The August 31st deadline is getting closer everyone! Although we have more than doubled the number of subscribers to YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, you still have some work ahead of you in the next three weeks to squeeze $120 MILLION dollars out of us! How can you help? It could not be easier to win a contest! That’s right! All you have to do is tell everyone in your family, every friend, neighbor, and coworker how much they will enjoy learning Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! And if they enter JapanesePod101.com’s $10,100 giveaway before the end of August, they could have their membership for the next 6 months for FREE! But time is ticking everyone! Tell everyone now before you lose out on your share of $120 MILLION dollars! Just look at everything you stand to lose!
Our $10,100 Summer Giveaway, that’s what! And what is THAT, you say? Well, first of all, we are giving away many, many, MANY free subscriptions - $10,100 worth of FREE Premium and 101Basic subscriptions to be exact! And entering is a piece of cake!
You can enter in JapanesePod101.com’s $10,100 Giveaway, by doing one or ALL of the following:
1. Follow JapanesePod101.com on Twitter
2. Become a fan of JapanesePod101.com on Facebook
3. Subscribe to JapanesePod101.com’s YouTube channel
4. Sign up on ALL 3 for three chances to win - and remember we have TEN sites. Think BIG! If you sign up at all of them, that’s a total of 30 chances to win!
One click - THAT’S IT! Yes, it really is that easy! And that’s not even the best part! Our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts contain a rapidly growing amount of incredible original content you won’t find anywhere else! Our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages are such wonderful ways to reinforce your Japanese speaking skills, practice speaking Japanese, and meet and communicate with others that share your love of Japanese.
FREE 6-Month Premium Subscriptions for EVERYONE! We believe in these methods of learning Japanese SO much that we are issuing you a challenge! If we reach one million TOTAL subscribers for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube - we’ll give EVERYONE a FREE 6-month Premium subscription!!! Each subscription is worth $120 - and you can take part in the $120 MILLION dollar value for FREE just by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, or subscribing on YouTube.
Can you think of a better time or reason to get your friends and family signed up then right now?! But you better hurry - as with all things good, it must come to an end, and this sweepstakes will run until the end of August.
Subscription Information
Course Information
Technical Information
Feature List
Video Guides
Privacy Statement
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
14 Responses to “News #86 - You’re Going to Have to Work a Little Harder to Prove Us Wrong…but Do It and We’ll Pay You and Your Friends $120 Million!”
Sunday at 6:30 pm
Time is running out to become our friend and earn your share in $120 million dollars!
http://www.japanesepod101.com/120million/
Monday at 3:41 am
oh I love the idea of beginner videos.
Monday at 5:05 am
After reading your post, As I do not believe in hype, I checked some numbers.
On Japanesepod on the 9th you had 2123 followers up 70 from 2 days before. So at the height of your great marketing campaign, you got 35 new followers per day. At this rate to get a million followers you would need continue like this for more than 78 yeas!
On the Chinese site you had 181 followers up 15 from 4 days before. To get a million it would take 685 years.
On Englishclass in 7 days you increased users by 3 reaching 37, this is less than a user a day. So we are talking about 6340 years.
Even assuming the best case (which seems 50 new fans per day on Facebook) for all 30 “chances”, it would take many years to achieve the goal.
Sweepstakes? No skill required for winning? Asking people to sign up their mum? I think you should have left this stuff to reader’s digest… It does not fir the image of a serious company!
Monday at 5:11 am
Sorry for sounding a dissonant chord, but twitter embodies the opposite of learning, according to well respected sources. Why associate yourself with it? Learning is not about the latest fad (what next? One word blogs? Every post a letter of the alphabet?). How about adding content to the site. Who would pay 120 dollars to learn a couple of words out of context from a video?
