David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

Enternal thanks to Chris who's whisking me (and 'tother half I hope ;-) ) to Orlando Florida! Sunshine has been running a competition for a while which closed today. I didn't win; Tania and her Fuerteventura holiday site won. Congrats to her.

I've spent the morning doing some work. I then logged onto A4U to find an message from Chris. I messaged him and he asked if I'd heard the news. "What news?" I said. He send me a link to http://www.sunshine.co.uk/affiliates/blog/2008-07-11/sunshinecouk-fam-trip-winners/

As a reward for hard work and a fair bit of effort, Chris is sending me on my trip to sunny Orlando!
 
I certainly didn't expect that. In fact, because I made 3 blog posts, I thought I had dashed my chance at winning, citing over-promotion! Chris assured me that there can never be too much promotion and so Sunshine is rewarding me, both for the time and effort I put into my entry and general promotion of Sunshine's competition.

Woo Hoo!

I can't wait! My computer's been playing up so I had to buy new components yesterday which probably wasn't good timing financially on my part but the opportunity to take first hand photos and videos outweighs that! The advantage of having fully researched an area is that I know exactly what attractions will cost and how to save money in Orlando :-) including pre-booking tickets, bus tickets and perhaps some show tickets. That way we need to take less money with us and we need to spend less whilst we're there. That's the plan anyway what with a pesky wedding coming up :-)

I also maintained throughout the competition that we would be more than happy to sport a Sunshine baseball cap so if this comes to fruition (my prize is separate to the main competition so I may not get that perk :-( ), expect a lot of cheesy photos with shameless plugs. I'm now thinking of getting some t-shirts advertising both Sunshine and my website. I'm off to Asda tonight for some Smart Price t-shirts and inkjet transfer paper!

The competition itself demonstrates Sunshine's power to get affiliates promoting their brand what with around 30 entries I reckon. That's at least 30 websites now promoting Sunshine that perhaps were not before. They certainly got more exposure on affiliate blogs as well so thumbs up to them there.

I hope to see more high brow competitions like this not only from Sunshine but from other merchants too.

So, if you are wanting to know what won me the holiday, take a peek at Orlando Florida Holiday (built from scratch), my competition entry, my step-by-step guide to using Price Tapestry to promote Sunshine and an explanation of what my Orlando site has to offer and how you could make a site similar to it.

Whilst the competition is now closed, keep in mind that the tutorials are still relevant and can still be applied. Why not build a travel site ready for the next competition? You know it won't be too long....