Update 12/20/08: The Truth Behind This Article

When Tim Ferriss came to our class to speak the day his TV show premiered he challenged us to compete in this promotion, except we were playing for a different prize. He offered us a $4000 ticket to The Entertainment Gathering, a 3-day conference of people from all facets in the entertainment industry, held in Monterey California. I sort of zoned out after I heard $4000 ticket, so I didn’t really know what I was competing for at the time, but I did know I only had 8 hours to promote what others had already been promoting for 36 hours. I realized I’d have to think outside of the box.

On my walk home from class, I came up with the plan: rather than promoting his show, I would promote his promotion. Therefore, everyone who subsequently promoted his show and their conversions were an indirect referral by me–a snowball effect. I created a little figure to help explain:

Outstanding work from all who competed.  I evaluated your actions based on all of the information you provided via blog comments, e-mail, screenshots, etc.; and I also used the following metrics and more for measurement:
-Known conversion ratios of different sites used
-Alexa/Compete/Quantcast traffic rankings for sites and pages used
-Supplied numbers and hard data, in addition to screenshots
-Signal:noise ratio.  In other words, if a site gets 1,000,000 comments and has 1,000,000 members, there is a 1:1 signal-to-noise ratio.  Fewer comments would increase the measurable or expected ROI for each posting.
-Click-through and one-to-one communication numbers vs. impressions or pageviews whenever possible.
 

…

(from fourhourworkweek.com)

• First American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango
• Advisor to more than 30 world record holders in professional and Olympic sports
• National Chinese kickboxing champion
• Glycemic Index (GI) researcher Political asylum researcher and activist
• MTV breakdancer in Taiwan
• Hurling competitor in Ireland
• Actor on hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong

Then, he wrote his book last year: The 4-Hour Workweek, which ever since has been a best seller on the New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Wall Street Journal lists. In the tail-end of his lecture, he talked about how he farmed out his menial tasks to India for $2 / task using tryasksunday.com.

The History Channel deemed his “life-hacks” worthy enough for their own TV show. So in his true life-hack nature, he is running a contest to see who can draw the most viewers. The biggest promoter gets:

my favorite travel bag in the world, the $500 retail Victorinox Swiss Army 25″ Trek Pack Plus. I used an older version during my 15-country world trip in 2004, and the latest model is even better.

Best of luck promoting!