Monday at 6:24 am
Giovanni, the goal of 1 Million is unrealistic but that#s probably the reason they picked that number
Anyway because of your comment I checked the numbers myself and I just post them for those who want an overview:
Japanesepod -> 6810
Twitter 1824
Facebook 1999
youtube 2987
Frenchpod -> 653
Twitter 92
Facebook 80
youtube 481
Koreanclass -> 5869
Twitter 641
Facebook 456
youtube 4772
Germanpod -> 560
Twitter 95
Facebook 64
youtube 401
Arabicpod -> 422
Twitter 50
Facebook 49
youtube 323
Englishpod -> 641
Twitter 154
Facebook 34
youtube 453
Russianpod -> 476
Twitter 50
Facebook 57
youtube 369
EnglishClass -> 278
Twitter 37
Facebook 33
youtube 208
Spanishpod -> 619
Twitter 92
Facebook 73
youtube 454
Chineseclass -> 915
Twitter 182
Facebook 150
youtube 583
Italianpod -> 656
Twitter 81
Facebook 146
youtube 429
Total: 17,899
Monday at 7:41 am
Of course it was an unrealistic target. The goal is always to increase customers. Especially now with all the new sites (my guess is, though it is early days, based on the number of comments, often zero, and very low following, is that they are not doing nearly as well as Japanesepod). The common view is that there is nothing to lose with an internet sweepstake (or lottery in the UK). My point would be that this low-level strategy can backfire. It seems to me that the “wide and shallow” metaphor applies here.
Surely not achieving the stated target by a very large margin, will look like a failure, even if more money is made. A lot of fudging will have to happen to present this as a success.
What about back to basics? These day if you connect to Japanesepod you find pages of lotteries, popup, notionistic content, and tons of self-congratulatory talk. The rule seems to be more noise, less original updated rich content.
Monday at 8:40 am
I am not disagreeing. Quality should speak for itself. I don’t like such an advertising campaigns.
Monday at 9:57 am
If you look at our Twitter page, you’ll see that we update it daily with new content
Before it was wasei-eigo phrases and bikkuri adverbs, and now it’s our Everyday Kanji project.
Tuesday at 12:29 pm
This promotion is strong evidence that Peter’s last name must be the result of some terrible mixup at the hospital where he was born. He is clearly a Barnum.
http://www.newsinfilm.com/?p=19634
Tuesday at 8:25 pm
So, I’m curious. I have been a subscriber to all of these pages excluding Facebook for a long time (and I’m a fan of that page now too).
How would we receive any of the prizes via these mediums? Because it’s not as if my Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts are linked to my JP101.com account!
Wednesday at 7:22 am
Without having to check all the time you can query the API of TwitterCounter, by
pasting the following URL in the address bar:
http://twittercounter.com/api/?username=japanesepod101&output=xml&results=100
You can query englishclass101, and so on by changing the username.
You get a record of daily followers…
1097
1103
1120
1290
1358
1402
1437
1462
1500
1512
1623
1711
1741
1761
That you can easily process (though I have to use ASCII here for this post not really pretty!)
y_axis
1761.0 ##
| #
|
| #
|
|
| #
| #
| # #
| #
| #
|
| #
|
|
|
|
# # #|
## # # # ## |
# |
# |
# # | x_axis
-19.0 # | 11.0
## 868.0
If you check what you find is that the campaign had no effect so far on any other language sites (Chinese, Italian, English,…), but it did boost slightly Japanesepod!
The growths are negligible in the twitter world but it is still interesting for Marketing in people…
With the first announcement, 26/07/09, you got 170 extra followers in a day.
The following days the number of additional users declined every day (68 44 35 25 38 12)
Then after the second announcement, 2/08/09, you peaked again with extra 111, followed by a declining trend
( 88 30 20).
It seems that the announcement are having smaller effects as time goes by….
Wednesday at 7:24 am
Alas, the graph came out really squeezed! You get the idea…
Wednesday at 12:02 pm
Thanks for all the feedback.
Remember the contest is for $10,100 worth of FREE subscriptions for subscribers of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. This is definite, and the drawing will be at the end of this month.
The $120 million offer was an add on; something to shoot for.
And these days you never know what can happen. 
Bob1-san, that is too funny. Slap at “e” after the P and T, and…
Wednesday at 12:06 pm
Salivia Baker-san, wow. Thanks for doing the Math!
Giovanni-san, thanks for the analysis.
Duality-san, we’ll be posting the winners on the blog and directly contacting the winners through PM services on each site.
Leave a Reply