Earlier this month I purchased my first-ever already-registered “premium domain name”.  For those of you that are new to webmastering, “premium domain” is a nice way of saying “fucking expensive” domain name!.

Aside from the obvious cost reasons I was always leery of purchasing a domain because I’ve read so many horror stories about people getting ripped off during the domain transfer process.  But I really wanted (needed) this particular domain name and it was offered through SEDO.com which after a little research, is safe by most accounts.

So I warmed up my credit card, signed up for my SEDO.com account and got my new domain name in just a few days with zero fuss.  The only real problem is that SEDO has a $500 limit on credit card purchases so I had to use PayPal, which everybody knows I hate/distrust/despise.

If you are looking to buy a domain name and are skeptical and/or worried about the riff-raff waiting to steal your money, SEDO.com’s process and escrow service makes the whole domain transfer and purchase process safe and painless.

We’ve just finished our April iPad giveaway using Rafflecopter so as I mentioned last month I can now compare how Rafflecopter works and performs when compared against Booshaka.

With both our Booshaka and Rafflecopter giveaways our goal was to increase our Facebook Fanpage Likes.  In our March Booshaka iPod giveaway we gained over 1,000 new likes.  So using the iPod giveaway as a baseline we offered a new Retina display iPad in our Rafflecopter contest.  The iPad cost a few hundred dollars more, and is a more sough-after item (by most people? Right?) than an iPod, so we were hoping for over 1,000 fans.  Sadly, using Rafflecopter we only gained about 900 Likes.  Not bad, but not what I had hoped for.

Here are some of the key performance differences between Rafflecopter and Booshaka and how I rank the winner:

• Ease of use for contestants: Booshaka wins
  Booshaka has a simple to enter, almost one-click entry form.  Gaining points toward the giveaway is as easy as posting a comment on our Facebook Timeline, which virtually all Facebook users know how to do.
  Rafflecopter is far to confusing for the average “regular” internet user.  To get points visitors just click the button to get points for “Liking” the page, or Liking us on Facebook, Tweeting, etc – But, it is too easy to just “Like”, tweet, etc, without actually doing the action.  The user must then enter the URL to the Tweet, or if they weren’t logged-in to Facebook, their Facebook URL, etc – For us this resulted in hundreds of invalid entries from people that just did not understand, and worse from cheaters.  Rafflecopter is far to easy to cheat.
• Ease of use for website owner: Rafflecopter wins
  As mentioned above, it’s very easy to cheat or incorrectly enter for a Rafflecopter contest.  This means that as the contest owner/website owner you must moderate all of your entires, or, your winning entry.  Luckily Rafflecopter makes moderating and confirming your contest winners easy in the interface, requiring only a few minutes to choose and confirm your giveaway winner.
  Using Booshaka for “Top Fans” our contest turned into a “who can post, like, and comment the most” – which is great, but to keep things fair, you have to draw the line somewhere and delete comments, deduct points, etc.  You also have to contend with overzealous Fans and might have to ban a Fan or two from your page or contest.  All this moderation can take a significant amount of time.
• Effectiveness for gaining more Facebook Likes: Booshaka wins
  Our goal is to draw more Facebook likes, so this is the most important factor, and by far Booshaka outperformed Rafflecopter in this respect.  I think this is because of how Booshaka is more Facebook centric, is easier to use for the contestants, and the better viral-traction that all of that commenting, liking, and posting creates.

Whether Rafflecopter or Booshaka is better for you and your contest depends on your goals and the type of giveaway you are doing (Facebook based vs blog or website based).  Although we may still use Rafflecopter, I think we’ll stick with Booshaka for the majority of our giveaways until we find something better.

A few weeks ago I was approached by Criteo to give their advertising network a try on Grownupgeek.com.  Criteo is a CPM based ad network that has two features that makes it stand out compared to many other ad networks.

The first feature is Criteo’s behavioral advertising cookies which target a visitor based on their previous web surfing or shopping activities.  For example:  A visitor goes to BigtvStore.com which happens advertise with Criteo and researches LCD TV’s.  That visitor then comes to your Criteo-enabled website and gets targeted with LCD TV ads.  Because that person was actually interested in LCD TV’s he or she is presented with advertisements that should appeal to him or her and they may be more apt to act on one of those advertisements.  In theory, it’s a win for the internet user and a win for the advertiser.

The second nice Criteo feature is their CPM floor.  This feature allows you to set a minimum CPM price for your Criteo ads.  If they can’t beat that price, they display another ad-network of your choice.  For example:  You know that Adsense pays you a (hypothetical) eCPM of $5.  You set your Criteo CPM minimum to $5.01.  Criteo will then only display ads that pay you a eCPM of $5.01 or more.  If they can’t make that price, they automatically display your Adsense code and ads instead.  It’s a virtual no-lose method!  … in theory…

There are however a few flaws that may make Criteo not very attractive for some website owners.

