Target Met: $955 raised in one week!
Congratulations everyone – Our two children remained supported for another year thanks to your support.
We have surpassed the target – I will be in touch with the last person about usage of their donation money.
With thanks to…
- Joel Williams from Life Goggles
- Fraser Edwards from Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
- Martin Roth from Health Monitors
- Rodger Constandse from Effexis Productivity Software
- James Martin from Google Watchdog
- Jon from Art of Money
- Christian Montoya from ChristianMontoya.com
- Oke Atatah from Life Is What You Make Of It
- Reesa from ReesaFindMe
- Dan Walsh from PayStage
- Darren Rowse from Digital Photography School
- Will Swayne from Marketing Results
It’s that time of year again – child sponsorship charity drive time! Since the year 2001, with the generous help of my community members and website readers, we have been able to support two children under the World Vision child sponsorship program.
Here’s how the story goes…
Back in the late nineties I was running an e-commerce business selling Magic: The Gathering trading cards out of my community site that I built and later sold to new owners – MTGParadise.com. Back then it was just me in charge and I was working frantically shipping cards all over Australia and the world as well as growing the website community. Unfortunately I made the mistake of selling a large sum of product to a person in Thailand and was taken for credit card fraud. You can read more about what happened in my business timeline.
After the whole ordeal was over and I had shut up shop I decided to sponsor a child. The first child I deliberately chose from Thailand because I wanted to make sure he didn’t grow up to become a credit card fraudster. This was my way of balancing karma – or something like that – and Apichet Chaisanan (and his village community in Thailand) was the first child sponsored by my online community.
Since the first child sponsorship drive went so well, when it came time to renew our sponsorship I approached the community at MTGParadise.com and asked for donations to raise enough to sponsor a second child as well and we successfully raised enough to help out Lucas Arcanjo from Mozambique.
When I sold MTGParadise I no longer had a daily presence in the Magic community, however with the growth of this blog I had a new community and last year I asked you, my readers, to dig deep and help maintain the child sponsorship for one child. For those readers who have been with me for a while now you will know that we were successful in last year’s charity drive raising $480 – enough for one year of sponsorship for one child.
Child Sponsorship 2006
This year we are aiming to raise enough to sponsor both children for a year. To do that we need to raise $900.
Last year you will recall that I gave out links on my blog in exchange for donations and this year I will be doing the same thing under the following system -
Donations
Option 1: Purchase a standard sponsorship package from Entrepreneur’s Journey and I will donate all the proceeds to the charity drive.
You can select a sponsorship package from the advertise page.
Follow the instructions there and tell me you made the purchase for the charity drive.
Option 2: Donate cash
Donate $50 and your name and website link will be listed in this post under a “thank you” section at the top.
Donate $100 you get a site-wide text link under a new “charity sponsors” section area on every page of Entrepreneur’s Journey for two months.
Donate $250 you get an article on Entrepreneur’s Journey specifically about your business. The article can’t be pure advertising but it can focus 100% on your business and of course link back to any of your own websites. You must supply the article.
You are welcome to donate any amount, more or less than the amounts listed above – everything helps!
[ Click Here To Make A Donation ]
All donations are taken via Paypal. Once you have made your donation please contact me via my helpdesk and provide the following details:
- Your name
- Donation amount
- The email address you used at Paypal to donate
- Your website URL
- Your anchor text
Thank you everyone for your generous support and let’s make that $900 target!
Yaro
Hi Yaro,
I enjoy the resources and articles on your website. I haven’t commented before but felt a need to do so after reading this latest post. I have sponsored a child in the past and know it can be rewarding, however, from the article I get the impression that you want other people to pay for the sponsorship and yet you receive the philanthropic reward. I didn’t read anywhere that you are preparing to offer your own personal money for the sponsorship.
If that isn’t the case, perhaps it would be a good idea to make that clear.
If not, the choices you make are yours and I’m sure you have good reasons for them. I just had the urge to point out my perspective.
All the best,
Matt
Hi Matt – thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear up any confusion.
These two children have been sponsored for five years now, some years with myself paying all or part of the fee, in more recent years 100% funded by my website communities by people who generously donate.
I personally donate and do other charitable activities outside of this but I don’t consider talking about that appropriate for this blog.
In this case my blog readers help sponsor two children and in exchange they get advertisement exposure on my blog. I think this is a great way to leverage my resources (my blog in this case) to help out two children living in poverty.
You certainly could say I get the “philanthropic benefit” out of this relationship (and the slight tax break too) but I certainly feel I share it with everyone who donates – although people who donate get another benefit too – exposure on my blog. Since I do the work to make exposure on my blog something of value I think it’s a fair deal all round.
I could donate some of my own money to this charity drive – and I certainly will if we do not make the target (in fact I already have since the sponsorship is charged in September) – but that would mean I would be taking money away from other places I donate to. If the full target is met here by other’s donations then I can use my donation money in other places and in that case we collectively donate more and help more.
I subscribe to the rule of tithing, which is important I believe in order to have success both from a business and spiritual standpoint. I really believe you need to give in order to receive and I’m seeing more and more evidence of this every day. Movies like “The Secret” enforce this principle, but that’s a topic for a different blog post.
This charity drive is a way I can give back along with my community of readers but just because in this case I am not putting my own money forward doesn’t mean I am not contributing. It takes me at least three hours to write the post and arrange all the details with the people who donate. If you calculate this time based on an hourly rate of pay I generally get I am contributing more than anyone else. I have also worked hard over the last two years to build an audience at this blog and without doing that this charity drive would not raise any money at all.
I hope that clears up any bad feelings you might have regarding my intentions in this charity drive and do let me know if you have any other comments to bring to my attention.
Yaro that was an absolute informative,professional response.Sometimes individuals are jaded and can’t see the proverbial forest for the trees! Please keep up the excellence you continually provide.My personal and business growth have been extremely influenced over a period of three years now by you. Because I cannot find better quality blog solutions any where else even when I think I have.
Hi Yaro,
I want to sincerely thank you and appreciate you for including me on your blog trafficking mailing list. I enjoy the resources on your weekly newsletter. Thanks so much.
Having read about blog and how to attract visitors to blog sites, I like to have my own blog.
Please, I like to know how to get started. I like to know how to get poeple to know about the site. The site will be basically on what it takes to start and grow business ventures, and what it takes to be an entreprenuer.
I also like to know how I can make money from this type of blog site, since it will not be for buying and selling.
I saw your advertisement concerning blog trafficking school, how can I benefit from this. How can I be part of the programme.
Thanks and I wish you the very best.
Sincerely yours,
Oyeniyi.
Hi Oyeniyi,
Thank you for your kind comments but I think you may be confused as to where is the best place to ask questions like you asked. The topic of this blog post isn’t quite related.
I suggest you head into my forums and ask your questions there -
http://www.BlogTrafficSchool.com/forums/
Back to charity – I have to get the first lot of donations up…
Hey Yaro,
Fair play for donating time and money to such a worthy cause. Last year, I was travelling around Thailand for 5 months and some of the poverty was unbelievable. Seeing how the children lived was heartbreaking.
Give me a few days and I’ll see what I can do with some of my communities to get some money together.
Thanks for your response. Cool to hear your perspective. Keep up the good work.
Helping poor children is offering your beauty from inside. If it was to me, all children could eat properly every day, and no more sickness in this world.