We'll be releasing more video in the coming weeks on our YouTube channel (don't forget to subscribe!). Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Choosing 5 winners from the many entries was difficult, but we did so based on the quality of the entry and the persuasiveness of the pitch, among other factors. Some of you told about your business in detail and others tried to swing a deal in your quote request. After much deliberation, I’m very pleased to announce that we’ve selected our 5 winners.

Before I reveal who the winners are, however, I’d like to thank our sponsors, without whom the contest would not have been possible. Please take a moment to visit the sponsors’ websites and check out their products and services.

Media Temple

(mt) Media Temple, Inc. is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, the company has provided businesses around the world with reliable, professional-class services to host websites, email, business applications, and other rich Internet content.

The team is comprised of 150+ incredibly smart and friendly employees who help create an award-winning culture. (mt) is an always-on company (24/7/365) with a U.S. based support department serving customers in over 60+ countries. The company offers support anytime by phone, email and also Twitter.

(mt) Media Temple’s infrastructure serves 85,000+ customers and more than 600,000 domains in top-tier datacenters on the east and west coasts of the United States. English is the company’s primary language, but the employees also occasionally speak Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Korean and Armenian.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is an easy-to-use online invoicing service that saves you time, gets you paid faster and makes you look Fortune 500 professional. From estimates and expenses to time tracking and invoicing, FreshBooks makes everything quick and simple — letting you focus on your work, not your paperwork. Customize the service with your own logo and colors, send invoices by email or ground mail, accept payments with PayPal, Authorize.net and more.

ColinCopy.com

Colin Chung has helped business owners and entrepreneurs create strategic marketing with profitable results in over 42 industries across the US, Canada and around the world. As a copywriter, he has worked on projects involving many of the top names including Dan Kennedy, Brian Tracy and T. Harv Eker. He is also a business coach, speaker and co-author of the upcoming book, "SELL!".

Pepper Virtual Assistants

Pepper Virtual Assistant Services is a team of professionals from the Philippines handpicked and chosen for their extensive background in project management, administrative support, customer support, online marketing support, web design and development.

The name Pepper was inspired by the extraordinary personal assistant of an Iron superhero. Pepper Virtual Assistants were screened with her image in mind. The idea is to provide you with an exemplary assistant who will not only perform simple tasks but who will also be someone you can trust with bigger responsibilities. Pepper Virtual Assistants will not only work for you, they will also understand your business and look after its interests.

Pepper Virtual Assisstant Services is backed by Aspac Advertising, a leading independent advertising agency based in Asia with an operational hub in Manila. It has made its mark by working with global brands such as Nokia, Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Kodak, Puma, Panasonic, and so many other big brands.

This ensures you that your very own Pepper virtual assistant will be backed up by a group of experts who have proven their professionalism and ingenious creativity for more than 30 years.

Winning Entrants

And now finally I can announce our winning entries. All of our winners have been contacted and while a few have yet to get back to us, some of them have been gracious enough to share their photos and their reactions to being selected.

Grand Prize Winner

Our Grand Prize Winner is Robert Jenis, a 15-year old entrepreneur who has produced, marketed, and sold his own product, the FanBand, in large quantities, all without the help of a website. Robert’s entry was extremely specific and showed remarkable clarity and business acumen, his age notwithstanding. We wanted to be part of Robert's already amazing story and we are very excited to award Robert with the Grand Prize package, which includes the following prizes, worth a total of $11,999:

• A free website valued up to $10,000
• Free Facebook and Twitter page setup
• Free hosting for a year from Media Temple
• Free online invoicing services for a year from Freshbooks
• A free copy writing certificate from ColinCopy.com
• 10 hours of free virtual assistant services from Pepper Virtual Assistants

1st Prize Winner

The winner of the first prize is Bennett Albertson from Rocky Mountain Underground, a custom ski manufacturer based in Denver, Colorado. Bennett and his friends have nurtured their garage-based custom ski venture into a viable growing business. The First Prize package includes the following prizes for a total value of $4,529.70:

• 30% off a website valued up to $10,000
• Free Facebook and Twitter page setup
• Free online invoicing services for six months from Freshbooks
• A free copy writing certificate from ColinCopy.com
• A $100 coupon from Pepper Virtual Assistants

2nd Prize Winner

The winner of the second prize is Evan Thomas, a Canadian student who wants to help his fellow students save money by connecting with local businesses. The Second Prize package includes the following prizes for a total value of $2,439.85:

• 15% off a website valued up to $10,000
• Free Twitter page setup
• Free online invoicing services for three months from Freshbooks
• A free copy writing certificate from ColinCopy.com
• A $100 coupon from Pepper Virtual Assistants

