Contest description and rules.

Top 10 posters (February 2010):
1. Steve-Hostirian (-)
2. arbet (-)
3. Taylor-e2 (new)
4. SwarmHost (new)
5. vWiz (new)
6. sequencehosting (new)
7. Engage-Engine (new)
8. energizedit (new)
9. romes (new)
10. Soniya (new)

(N) previous month's position
(-) same position as last month
(new) new player


February 2010 produced some high quality contributions from both new and established members. Those that I wanted to highlight are SwarmHost (who finished the month ranked 4th), as well as we had some great posting from csn-uk. nightshadpro joined HostingDiscussion.com this month, and while this member did not finish the month in Top 10, his activity is worth mentioning.

Engage-Engine, however, takes the ultimate prize this month, as I found his posting profound and sometimes edgy, but always on topic with plentiful of ideas. Engage-Engine is a great conversationalist/debater and such is seen throughout his activity here at HD. For those reasons and member's contributions during the month, EE is the most valuable member of the month!

Honorable mention:
Our honorable mention this month goes to Steve from Hostirian.com. We are accustomed to seeing Steve finish the month in first place, but its not what makes him one of the strong contestants almost every month - it is his nature to help, assist and share insightful thoughts and ideas in a very warm style that makes him stand out.


Congrats to all Top 10 members who made it this month! The winners will be contacted in private.



MVM General Stats
Total contest months: 15
Wins: handsonhosting (promoted to staff position) (2: Dec 08, Jan 09), Lesli (1: Feb 09), Steve-Hostirian (7: Mar 09, Apr 09, May 09, Jun 09, Sep 09, Oct 09, Jan 10), Zachary McClung (1: Jul 09), csn-uk (3: Aug 09, Nov 09, Jan 10), brybert (1: Dec 09), ITEHosting (1: Jan 10), Engage-Engine (1: Feb 10)
Honorable mentions: Lesli (1: Jan 09), siforek (1: Mar 09), csn-uk (1: Apr 09), Zachary McClung (2: May 09, Aug 09), lweeks (1: Jun 09), Steve-Hostirian (2: Jul 09, Feb 10), romes (1: Jul 09), RightServers (1: Oct 09), CoreXchange (1: Oct 09), charlier (1: Oct 09), e-Sensibility (1: Nov 09), Digitallinx (1: Dec 09)

Congratulations Everyone.
Keep up the good work

Congrats to Engage-Engine. Keep up the great discussions.
And thanks for the Honorable Mention, Artashes.

Grats to Engage-Engine and Steve, always nice to see a new face take the biscuit and give us a run for our money

Your list is starting to get a tad long now mind Artashes

Many thanks for the award! I'd like to thank the Academy, my mom, the guys on the film crew, the groupies in the tour bus, etc, etc.

Usually when a forum mod sends me a private email, it's to inform me I've been banned, so imagine my surprise at receiving your kind note. A real gotcha moment...

Well, here's my post game analysis.

My purpose in coming to the forum was to learn how to partner with hosts, and to help hosts use email to build their businesses.

I regret to report I've entirely failed in reaching either goal. Not a single host has taken me up on my offer, and only a few have shown an interest in the main thread I posted in on this forum.

Ideas For Building A Hosting Business

Given the facts from the field, I decided to stop posting until I have something more appealing to offer. If someone reading this sees a better solution, happy to hear your input.

In the meantime, I've decided to go in to competition with you. Not standard Cpanel type hosting, but my own Wordpress like sitebuilder. Now I have at least one host I know how to partner with!

Thanks again for the award, it stands proudly on my trophy wall, right next to my collection of "you've been banned" notices.

Best of luck to everybody!

Phil

Phil, do you think it is perhaps because hosting companies prefer to work on their own content for the newsletter as they go along, or for any other reason?

Hi Artashes,

It's a good question, thanks for helping me explore it. Hmm...

Well, here's what I know, perhaps you can add to it.

In the process of my partnership project I personally visited a couple hundred hosting sales sites, and found little evidence of list building efforts.

I got the URLs from the signatures in another hosting forum. My theory was that most of these hosts were smaller hosts still trying to build their business, or they wouldn't have the time to be in forums.

Putting this information together, my reasoning was that these hosts needed additional marketing, and weren't yet making good use of email.

Why weren't they using their sales sites to build prospect lists?

Perhaps because they don't really get email. Maybe because they're good techs, but not good writers. Maybe because the whole thing just seemed like a lot of work. So I set out to try to solve these problems.

I completely agree that original quality content directly from the host is the ideal plan. That said, guest author content is better than no mailing at all, which seems to be the reality in most cases.

Bottom line for me, looking for hosting partners seemed like not the best time investment. Too much work, too little benefit.

But I did at least get an award out of it. If I decide to revive the project I can, thanks you, say stuff like...

"Award winning poster Engage brings you another amazing offer!"

congrats to all

Congrats. Looking forward to seeing more. Hopefully you stick around Phil and continue on that thread, it's an interesting idea, I just didn't have much personally to contribute to it