Find $200 On This Site and It's Yours!

Part of being a good entrepreneur is thinking up cost-effective ways to promote your business. Here's a simple one that took me half an hour to implement. If you like my idea, think about something you can do that can raise the awareness of your business without costing an arm and a leg. Some people call it guerrila marketing, viral marketing, or word of mouth marketing -- whatever it is, it works!

Sorry. You are too late. Somebody found the money.

I hid $200 somewhere on my site today (November 18, 2006) , and if you are the first person to find it I will send you the $200.

I'll admit it. This is a simple attempt to promote this site, a site for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Once the $200 has been found, I will put a note at the bottom of this page, letting you know where it was and who found it. Then, before too long, I'll probably hide another $200 and keep doing this every so often for a while.

When and if you find the $200, you'll know you've found it, and there will be instructions on how to collect the money.

The money could be just about anywhere within my Gaebler.com site. There are hundreds of articles for entrepreneurs on this site and a very extensive directory of franchise opportunities. It could be anywhere!

It might be some text in the middle of an article that says "You found the $200!"

It might be in an image on the site - some text on an image that says "Ouyay oundfay ethay otway undredhay ollarsday".

In case you didn't know, that's pig latin for "You found the two hundred dollars."

You may have to mouse over something to see the message. I'm not saying that you have to mouse over something to see the message about the $200 - I'm just saying that that might be one of the ways I've hidden the money.or it might not be.

Even though my site is not very big, there are millions of places and ways I can hide the money.

So what are you waiting for? See if you can be the first person to find the $200. Remember, you have to be first. Second place or later - you get nothing.

11/21/06 - Four people emailed me today with essentially the same question. Is the hidden $200 visibile to the eye? No. Not necessarily. It could be in an audio file. It could be white text on a white background. It could be in an image alt tag. It could be in a comment with an HTML file. So, the answer is that the hidden money might be visible but it doesn't have to be visible.

LATEST UPDATE: Nope. Nobody has found it yet. Keep looking! Game over! Congrats to Jon Klest who earned $200 in free money just in time for his holiday shopping. He found the money in a .js file that could only be found on one page in the site:

http://www.gaebler.com/incorporating.htm

For those who don't know, a .js file is a file that contains JavaScript. When Jon opened up my pulldown.js file, here's what he found.

// JavaScript Document

// I
// am
// impressed.
// You
// f o u n d
// my
// t w o h u n d r e d b u c k s
// Call
// me
// on
// my
// c e l l
// p h o n e
// at
// [DELETED]
// and
// I
// will
// make
// arrangements
// to
// pay
// you.
// You
// have
// to
// mention
// this
// c o d e:
// [DELETED].

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Nice work, Jon! Your free money is on the way.

As for this promotion, it was a moderate success. Traffic increased 10%. A number of people sent me emails saying they liked the site and wouldn't have discovered it except for having read about the promotion in a few blogs. A few people emailed me and said it was one of the more clever marketing ideas they'd seen in a while. All good.

I think the main lesson learned is that if you think up a good marketing idea for site promotion, plan it out to the end. I implemented the concept and then thought -- hmmm, how do I promote this?

Stay tuned. I'll likely be giving away another free $200 soon. I'll make it a little easier next time. My daughter says I have to do the next one so that anybody can find it, even a kid.

LINK TO ME PLEASE: Have a website or blog? Please link to this page. Thanks!

<b><a href="http://www.gaebler.com/Money-Hidden-on-Website.htm" title="Money Hidden on Site">Find $200 at Gaebler.com</a></b><br> There's $200 hidden on the Gaebler.com site. Be the first to find it and it is all yours! <br>

WHERE I GOT THIS IDEA: This idea came to me while attending PubCon, a great conference for anyone who is interested in promoting anything via the Web. Special thanks to Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin, and Lawrence Coburn -- three excellent presenters at the Viral and Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) Marketing Management session. Listening to them really got the brain going, and the end result is this little linkbait experiment. Thanks guys!

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Money Is Hidden On This Website

Find $200 On This Site and It's Yours!