3rd Prize Winner

Jeff Tysco from My IT Guy wins our third prize. Jeff provides a broad range of IT services to businesses and wants a redesign to better showcase his abilities. The Third Prize package includes the following prizes for a total value of $1,550:

• 10% off a website valued up to $10,000
• A free copy writing certificate from ColinCopy.com
• A $50 coupon from Pepper Virtual Assistants

4th Prize Winner

Mahmood Choudhury, a 29 year old IT engineer by day and creative thinker by night, is the winner of our fourth prize. Mahmood wants to help young people connect with mentors and sponsors through his website, Sponsor My Talent. Here’s what Mahmood had to say about being selected as a winner:

“When I came across this competition - I decided to enter on a whim not really expecting to win anything. However, when I wrote why I should be chosen as a winner - my creative forces started flowing through my fingers and it took over. I meant every word of what I wrote because I see the bigger picture and have a greater vision to help others with their talent - I just needed a way to express that vision (a website).”

“On the weekend, I looked through my inbox and saw a message from Virtuosi Media. I anticipated because I thought it would be a ‘thanks for entering our competition, but unfortunately you haven't been selected on this occasion...’”

“To find out that I won made me smile all over. I was so happy and excited that now my vision can be created by professionals in the way I want. I can't wait to see what the guys at Virtuosi Media come up with !!!!”

The Fourth Prize package includes the following prizes for a total value of $1,550:

• 10% off a website valued up to $10,000
• A free copy writing certificate from ColinCopy.com
• A $50 coupon from Pepper Virtual Assistants

Thank You

Congratulations to all of our winners. I’d also like to thank all of our contestants for participating. We will be contacting all of our contestants over the next few weeks regarding their requests for proposal. With this contest now in the books, keep checking back for future promotions that can help your business make a difference online.

While we still plan to implement a comment module for our CMS, we decided that we couldn't go without comments any longer. We wanted to give our users a voice and start building a genuine community. That's why, as of today, all of our articles, tutorials, and download pages will now feature comments using Disqus.

Why We Chose Disqus

We've had our eye on Disqus for a while now. A few of our client sites are outfitted with Disqus and when we built our business contest page, we decided to try it out as well. We liked it a lot.

There are some features that makes Disqus particularly appealing: login through multiple providers (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, OpenID), easy moderation, and quick installation time. It didn't take more than a half hour to integrate the comment into our site.

So What Now?

As I mentioned above, we really wanted to begin building our community. We wanted to hear your input, answer your questions, and allow you to interact with other users from all over the world. We wanted to give our guest authors an opportunity to see feedback on their awesome articles. Most of all, we just wanted to provide a great environment for business owners, programmers, and designers to come together around their passions.

Eventually we'll migrate to our own comment system, but until then, we'll be using Disqus. With that announcement, we can't wait to hear what you have to say!

Ultimate Business Contest: Win A Free Website - $21,000+ In Prizes

Update: The contest is now closed. Special thanks to all of our contestants and sponsors. We'll announce the winning entries on our blog on Tuesday, May 31.

We’re having a contest and if you’re a small business owner, you have a chance to win big! We’re giving away over $21,000 $22,000 in prizes, with the Grand Prize package featuring a free business website valued up to $10,000 and other prizes from our sponsors, all designed to boost your business’ success online.

Interested in increasing your bottom line, improving the image and visibility of your business, and doing it all for free? Read on!

The Prizes

We really have some great prizes to give away to five lucky businesses. Use the tabs below to view our prize packages.

How To Enter

So how do you enter the contest? It’s easy and free and it only takes 3 simple steps to enter to win. (You must be a business owner or be entering on behalf of a business to be eligible to win. Sorry, no personal or non-profit websites this time around.)

1. Spread The Word - Become our fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Share this contest page with your friends on social media sites, through email, through a YouTube video (as a reply to our video above), on a blog or forums or other websites across the internet.
2. Request A Quote - We need to know about your business and what kind of website you need. Fill out the Request A Quote form with as many details as you can.
3. Make Your Case - In the comment section below, let us know why we should select your business as the Grand Prize Winner of over $11,000 in prizes.

Our Sponsors

A special thank you to all of our contest sponsors who have graciously provided their products and services as prizes. Be sure to visit their websites and see what they have to offer.

Media Temple

(mt) Media Temple, Inc. is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, the company has provided businesses around the world with reliable, professional-class services to host websites, email, business applications, and other rich Internet content.

