NEW ENDEAVOR

Unfortunately, we did not plan very well and so instead of making money on our www.FunnyPhotosContest.com website, we are losing money! Initially we were going to charge contestants a fee to enter our contest. But a few days before we launched our site we realized, that viewers could enter other photo contests on the Internet for free. So how could we charge? Oh well, we thought all we needed to do was find a few sponsors to advertise on our site and that would solve the problem.

However, attracting sponsors is more difficult than we ever anticipated. As a new website we do not have enough visitors to make it worthwhile for any advertisers to spend money on our site. Thus, we are currently no longer even trying to solicit a sponsor. Instead, we have placed some Google ads on our web pages, but we only get paid when a visitor clicks on an ad. Furthermore, Google often pays only a few cents. And so we are sending bi-weekly cash prizes to all the winners of our contest without receiving much income.

Luckily, an interesting story on the Kim Komando radio program about the www.cafepress.com website has given us some hope. The site allows anyone to sell a variety of products – t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc. – with zero upfront costs and zero inventory. Sounds too good to be true, but in fact they have existed for almost ten years and many people have successfully sold products through the website. They charge a base price for their products. We can then sell their products at any price we choose and they will pay us the difference....not bad!

With this exciting possibility in mind, we will soon begin selling www.cafepress.com products. Our viewers will have an opportunity to purchase t-shirts, mugs, etc. displaying their own photos and our logo on it. We hope that lots of viewers will buy lots of products. But, who knows. All we can do is wait to see what happens.

SO MANY CHANGES

It probably sounds strange, but the changes to my website, www.FunnyPhotosContest.com since I launched it in June, 2006, really do amaze me. In the beginning, the site consisted of just six pages – the home page, of course, a page for photos, another to display (and update every few days) the current number of votes cast for the photos, one for the winners and another two pages for the contest rules and for submitting photos. At the time it seemed like those six pages were sufficient. What more was needed?

Well, I was wrong. Websites like many other things grow. To begin with, as the number of viewers expanded and the number of photos increased, we decided to add a second photo contest. Instead of only one contest, we felt we should separate the photos into two categories – one for “funny” photos and another for “cute” photos”. So a seventh page appeared on the website.

As the second month of our contest began, we removed the previous months photos and replaced them with the new entries. But it seemed a shame to eliminate all those great photos we had received. And so our “Photo Archive” was born and now each month another page is added to the site. We also started receiving emails from our visitors making suggestions, comments, etc. Why not share these interesting messages with all the viewers, we thought? You guessed it, another option appeared on our navigation bar for “Your Comments.” By now I began wondering how much more could it grow?

Of course, it continued to expand and soon we had a third contest. We offered viewers a chance to create captions for a monthly featured photo. We now had three contests for “funny photos”, “cute photos”, and the “caption contest”. With so many options, we wanted to avoid confusion and produced yet another page, the “Details” page.

As if all these pages are not enough, we have also included a page for links and a page for potential advertisers. It seems to me we now have quite enough. But I thought the same thing a year ago. So I can only say, “Who knows what new pages the future will bring?”

Anniversary

Well, we just celebrated our first anniversary ! A year ago on June 1, 2006, we launched our website, www.FunnyPhotosContest.com. And during the past twelve months, we have experienced an exciting and fabulous year. Hundreds of wonderful and loyal followers have submitted over a thousand wonderful photos.

And although we are certainly pleased with the results, at the same time I must admit, I can’t help feeling disappointed and discouraged. But, of course, it’s my own fault. Like many other entrepreneurs, with grandiose expectations, I had anticipated way too much. After all, YouTube.com receives millions of hits a day and made billions of dollars when Google purchased the site. I simply assumed that like YouTube, FunnyPhotosContest.com might get lucky too!

Of course, YouTube is the exception. As it turns out most sites have only a small number of visitors each day and the quest to increase website traffic plagues an incredible number of website owners. If I were to make up a statistic, I would guess 90% of all website owners, blogers, etc., are not receiving anywhere near the number of hits they would like. And efforts to generate more traffic only bring more frustrations than successes.

Nevertheless, it’s a huge endeavor. If you search Google for the phrase, “increase web traffic”, you will receive 33,400,000 results! Not only that, among those millions of hits, you will find that many clever people have written numerous books, newsletters, etc. on the subject and are greedily raking up nice profits. Guess I missed the boat. I should have written a book instead of creating a website.

Amazing Coincidence

Sacha Baron Cohen, filmstar of "Borat", has selected another Madison, Wisconsin contestant as the winner of the Caption Contest on the www.FunnyPhotosContest.com website. As Judge of the site's contest, Baron Cohen, awarded the prize, for the March contest, to Christopher Nanstad's entry, "Wait…Hold it! If we are all counting, who's gonna hide?"