The first flaw is that only a small percentage of your website visitors may be harboring a Criteo targeting cookie necessary to display Criteo targeted adverts.  This leaves you with say, 20% of your visitors that will ever see a Criteo ad.

The second flaw is that only a small percentage of Criteo advertisers will be able to meet or exceed your minimum eCPM.

When you do the math and combine the low percentage of visitors with the Criteo cookie with the low percentage of advertisers that will be able to meet your minimum eCPM (unless you set it very, very low), the net result is a very low number of actual Criteo impressions.  If your website regularly receives, say, 100,000 visitors per day, then your potential Criteo earnings could be decent.  If however, your website receives only a few thousand visitors per day, your number of paid impressions may only range from a few hundred to 1 or 2 thousand.  The net result is that even though you may be getting paid a much higher eCPM rate, your actual earnings may only be a few cents per day.

For us, Criteo isn’t cutting it.  It’s no fault of Criteo, but more due to our modest 10,000 to 20,000 page views per day.

If you have the impressions, you should give Criteo a try.  It’s a great idea with great potential for excellent earnings.  Criteo.com (non affiliate link)

For the entire month of March we have been running our first ever Facebook contest.  Even though the contest does not end for another day, it’s been long enough that we’ve already learned a few things that I can share.

The goal of the contest was to increase our Facebook-Page fans/Likes so that we can better use the Facebook page as an ongoing platform to drive traffic to the website.  In the contest we were giving away a 32GB iPod Touch, an iPod Shuffle, and a $50 Amazon gift card.  Our total investment for this contest is approximately $400.  We used Booshaka to track who “interacted” with our page, and rank them.  Points are gained by Likes, comments, posts to our wall, etc.  We had a few “mini contests” to win additional points toward the prizes, such as a scavenger hunt at the website and some posting/content generation contests. The prizes, particularly the 32GB iPod Touch are substantial, so we were hoping for quite a bit of buzz, activity and new Likes for our Fanpage.

Based on our previous spending on Facebook advertising costs, $400 would have bought us approximately 150 likes, or around 200 likes based on the national “cost per Like” average.  Of course, would could have bought 5,000 likes for $100 from some guy in India, but 5,000 likes from fake accounts and/or people that don’t care one bit about our Fanpage would be a total waste of money (do people REALLY pay for these phony Facebook Likes?!).  So based on our $400 contest investment we would have been happy with 400 or 500 new Likes on our Fanpage.  I am ecstatic to report that even with a day left before the contest ends, we are at ~1,000 new likes on our Fan Page – over double what we had hoped for – and our reach/virility has also skyrocketed as shown by our Facebook Insights:

Other than confirming that a simple contest can be more effective at gaining exposure and Fans than Facebook advertising can, we also learned these nuggets of knowledge:

• A full month is far too long to run a contest of this type, at least for something relatively small like an iPod touch.  31 days is grueling on the contestants and even more grueling on whoever is trying to keep up with and moderate all the posts and comments on the Facebook page.  The next time we run this type of contest it will be for 10 days to 2 weeks, maximum.
• The Facebook friends of contestants hate getting spammed about our Facebook page and website all day and night.
• We love when the contestants spam about our Facebook page and website all day and night. 
• Very few people are actually willing to work or invest any time to win – even for a $300 iPod.  They want something fast & easy, even if that means they have a lower chance of winning anything.
• A tiny percentage people are very willing to work for the prizes and will invest every last breath to win.
• Many people will compete in the contest, or at least begin to play until they get bored or realize it’s more work than they are willing to do – then drop out.
• The vast majority of people will follow the rules and have fun in the contest.  But, just as in the real-world, it will draw a few shitholes.
• Any contest will apparently attract a few “contest mercenaries” (professional game-players) out of the woodwork that don’t really care about your Facebook page or your website.  Not much you can do about them but they do help to “up the ante” and can keep things competitive.
• Facebook & the internet, just like the real world, is full of idiots and shitholes that will cheat, lie, or steal their way to win anything.  You have to expect and be on the lookout for these people.  It’s these people that make running a contest and sometimes just running a website, a pain in the ass.  You can’t do much about them other than keep an eye out for them, and block/ban them.
• No matter what you do, or how you do it, someone (or multiple someones) is going to become unhappy when they don’t win.  It will never be their fault.  It will never be because they didn’t actually read the rules.  It will never be because they didn’t follow the rules.  It will always be YOUR fault or worse a grand conspiracy going all the way up to the President and the U.N. with everyone ganging up against them to prevent them from getting that prize that they perceive as their birthright.  There isn’t much you can do about these people.  Deal with them, ignore them, or tell them to go play in someone else’s contest.

Overall we are happy with the results of this contest.  The biggest takeaway is that it was too long and too much work.  Next month I think we will try a few simpler giveaways using Raffelcopter.com and see how effective it is verses a Booshaka.com contest.