The team is comprised of 150+ incredibly smart and friendly employees who help create an award-winning culture. (mt) is an always-on company (24/7/365) with a U.S. based support department serving customers in over 60+ countries. The company offers support anytime by phone, email and also Twitter.

(mt) Media Temple’s infrastructure serves 85,000+ customers and more than 600,000 domains in top-tier datacenters on the east and west coasts of the United States. English is the company’s primary language, but the employees also occasionally speak Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Korean and Armenian.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is an easy-to-use online invoicing service that saves you time, gets you paid faster and makes you look Fortune 500 professional. From estimates and expenses to time tracking and invoicing, FreshBooks makes everything quick and simple — letting you focus on your work, not your paperwork. Customize the service with your own logo and colors, send invoices by email or ground mail, accept payments with PayPal, Authorize.net and more.

ColinCopy.com

Colin Chung has helped business owners and entrepreneurs create strategic marketing with profitable results in over 42 industries across the US, Canada and around the world. As a copywriter, he has worked on projects involving many of the top names including Dan Kennedy, Brian Tracy and T. Harv Eker. He is also a business coach, speaker and co-author of the upcoming book, "SELL!".

Pepper Virtual Assistants

Pepper Virtual Assistant Services is a team of professionals from the Philippines handpicked and chosen for their extensive background in project management, administrative support, customer support, online marketing support, web design and development.

The name Pepper was inspired by the extraordinary personal assistant of an Iron superhero. Pepper Virtual Assistants were screened with her image in mind. The idea is to provide you with an exemplary assistant who will not only perform simple tasks but who will also be someone you can trust with bigger responsibilities. Pepper Virtual Assistants will not only work for you, they will also understand your business and look after its interests.

Pepper Virtual Assisstant Services is backed by Aspac Advertising, a leading independent advertising agency based in Asia with an operational hub in Manila. It has made its mark by working with global brands such as Nokia, Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Kodak, Puma, Panasonic, and so many other big brands.

This ensures you that your very own Pepper virtual assistant will be backed up by a group of experts who have proven their professionalism and ingenious creativity for more than 30 years.

Additional Sponsorship Opportunities

If you have a business-to-business service or product and you’d like to be added as a sponsor for this contest, send us an email with your prize package description and total prize value. If we think it’s something our contestants will be interested in and if it fits our quality requirements, we’ll add it to the contest.

Contest Rules

Here’s the boring but necessary legal stuff we’re required to list. By entering the contest, you will automatically be deemed as having accepted the following rules and restrictions:

• The contest will run from 8AM (PDT), Wednesday, May 04, 2011 to 11:59PM (PDT) Tuesday, May 24, 2011.
• Winning entries will be selected and announced via blog post by Tuesday, May 31, 2011.
• Winning entries will be selected by a combination of the following requirements: sharing the contest by at least one of the methods mentioned above, the best and most detailed request for proposal, and the best presentation of why the entrant’s business should be selected to win. Any entrant deemed as not having fulfilled the contest requirements will be ruled ineligible. The above criteria will be judged at the sole discretion of Virtuosi Media, Inc.
• Odds of winning are dependent on the number and quality of entries.
• The entrant must own or represent a business in order to be eligible.
• Ineligible businesses include, but are not limited to, businesses selling or promoting pornography, adult products or services, tobacco and alcohol products, gambling, and illicit or illegal activities.Virtuosi Media reserves the right to rule any contestant ineligible at their discretion.
• No purchase is necessary to enter the contest. All eligible persons may enter the contest free of charge.
• Prize descriptions and their monetary values are listed above.
• The redemption of select prizes may require the purchase of goods or services.
• Prizes vouchers will be dispensed within 2 weeks of the contest winners having been announced.
• The redemption of all prizes must occur within 6 months of the prizes having been dispensed else the prizes will be deemed expired and void.
• Winning entrants agree to work with Virtuosi Media, Inc. and the other contest sponsors to establish an appropriate and realistic timetable for services rendered for the redemption of prizes. Website projects will be completed within 5 months of project start unless otherwise stated in the contract.
• The $10,000 website prize limit does not include ecommerce, social, or extensively modified websites. Winning entrants who wish to have additional functionality to their websites may be quoted an additional amount.
• Payment of the appropriate taxes is the sole responsibility of the winners.
• By submitting an entry to the contest, the entrant agrees to release Virtuosi Media, Inc. and other contest sponsors from any liability associated with the contest or prizes.
• Virtuosi Media, Inc. is not responsible for and will not be held liable for the redemption of third-party sponsors’ prizes.
• Entrants agree to allow Virtuosi Media, Inc. and the contest sponsors to contact them via email regarding the contest results.
• Winners may be required to complete a statement of eligibility and to sign a release in order to claim their prizes.
• As a condition of winning a prize, winning entrants agree to allow their name and likeness to be used by Virtuosi Media, Inc. and the other contest sponsors for advertising purposes without compensation.
• Virtuosi Media, Inc. is not responsible for lost, late, or misdirected entries or entries that are corrupted or have not been received due to technical failure.
• Virtuosi Media, Inc. reserves the right to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend the contest at its discretion in the event of technical failure or any other causes beyond its control.
• This contest shall be governed by the laws of British Columbia, Canada which shall claim venue and jurisdiction for any legal action or claim arising from the contest or the administration of its prizes.
• This contest is void where prohibited.

3. Make Your Case

Now it’s your turn. In the comment section below, tell us why your business should win the Grand Prize. Tell your story, tout your achievements, give us your plan, let us know how you promoted the contest. Make us laugh, make us cry, inspire us, or wow us - just tell us the truth. And don’t forget the other contest requirements.

Note: To enter a comment, hover over the Disqus button and click the login link. You can login and comment through your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, or OpenID account. If you don't have accounts with any of those services, register for a new Disqus account to enter your comment.

Remember, the best business wins!

blog comments powered by Disqus

That's why I'm very honored to announce that Virtuosi Media has been selected as one of the best web design and development companies in 2010 by Web Hosting Search, a website that provides some of the best webhosting reviews on the internet.

Thanks, Web Hosting Search and thank you to our users and clients as well. We continue working hard for you. Be sure to check out our web design portfolio and to check out our online business resources.

Let me give you a few highlights of what the redesign includes:

A completely new site design - We did a whole lot more than just a new coat of paint. If you remember our old site, there isn't much that the two designs have in common. We wanted a more polished and elegant feel and so we went all out. 

You'll find little details all over the site where we tried to go the extra mile.  For this redesign, we redid all of the artwork, the fonts, and the copy. There are well over 40 custom icons across the site, with more to come. We've progressively enhanced our design. If you browse the site in different browsers, you'll notice a slight difference between Internet Explorer 8 and older versions of IE and modern browsers like IE9, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. (Also, despite our massive tutorial on the topic, we've dropped IE6 support for our website and all products going forward. Talk about a relief!) 

New software - Our old site was a static site, but now we've installed a content management system which will make maintenance and management far easier. We were able to create over 30 different page configurations without breaking a sweat. More on that below. 

More content - If you haven't noticed, our new site is significantly bigger. We've expanded our content categories and we've added new content. We have a lot in the pipeline that we'll be releasing over the coming months. If you're interested in business, development, or design,  you'll love our site. We are also accepting external authors for the first time, so if you have a passion for any of those topics and want to write about them, let us know.

A new search interface - Searching for information on our site should now be a lot easier. We have search available on every page and also an advanced search feature. If you're familiar with any Google search hacks, a lot of those will work on our website as well.

A brand new tagging system - If you want to browse different topics across our site, our new tagging system will be your new best friend. Tags are available at the bottom of most pages and our tag filter can help you narrow your focus by creating tag sets with just a few short clicks. If you want to see all of our tags at once, check out our tag cloud.

RSS and Atom feeds for every category, tag set, and search - We went all out on this one. Now you can subscribe to our content in multiple ways. Take a look at our feed directory for our category feeds. Or, if you just want to subscribe for a certain tag or keyword, we offer feeds for every search and tag set.

The Real Deal

While we're excited about the website redesign, which we've been working on over the last few weeks, what really has us pumped up is the software that the site is running on. We've built a completely new type of content management system and we're about to run it through its paces. 

I'm not going to give away too much information about it just yet. I will say, however, that it will be a commercial CMS and that it is in a late alpha stage. We still have some features to add like user registration and comments, which we'll gradually roll out on this site over the next weeks and months.

When we get to a stage with our CMS where we feel comfortable with its stability and feature set, we'll begin a limited developer beta to really begin testing it out and to give developers a chance to begin building extensions. After that, we'll open it up for a public beta. We will have an email list for it in the future, but for now, if you're interested, send us an email.

Finally, I want to point out our email newsletters. We're going to be sending out 3 different email newsletters about once month, one for those interested in business, one for developers, and one for designers. In our newsletters, we'll be highlighting articles, products, and news of interest from our site and from around the web. Sign up is free and we'll even throw in some goodies from time to time.

That's it. We would love to know what you think of our new site. Since we're still testing out our software, there are bound to be a few hiccups. If you have any problems, let us know and we'll try to fix it right away. Thanks, everyone!