Secret Cfa //top\\ -

“For the last time, no, I won’t calculate your Sharpe ratio for free.”

Why the secrecy? Because this charter isn’t just a title to me. It’s a silent oath. I don’t flaunt it. I use it to protect portfolios, spot fraud, and serve clients who will never know I hold one of the toughest designations in finance. secret cfa

But today, I’m letting you in. Now you know. The secret CFA is me. The Secret CFA “For the last time, no, I won’t calculate

“Why hide it?” I asked.

secret cfa
Kyo - January 9, 2015

Hi Josh,

First off, thank you for writing these posts on the KingSumo Giveaway plugin. I’m running my first giveaway using the plugin and they’ve been super helpful.

You said that people will try to submit fraudulent emails and I’m pretty sure this is happening to me. There are a few people in my giveaway who already have WAY too many entries (so many in such a short amount of time, there’s no way all the entries that they earned are legitimate).

What do you recommend doing?

Does the plugin have some way to scrub for these false entries?

Thank you,
Kyo

    secret cfa
    Josh - January 9, 2015

    Hey Kyo!

    Couple of suggestions… When you do the drawing, you can choose to delete the selected “winner.” So if someone is trying to rig the game, you can disqualify them.

    I ended up doing some manual cleanup on my list before I imported it to MailChimp. I just looked for patterns of fake emails–luckily the cheaters weren’t too bright, so it was easy to eliminate a ton of fake addresses. It’s worth looking at your list afterward to see if you can do the same.

    Good luck!

      secret cfa
      Nick Miller - January 16, 2016

      What kind of patterns do you look for? Anything new?

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        Josh Earl - January 17, 2016

        Hey Nick, good question… Since I first wrote this, the Giveaways developers have added an option to put a Capcha on your contest to block most spam entries. Other than that, it’s pretty tough to prevent fake entries… The guy who submitted 100K entries did it with “valid” variations of a gmail address, where he put various combinations of periods between the letters: , , etc.
        I was able to use Sublime Text (heh) to find/replace all the extra periods, then just select/delete the 100K duplicate addresses. It was a pain.

        —

        Josh Earl
        *Email Copywriter*

        Website: http://joshuaearl.com
        Email:
        Skype: josh_earl
        LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshuajearl

          secret cfa
          TheUrbanTwist.com - March 20, 2016

          +1,000 for this!

          I’ve been looking high and low for a way to disqualify these kinds of bogus entries. I submitted a suggestion to King Sumo last week and hope they do something about this.

          I don’t mind these bogus entries from entering because we can’t stop them but what I do mind is that when it comes time to pick winner and we see it’s a bogus entry, we should be able to delete their entry completely from the giveaway when we select the “remove” option.

          That’s all I’m asking for.

          I removed a few entries and redrew only to get them again because they rigged the giveaway that well, lol.

          I just want the option to remove them completely to keep them from winning and saving me some time.

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Gen - August 20, 2015

Well, you said to let you know if we have questions, I have one on prize selection.

So I design & develop WordPress sites for small businesses. My target clients are small businesses who either have a website causing them pain or no website. My first thought was offer a free theme or plugin, but I think that would get far too many entries for people who would never be clients, and probably not be of interest to clients who wouldn’t know what to do with a theme.

Any other ideas for giveaways when most of your ideal clients don’t really want ANOTHER tool?

Thanks,
Gen

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    Josh Earl - August 26, 2015

    Hey Gen, this is a great question… Small business owners are 1.) short on time and 2.) short on cash.

    What can you offer that instantly helps them with one of those problems, while also having some tie-in to building websites? One thing that jumps to mind is “free website hosting for life.”

    Also, what are some of the most common problems your clients have specifically with their sites? Can you give away some kind of done-for-you tool or service (from a well-known vendor) that addresses one of those pain points?

      secret cfa
      Gen - September 7, 2015

      Thanks Josh,

      Your point on “done for you” or “no work needed” is a really good one. I think instead of just offering a plugin license, it should be install & setup for something like OptinMonster (very well known tool to grow email lists).

      Or I could go really crazy and give away a whole WP website with #1 page builder out there Visual Composer with year of hosting (I’d need to put some rather specific limits on what they get).

        secret cfa
        Josh Earl - September 8, 2015

        Great! Glad that was helpful. 🙂

        One thing to keep in mind is that it’s less about the price tag of the giveaway item than how badly they want it.

        Good luck!

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Email Marketing In-Depth with Josh Earl - October 27, 2015

[…] How to Create Your Own Viral Giveaway with KingSumo […]

secret cfa
Devesh Tiwari - December 5, 2015

Can we add additional fields beside email address? I want to add some more extra field. how is it possible?

secret cfa
Nick Miller - January 16, 2016

Hey Josh,

Does Giveaways not have a way of tracking fraudulent signups?

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Social Share - July 7, 2017

Just bought one using your affiliate code.

Comments are closed