COMMENTARY FROM MR SWEEPY
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Sunday, December 16, 2018
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Members, over the past couple of days since the removal of the "Quick Entry" button, I received a handful of emails about this change. I want to take some time to explain why this change happened for those who haven't kept up with previous conversation on the subject.
To begin with, the whole of the internet and how it functions at the business level has changed greatly. 15 years ago, the business side of the net was pretty fair to the publishers. I didn't have the issues of getting paid on advertising and receiving quality sweep ads to place on ST through what was called Ad Networks. Times were good for Mr. Sweepy.
In 2011 we hit our peak in terms of revenue, active members and most of all, ST was rated by Google Search as number one in the world for the keyword - "Sweepstakes" out of 100 million pages.
Then Google started to make major wholesale changes on search ranking to how much publishers would be paid. Google was shifting to a model based on mobile phones and not desktop or laptops. Then Google started to make demands on publishers on "how many banner ads we could place" on our sites and to upgrade to HTML5 mobile programming. None of these changes are simple or quick to make.
Even though internet advertising increased close to 25 percent, ST's revenue decreased 85 percent. Yes, 85 percent from Google alone. We also saw a decrease in Ad Network revenue mainly because most of these vendors went out of business because they couldn't get quality sweep ads.
Worse, ST and many other publishers were labeled as "index websites". This is sharing of other links from the net through our website. For us these are the sweeps you see and enter. As a result, our Google Search Ranking dropped big time. New members couldn't find us as easily, and advertisers did see us in search as well.
This brings us today. To answer a couple of questions about the number of members on ST. We have signed up over 340,000 members over 15 years. However of this, over 95 percent gave up this hobby. Most quit after the first day or week. Sorry but I don't give a award or certificate for "quitting". If you wonder why so few members win a lot, they don't quit and seldom miss a day entering sweeps. The top winning ST members enter in over 300 sweeps per day. This is why we have about 400 members who have surpassed over $10,000 in winnings and many over these members over $40,000.
One subject that you can see now in Google search is the massive attacks by Russian and other foreigners scammers and hackers by placing fake URL links with fake contents pages. While sweepstakes are high on the list, everybody on the net is taking a hit except the very big companies who have the big buck to fight back. These bad URL links are seriously hurting ST's rankings in Google. The worst part of this is Google set the rankings to allow Russian hackers to placed a higher ranking than ST's 60,000 quality sweepstakes links. This is how Goggle is seriously hurting ST and helping the hackers and scammers. You can see this in Google Search on Chrome by typing in "Site: https://www.sweepstakestoday.com" but DON'T click on any bad link that you might see starting on page 4 or 5.
For ST, I have tried over the years to give you innovated tools and features on the site. We were the first to come up with My Lucky List, Last Chance Sweepstakes and Quick Entry. All of these feature programs were added when times were good. For Quick Entry this cost ST out of pocket maybe $5,000 per year in clicks and page views. Because of the Google change to "per view" the numbers increase. Last on Quick Entry, we had new members who thought if you clicked the button once you would be entered. This was very rare but I also wanted to address this misunderstanding.
There are other factors that didn't help but I will not discuss these. I will say yes, Sweepstakestoday.com is a business. I will also say that I started the company totally out-of-pocket and some with personal credit. The success of ST is because of all of you who stayed with the site over the many years. You are the ones I credit the success to. I started ST as much out of love for the hobby and having won much. So while ST is a "LLC" list corporation, I consider ST as a family owned business in many ways. You are my family. The staff and team who works on ST feel the same.
So if you want to help Mr. Sweepy more, call your senators and congressman to take away the monopoly Google has gained and getting bigger. The hearing that is coming this next week about Google is about privacy but I gave you a preview about what are more serious issues ahead.
Now you know what I am up against. I haven't given up. I got good people behind the screens helping. For now I am buying time with the GoFundMe.com page until we can get up a subscription page up.
Craig McDaniel, President
Mr. Sweepy
To begin with, the whole of the internet and how it functions at the business level has changed greatly. 15 years ago, the business side of the net was pretty fair to the publishers. I didn't have the issues of getting paid on advertising and receiving quality sweep ads to place on ST through what was called Ad Networks. Times were good for Mr. Sweepy.
In 2011 we hit our peak in terms of revenue, active members and most of all, ST was rated by Google Search as number one in the world for the keyword - "Sweepstakes" out of 100 million pages.
Then Google started to make major wholesale changes on search ranking to how much publishers would be paid. Google was shifting to a model based on mobile phones and not desktop or laptops. Then Google started to make demands on publishers on "how many banner ads we could place" on our sites and to upgrade to HTML5 mobile programming. None of these changes are simple or quick to make.
Even though internet advertising increased close to 25 percent, ST's revenue decreased 85 percent. Yes, 85 percent from Google alone. We also saw a decrease in Ad Network revenue mainly because most of these vendors went out of business because they couldn't get quality sweep ads.
Worse, ST and many other publishers were labeled as "index websites". This is sharing of other links from the net through our website. For us these are the sweeps you see and enter. As a result, our Google Search Ranking dropped big time. New members couldn't find us as easily, and advertisers did see us in search as well.
This brings us today. To answer a couple of questions about the number of members on ST. We have signed up over 340,000 members over 15 years. However of this, over 95 percent gave up this hobby. Most quit after the first day or week. Sorry but I don't give a award or certificate for "quitting". If you wonder why so few members win a lot, they don't quit and seldom miss a day entering sweeps. The top winning ST members enter in over 300 sweeps per day. This is why we have about 400 members who have surpassed over $10,000 in winnings and many over these members over $40,000.
One subject that you can see now in Google search is the massive attacks by Russian and other foreigners scammers and hackers by placing fake URL links with fake contents pages. While sweepstakes are high on the list, everybody on the net is taking a hit except the very big companies who have the big buck to fight back. These bad URL links are seriously hurting ST's rankings in Google. The worst part of this is Google set the rankings to allow Russian hackers to placed a higher ranking than ST's 60,000 quality sweepstakes links. This is how Goggle is seriously hurting ST and helping the hackers and scammers. You can see this in Google Search on Chrome by typing in "Site: https://www.sweepstakestoday.com" but DON'T click on any bad link that you might see starting on page 4 or 5.
For ST, I have tried over the years to give you innovated tools and features on the site. We were the first to come up with My Lucky List, Last Chance Sweepstakes and Quick Entry. All of these feature programs were added when times were good. For Quick Entry this cost ST out of pocket maybe $5,000 per year in clicks and page views. Because of the Google change to "per view" the numbers increase. Last on Quick Entry, we had new members who thought if you clicked the button once you would be entered. This was very rare but I also wanted to address this misunderstanding.
There are other factors that didn't help but I will not discuss these. I will say yes, Sweepstakestoday.com is a business. I will also say that I started the company totally out-of-pocket and some with personal credit. The success of ST is because of all of you who stayed with the site over the many years. You are the ones I credit the success to. I started ST as much out of love for the hobby and having won much. So while ST is a "LLC" list corporation, I consider ST as a family owned business in many ways. You are my family. The staff and team who works on ST feel the same.
So if you want to help Mr. Sweepy more, call your senators and congressman to take away the monopoly Google has gained and getting bigger. The hearing that is coming this next week about Google is about privacy but I gave you a preview about what are more serious issues ahead.
Now you know what I am up against. I haven't given up. I got good people behind the screens helping. For now I am buying time with the GoFundMe.com page until we can get up a subscription page up.
Craig McDaniel, President
Mr. Sweepy
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