job search. Although I knew a lot about the Internet, I didn’t know much about blogs and social media and the best way to learn was to jump right in.

Initially, the idea behind JobMob was to blog about my job search, share my successes, failures, lessons learned and resources discovered.

In the summer of 2006, I started planning the website.

Before you choose a web hoster

Planning the website meant:

1. Imagining how I would update and maintain the website
2. Understanding my traffic goals, short-term to long-term
3. Deciding on what I would need to measure and track

All of these things had an impact on my eventual choice of software requirements, which narrowed the list of hosting companies that were relevant.

Once I had my plan & estimations in hand, I started looking for a hosting company. This was in November 2006.

This was my list of requirements for choosing a company.

Criteria for judging a web hosting company

These requirements were all equally important, so in no specific order…

1) A hosting plan that met the technical requirements for my project, with room to spare

WordPress was the blog software and its system requirements are well-documented. Lots of companies serve WordPress, and even install it for you.

2) Fast servers

Nobody likes to wait for a page to load, least of all if I need to work like that every day.

3) Scalable/Burstable servers

I knew that at some point – hopefully sooner than later – my traffic would spike beyond whatever the hosting plan allowed, and I didn’t want my site to stay down during that rush of popularity. So it was critical that the company allow me to occasionally exceed my traffic limits without the site going down, giving me enough time to decide how to react.

4) Reasonably-priced (not the cheapest)

When the hosting is too cheap, you know they’re skimping on some part of the service such as poor technical support, too many clients sharing each server, etc. It’s about the value you get for the money you pay, so I was willing to pay up to $20 per month, avoiding all those $5-$7 packages that are only useful for people who don’t expect or want their traffic to grow.

5) Round-the-clock, non-email tech support

When you’re site is down and you’re panicking, the last thing you want is to use a contact form or send an email support request and then sit there staring at your screen in hope of getting reply. No, you want to talk to someone asap. And if you’re based in a different country and timezone, you need support at every hour of the day.

6) Easy to join, but not too easy

Not surprisingly, most companies make it super easy to sign up because they want your business asap. Sometimes there are situations where it’s not so easy because you’re in another country and/or setting up a business account, etc. And some signup obstacles make sense and actually give more credibility to the hosting company as one that only wants a certain type of responsible client that won’t abuse them.

7) Easy to leave

On the other hand, when you want out, you want out asap and you want to easily be able to transfer all your files, databases, email accounts, domain names, etc., and if possible get a refund for the unused contract term. Before joining a hosting company, always find out how to leave and do not hesitate to test their support services with questions on this topic.

8) Good reputation with users

You can quickly google any hoster’s name but you’ll often find too many positive reviews due to bloggers pushing that company’s affiliate programs. Instead, google people’s reactions over Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn where they’re more likely to be honest, especially when complaining. That said, weigh things carefully. People usually complain much more loudly than they compliment.

9) Good reputation with search engines

If Google (for example) regularly punishes sites with a specific hosting company, it can drag down everyone else there.

10) Large community of users

When many people use a hosting company, they’ll often find solutions to problems you don’t know about until they explode in your face. It’s great to find some client’s problem solved when you’re waiting for tech support’s replies.

How to make the final decision among relevant candidates

• Get recommendations from people in similar situations e.g. people using the same software
• If you can trial for 30 days with a moneyback guarantee, do so, and test tech support i.e. not marketing, who in their eagerness to bring you on, will probably show you a level of support beyond what their technical team can do.

In a followup article, I’ll explain which companies I tested and used, and tell the ups and downs.

This article is part of Designer Daily‘s How To Choose The Perfect Web Host Group Writing Project, which is sponsored by WebHostingBuzz.

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert

Theme

How to chose the perfect web host

In Mirko’s words: “This will hopefully end up with a variety of informative articles as well as give you an opportunity to connect with other designers and bloggers.”

Rules

• Write a new post expressing your opinion about the topic.
• Your blog post must be at least 100 words long.
• The post must contain links to Designer Daily and WebHostingBuzz.
• Recommended: link to other participants’ blog posts.
• To submit your entry, leave a comment with your permalink on the announcement post or email it to mirko[at]designer-daily[dot]com.

Prize

One randomly-chosen winner will win an iPad 2

Submission Deadline

Thursday June 30th 2011 July 31st 2011

Results

Friday July 1st 2011 August 1st 2011

--Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert