It’s official Neal (from Nota Bene Consulting) and I, creators of A Taste of Christmas, have just won the $1000 first place grand prize in the Pepperjam Network Store Builder contest.
After finding by sheer accident that our blog had reached the final seven on Thursday morning we knew we had a tough battle on our hands. A Taste of Christmas had only 1% of the vote and the winner was leading with 49% of the vote.
We had to fight top endorsements by the likes of Garry Conn and even John Chow! To top it off we were accused of cheating and had to carry on our struggle for votes whilst being investigated for something that we clearly did not do!
We finished an astonishing 90 votes ahead of 2nd place with 361 of 964 total votes. That’s 37% of the votes to save you doing the math!
I am so unbelievably grateful to everyone including Neal (who worked his backside, off whilst having a full time job too), King Pepper, ALL my brilliant friends and everyone else who helped me out. I must say that this has been the best use of social media and personal networking that i have ever participated in.
In the next few days I will be producing a detailed post letting you all know how exactly we achieved such a victory. This could be useful for any campaigns you are going to run, so please sign up here so you can read all about it.
Now I am off to the pub to get away from the computer for a while 
Thanks again….
Congrats bro I knew you would win! all that hard work pays off.
Congratulations on the win Forest, I enjoyed competing against you in the contest. Enjoy that extra cash, it should make for a nice early Christmas gift!
Hey Nick, thanks very very much.
ClarkeW, thanks very much for stopping by… which site did you own? I will be using the cash to help my income this month as it has been a little down. I kind of needed this cash as I have migrated to fulltime online work but am not at the super earnings stage yet
I dedicated a lot of time to the contest and it paid off well for me 
Congrats on the win.
My site was actually http://www.mywatchstore.net/ and I’m looking forward to it doing well in the future.
Biggest congrats, knew you’d do well
Congrats Forest. That was a good win. I look forward to reading HOW you and Neal did it.
Woo Hoo Dude !!!
beers and crisps are on you this weekend, Im driving to montreal today to celebrate !!
WOW!! Congratulations and I’m glad your hard work has paid off!
@ Don, Cheers man
@ClarkeW, Your site was actually my favorite and I would have voted for you if I was not biased.
@Dardopoli, Thanks Mum
@Missy, thanks. I should be writing the post in the next week or so, just have a lot of work to catch up on!
@Shane, ha ha… I was hungover so would not have been much of a host! Oh is there a bus from your area to Kingston?
@Lynne, thanks so much. Sorry I have not been over to visit your blog in a long while!
Congratulation man…
Cheers Indocontest