I quite enjoyed this competition, as with anything in life some people would prefer it to be easier and some would prefer it to be harder, Task 2 & 3 were solved pretty quickly which kind of made just doing Task 1 a long shot to win the comp so it certainly could have been done better but for a first attempt I was very happy with how it went, I had to create a new folder in my inbox to deal with the emails & entries!

I also learned a few lessons along the way myself and I think I’d like to do another competition in the future but perhaps this time with one clear winner, possibly an online treasure hunt?

Task 1
Some superb entries with a lot of them being put in the comments and some serious time and effort going into them so I’d like to thank everyone that took the time out to have a go, it shows a lot of dedication and gets a good though process going.

First (5 points): Albert – with a great understanding of what the site needs right now and moving forward to include redesign, forum and marketing.

Second  (3 points): Jam - a well though out plan that would not only tackle the current problem but also seeing the community & user submitted route that could lead to success.

Third (2 points) : Carl Moeller- for offering to give to his sisters to give them a leg up and finding a source for new content.
_______________________

Task 2
With the clue being ‘These small online homes can often make big money’ of course it has to be minisites.net

First : Michael (5 points)
Second : James (3 Points )
Third: Matthew (2 points)

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Task 3
The anagram which when re-arranged made ‘Self Made Minds’

First: Carl (5 points)
Second: James (3 points)
Third: Johnston (2 points)

_______________________

The result
So overall the points were as follows:
Michael (one bonus point for guessing the url) 

James 6
Michael 6
Albert 5
Carl Warwick 5
Jam 3
Carl Moeller 2
Matthew 2
Johnston 2

Therefore the overall winner is a draw! Between Michael & James.
I decided to flip a coin and used this site to decide to outcome which was …James

Congratulation James, I’ll contact later today about getting the site.
Unlucky Michael, thank you to everyone who entered & hopefully we can do this again!

The prize:
You’ll win the complete website & domain fictionforum.net which is a simple flat hml site so can be zipped up and emailed to the winner, the domain is with godaddy so can be pushed for free to the winners account at goddaddy or transferred out to a registrar of the winners choice. The domains has another 2 years before it needs renewing in 2009.

Today I’ll post the rules of the competition and announced the winner next week.
The person with the most points wins, the judges (my) decision is final.

Competition, complete all/any of the tasks below to gain points.
Closing date: 15th July

_____________________
Task 1
Let us know why either by a trackback from you own blog or if you don”t have a blog leave a comment stating why you should win it and/or what you would do with the website fictonforum.net. I will read through them all and then choose the best 3 that I like.

Points Awarded
Best 5 points
2nd  3 points
3rd  2 points

_____________________
Task 2
Solve the clue below, if you solve it then you will get a website address to go to which will tell you to email me a secret word.

The clue: These small online homes can often make big money, the tld is in tent.
Domain (9,3) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _

Points Awarded
First person to solve the clue & email me gets 5 points
2nd person to solve the clue 3 points
3rd person to solve the clue  2 points

_____________________
Task 3
Solve the anagram, the word below is an anagram, re-arrange the letters to discover the answer.

Anagram:         famed mildness

Use the contact form to submit your answer.

Points Awarded
First person to solve the anagram & email me gets 5 points
2nd person to solve the anagram 3 points
3rd person to solve the anagram  2 points
_____________________
That’s it! Oh and Michael has 1 point from Monday for being the first to guess the URL
Best of luck!

On a more serious note this post should be about housekeeping and my lack of it, I was checking through most of my sites recently and stats and doing general website housekeeping duties when I found a website that I had purchased and totally forgotten about!

It is actually easier than it sounds, I own a lot of domains, some domains are just investments as domains, some are mini sites others have mini site potential, others need to be developed, some have been developed but are sandboxed and struggling, others have been found & bought and need lots of work. The larger sites tend to get my attention more for obvious reasons as they have the ability to generate more income.

This site that I found had been discovered by using my normal property developing searches, as soon as I saw it recently- I remembered finding and buying it, however it needs work and for some reason it managed to fall of the radar completely for the last few months. Rather than put it back into storage I think I’ll give it away free to someone that could maybe use it.

The website
I’ll give some basic info on the website in question:

• Domain created 31st May 2002
• Archive history dates from 2007 back to 2002
• Site: command in Google gives 267 pages (html not dynamic site)
• Links from relative sites
• Yahoo site Explorer shows 401 Inlinks Pages 301

I don’t have a stats program installed, I ran the logs this morning and there is an old guestbook thats disabled that gets a lot of the traffic from spammers, apart from that there is a little traffic but some new content should really get it going again.

I was offered $500 for it a number of months ago but it is potentially worth a lot more especially if new content was added to get the traffic flowing.

For today if you can guess the domain we’ll be one step closer to finding the site a new home.

Clue: It’s not a real place to meet and have a discussion. (7,5,3)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _/ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _

Can you guess what it is? oh and I hope you do your spring cleaning more often than I