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It’s time for a blog contest to beat all others. I’m talking about on my blog only. Sorry, can’t compete with the big guys yet (maybe someday), but none the less, you can win some very cool gadgets courtesy of Market Leverage, Vat19.com and myself.

So what’s the big prize stash consist of?

How about a Nintendo DS Lite! I won one in the Webmaster Talk contest, but I’m not really into gaming so I thought I’d give it away. How about the one pictured below along with 2 games valued at $155!

For the second prize, Market Leverage has graciously sponsored a Flip Mino camera which is the top of the line Flip camera valued at $179. If you haven’t see the Flip camera or don’t have one, they are very cool and make shooting video and uploading it to YouTube about as easy as it gets. I’ll be shooting more video soon, but you can check out my first YouTube video done with the Flip and see how good the sound and picture quality is. Thanks goes out to Market Leverage for sponsoring such a great prize and if you haven’t joined ML you should check out some of their affiliate offers for some great payouts.

And the last, but not least, prizes come courtesy of Vat19.com, the “purveyors of curiously awesome products.” And let me tell you, they do have some awesome products such as the AirZooka that shoots a blast of air 40 feet, invisible book shelves that make your books look like they’re stuck to your wall, a USB lava lamp for all you 60′s left overs and a bunch of other cool stuff.

Vat19 is sponsoring a USB missile launcher (valued at $34.95) you can control from your computer and engage in cubicle warfare with your co-workers and the soon to be famous, Banana Bunker($4.95 value) that protects your banana from getting squashed. You can now carry your banana anywhere without fear of bruises. Check out the prizes they are sending over below and go visit the links above for videos on each product. The one on the USB missile launcher is pretty funny.

Now the rules of the blog contest:

You know I love simple contests and easy ways to win, but we are talking about over $350 worth of prizes here, so you will have to do more than just leave a comment on this post, you will have to write a short post about the contest, link to this post and link directly (not through the links above) to Market Leverage and Vat19.com and then leave a comment here that you’ve done so. Your comment here will be your official entry, not your trackback, so don’t forget to comment. The post doesn’t have to be any specific length, it just has to mention and link to this contest and the 2 other sponsors and that’s it. Remember, I like simple.

The contest starts today and runs through June 25th when I will pick the single winner of more than $350 in prizes and announce the winner around noon, just in time for you to be so excited you won’t be able to eat your lunch.

Enter now and try your luck on winning some great prizes.

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I fired off a pretty direct email around 11:00 am this morning wanting to know what was up with my iPod Touch, the only prize not so far received from the Webmaster Talk contest that ended on May 13th. It had been 10 days since I last heard from Clickbooth, the company who sponsored the prize. Not more than 2 minutes later, the lady that delivers our mail stopped at our mailbox and when I went to check the mail, there it was. Funny how that happens sometimes. All the prizes in the contest have now been received and accounted for and a big thanks goes out to all the sponsors that I will mention in an upcoming post.

Now, I’ve never even seen an iPod Touch until yesterday evening when I told a friend about the contest winnings and he let me check out his iPod Touch. All I can say is this thing is very cool and I hope to get to play with it a bit more this evening. It’s been a fairly busy day and all I had the chance to do was turn it on and have it tell me to plug it into my computer, which unfortunately I didn’t have time to do.

I’m not normally a techie sort of person and I usually get just what I need as far a gadgets go, but this contest has been great because it’s made me check into things quite a bit more than I normally would. I’ve been messing around with the Nintendo DS Lite, which I will be giving away in an upcoming contest, checking out the Flip camera, reading up on the iPod and of course going through the hassle of trying to get the Macbook Air working and then setting it up and playing around with that.

Who knows, all this cool gadgetry may inspire me to set up another Build A Niche Store based on tech stuff and fun electronic toys. There’s an advantage and opportunity in every learning experience.

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Finally, the MacBook Air I won in the Webmaster Talk forum contest is at home and working. I had previously reported when the Mac Air first showed up it was dead on arrival, but thankfully I was able to get in touch with AppleCare Support and the tech I talked with was able to locate an authorized service center about 15 minute from our house. The computer had to eventually be shipped back to Apple to replace the hard drive, but all is well now.

I just got through setting it up, creating a user, hooking up to our home network and my initial reaction is that it is awesome! The design is very cool and yes, it is thin enough to put in a manila envelope. The computer feels very sturdy and the display is bright and even though I don’t like glossy screens, this one doesn’t seem to produce as much glare as I though it would.

However, since I’ve been a Windows person from day one and have never really used a laptop without a mouse for any length of time, much less a Mac laptop, it is a little awkward trying to find everything. For me nothing on the interface is familiar and all the usual tools and apps I would be using on my Windows machine are obviously not there. I did use a Mac briefly back at school while working on my graphic design degree and also used a Mac for 6 months back 10 years ago when I was a graphic artist for BellSouth, but I remember about zero from those experiences, so this is all pretty much new territory.

After using the MacBook Air for 30 minutes or so it did get a little easier to find my way around so even though it will take a while to get used to, it shouldn’t take too long. One thing I don’t like so far is the HUGE icon bar at the bottom of the display. It takes up way too much screen real estate. I’m sure there’s a way to hide it, but I haven’t figured that one out yet.

Overall though, I’m very pleased and hey, you can’t beat the price, completely free.

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Yahoo! The Fip Camera won at the Webmaster Talk contest was delivered by FedEx today and unlike the MacBook Air it actually worked and is very cool. The Flip is very easy to use even for a video noob such as myself. I know nothing about posting videos on YouTube and was able to shoot a video and upload it in only about an hour or so (It took several takes without saying something dorky before I got it right). The only prize I’m waiting for now from the contest winnings is the iPod Touch. Of course I’m also waiting for my Macbook Air to get back from Apple.

My intention with the Flip is to do some video blogging on both this blog and our Healthy Diet Podcast blog. I’ve never really dome a video before so the one below is my first attempt and shows a little different side of me than what I normally talk about here on Affiliate Confession. Affiliate marketing has nothing to do with playing the drums, but this is just an experiment and next time I’ll do something related to making money online. For now, you can just tap your feet along with the video.

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Congratulations goes out to Tim at Yimto.com for winning the $50 Market Leverage Rewards Card and the XL Nike Golf shirt in the latest blog contest I had going. You are going to love the shirt because it is extremely comfortable and looks nice as well, and I’m sure you’ll have fun spending the $50.

I just sent Tim an email congratulating him on the win and all he has to do now is send me his mailing address and I’ll ship out the Nike Golf shirt and Market Leverage will send out the $50 rewards card.

If you haven’t taken a look at the offers Market Leverage has or experienced their personal service you are missing out on one of the top CPA affiliate networks in business today. I’ll be running one of their health related offers on our healthy diet web site as soon as I get a couple of pages of content written for it. The offer is perfect for that site and because the site is 4 years old and has all of its pages indexed, the offer and new content I’ll be putting up should be indexed and start getting traffic in just a few days. And the offer has a $30 payout! You don’t find a lot of affiliate products that pay quite that well, so head over to Market Leverage and find out what they can do for your affiliate business.

And of course, congratulations again to Tim on the big win.

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