In an email Baron Cohen sent to me, he wrote in keeping with his famous characters, Borat, Ali G, and Bruno,

"Hi,
Hope alls well with you, have to keep this short as keep getting dis connected, i knew i should of paid that bill, anyhow...
great picture and some great captions there to but my fav and clear winner will have to be number 1 also Isla's fav too !!! (Note: Isla Fisher is Baron Cohen's fiancée) anyway take care and i will try and fix this laptop
regards
Sbc x

The other Madison winner whom Baron Cohen picked for the website's Caption Contest in January was Doug Moe, a local newspaper columnist.

To add to this interesting coincidence the photographer, who submitted the snapshot for the recent March Photo Caption Contest, lives only one block away from the creator of the winning caption. Of course, when choosing the winner, Sacha Baron Cohen had no way of knowing about this close connection.

After retiring, as a computer trainer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Division of Information Technology, creating a website seemed like a perfect hobby for my retirement.
Since last June, when I received 24 photos from friends in the Madison, Wiscosin area for the first contest, I have received over 900 hundred fascinating photos and have attracted many wonderful and loyal followers throughout the U.S. and from many countries around the world.

Little did I ever dream that my website would create so much fun and excitement in my life.

How I Met Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat, on the Web

I learned in Sunday school to simply “ask and you shall receive”. But in my wildest dreams, I would never have guessed that Sacha Baron Cohen, filmstar of Borat, would contribute to my website www.funnyphotoscontest.com . Not only that, even though we were total strangers having, just met on www.myspace.com, he easily agreed to my requests without any reservation. Can you believe that??

“Come on now,” you’re thinking -- myspace.com where kids, imposters and predators lurk. Surely, Sacha Baron Cohen does not frequent that website. But, as a matter of fact, he does. And it is I, not Baron Cohen, who is the imposter.

It all began on Dec. 12, 2006, my Mother’s 89^th birthday. My sister and I treated Mom to lunch and a movie. Mom wanted to see “Happy Feet”, a movie about dancing penguins. But my sister suggested the new, widely talked about film, “Borat.” Although, it wasn’t really Mom’s kind-of-movie, she was a good sport and a few parts did make her laugh.

Late that evening, when I turned on my computer to work on my website, www.funnyphotoscontest.com, I took a short break to read the comments, on www.myspace.com about Borat. To my complete surprise and sheer delight Sacha Baron Cohen, himself, had only minutes earlier posted the following message.

“Hit or miss, you tell me......

all feed back is welcome here, i dont care if you didnt enjoy it, but tell me why???
Was is good ? what was your favourite bit in the film ????

Do you want to see BRUNO the movie, it's in the pipeline as we type !!!!
i will try and reply to all msg's - promise x Sbc x”

This was just too incredible!!! I was so excited that I just had to respond. After all, how often does one get to chat with a real live movie-star?

Now, I must first tell you about my experience, a few years ago, with myspace.com. I was curious about this website that attracted millions of kids, but allowed only members to view all its features. No problem I thought, I’ll simply pose as my grandson, Jacob. Thus, I registered and poked around a bit, but never returned -- until a few months ago. I heard I could generate traffic to my own website, by mingling with all the folks on myspace.com as many adults now surf the site. Sounded good to me. So I created a profile, placed a few funny photos on the page, invited other members to create a caption for the photos and promised to post the best ones.

But, back to Sacha. Assuming, he might sign out any minute, I quickly wrote him the following message, clicked the send button, and then thought to myself, “For heaven’s sake, what chutzpah (guts) you’ve got”. I couldn’t believe what I had done.

“Saw your film today....verrrrrry funny.

Would love to have you create captions for the photos on my page.

Thanks,

PS - Happy Hannuka with lots of latkes”

Of course, I felt embarrassed to sign my own name. After all, the myspace.com community saw me as Jacob. Thus, I ended my message with a simple thanks. What else could I do? How ironic! In the days that followed many people asked me, “How do you know it’s really him?” But, in all truth I was the one, not Sacha, posing as someone else, my grandson Jacob. And Sacha Baron Cohen, not suspecting any ruse, graciously replied.

“Happy Hanukkah to you too, glad you liked the movie, would be more than happy to make a comment for your captions, but cant until we become friends, so you know what to do !!!”

Although, I didn’t know what to do, I figured it out and Sacha created the caption, “Nose hair takes a turn for the worse.” Wow…this was so thrilling. I could hardly wait until morning to tell everyone I knew. And maybe, just maybe…Sacha Baron Cohen could help promote my website !!!