It’s the moment we’ve all been reading for. The moment that How2Blogger announces the winner to his Super Sexy Holiday ‘How To’ Contest.

Don’t worry - I’m not going to type “Drum roll, please…” before I announce the winner.

But, seeing as this contest was by my own words, super sexy, I wanted to announce it in a big way. I looked into a few options to announce the winner (which was drawn by assigning each of the 810 entries on my ’super duper master contest entry list’ a number between 1 and 810 and then generating a ‘random integer’ between 1 and 810 from the Random Integer Generator over at Random.org which describes the Random Integer Generator like this:

The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.

which I’ll be the first to admit I’m not exactly sure what they mean by generating numbers out of atmospheric noise, but it sounds really freaking cool and makes me feel a lot better than knowing the ‘random’ number came from some complex math algorithm. This is what they gave me:

which means that the entry assigned number 342 is the winner - congrats! Now, luckily I had the ’super duper master contest entry list’ to go from, which led me to the owner of entry number 342, who is now $100 dollars richer at my expense.) and I thought that I could announce the winner in one of the typical blog contest winner announcement ways (Was that parenthetical phrase too long?). You know:

• An ad in USA Today
• Skywriter
• Carrier Pigeon

But I ultimately decided against these because they were (in no particular order):

• Too expensive for my now $100 dollars poorer ass
• It’s dark out right now, duh!
• Would take too long to train seeing as I don’t own any of those things right at this moment

So, I thought I would announce the winner in a few more practical and logical ways.

• A random John Chow Comment (we’ll see if it makes it through moderation)

• Gotta try Problogger as well

• Can’t leave the Cow out of the fun.

• One on Gorilla Sushi for good measure.

• I also decided it might be wise to post it on Craigslist. So I posted in Las Vegas (my home town), British Columbia (the winner’s home province), and Kalamazoo, MI (because there really is a Kalamazoo, MI(I went to school there)).
• Since so many told their moms about the contest - I thought I should call my mom. She now knows who the winner is. She said, “Congrats.”
• Just for fun, a little scavenger hunt. I went into an old post and edited a random comment on this blog. Anybody that can find it and then be the first to leave it’s location in a comment on this post will win 150 EntreCard Credits.
• And finally - I wanted to link to the winner: Sweet Mummy!!! Congratulations (It’s there in the white space -you have to highlight or click - visit and congratulate them!)

Thanks everybody who entered! And I’m sorry I didn’t have $100 bucks to give each and every one of you. Though if I did, I would. I promise!

Oh, we’re close. These are the final ‘How To’ articles from my silly little contest for $100 bucks. Again, thanks to all who entered by writing a ‘How To’ article on their blog. I hope everybody had some fun writing them.

Some of these articles made me laugh. Some of them made me cry. And one of them made me do a cartwheel in my living room, though I’m not sure why. Which ones did which? Well, I’m going to leave that to your imagination.

So, without further ado (man I love that expression and again, I’m not sure why), here’s the final round of links:

• Alice of WooHooInWonderland (Woohoo being another favorite word of mine) contributed this quicky, in true How2Blogger fashion: How To Enter How2Blogger’s Contest.
• Erz of Blogodise gives us some ideas on How To Hold A Successful Blog Contest.
• BlogContestCentral wrote a great little ‘how to’ on running successful comment contests in their post: How To Run A Blog Comment Contest Successfully.
• JustMyLuck wrote How To Survive Without Internet Connection, so hopefully you read this before your connection goes out, because if it does go out and you haven’t read it, well, then you’re really sh!t out of luck. I’m not exactly sure why I just wrote sh!t like that - it’s not like I have a filter on here that I have to get around like on Yahoo! spades. Some people are just really creative when it comes to getting around those profanity blockers - it always makes me smile when I see a good cuss word written out creatively and thoughtfully
• Valmg of “I Know EVERYTHING - just ask my hubby” (I love it lol) writes about How To Make White Rice. There’s a great comment in the comments section about how rice makers don’t always come with instructions. It’s funny because it’s true. Seriously.
• Leslie Ann of Rant and Rave! wrote about How To Choose A Topic For Your Blog. A great article for anybody that’s reading this who isn’t a blogger, but thinking about giving it a shot. Good luck.
• RampantHeart gives us an article which I’m not really sure what to say about, though it is classic, seriously: How To Lose A Guy In 5 Days (a.k.a. How to act real smart before your beau acts smart). Awesome.
• Zang of My Consoling Asylum wrote How To Use Genie’s 3 Wish Grants Wisely For The New Year. Just in case you find that lamp in the next couple of days you’ll know what to do.
• Lance wrote How To Be The Worst Hacker In The World which I loved because I love posts with screenshots of online conversations. For some reasons these always seem to make me laugh.

Now we just gotta pick a winner.

Note: Double checking the entries I realized I should probably link to the contest blogs that blogged about the contest as well. Thanks guys!

• The Link Bait
• MyBlogContest
• Contester
• Contest Beat
• Submit Your Contest
• BlogAboutYourBlog

1. Make sure that the Saturday you want to do this on is December 29th, 2007 (tomorrow, which also happens to be How2Blogger’s birthday! Wait, shouldn’t I be getting money instead of giving it away? I think I might’ve done did this wrong…).

2. Create a last minute entry for How2Blogger’s Super Sexy Holiday ‘How To’ Contest by writing a post or stumbling or commenting or all of those things.

3. Hack into random.org to make sure that your entry is drawn when How2Blogger tallies the entries and picks a winner.

I thought about selling this great info as an e-book for $7.99 a pop, but seeing as I love my readers and it is still the holiday season I’ve decided to make available “How To Win 50% Of The Blog Contests You Enter” to all of How2Blogger’s readers.

So, just follow the instructions carefully and you’ll have no problem winning 50 percent of the blog contests that you enter just like us here at How2Blogger. Who knows, perhaps you’ll end up with a brand new Wii before the year is out!

How To Win 50 Percent Of The Blog Contests You Enter

1. Enter a contest and win.

2. Pick a second contest like The Big Bald Blog’s Contest in which you could win an IPod Touch as well as a number of other goodies simply by blogging about it and subscribing to their feed. Or enter How2Blogger’s Super Sexy Holiday Contest in which you could win $100 bucks cash money. Dude, you could even enter both!

Now, looking at the math involved here, you should see that we’ve entered a total of 2 blog contests and won a total of 1 contest. With my handy dandy calculator I have divided the total number of wins (1) by the total number of entries (2) giving us a blog contest win percentage of 50%.

Here’s the formula you can use to figure out your win percentage:

Wins (1) / Entries (2) = 50%

You might have thought winning 50 percent of the contests you enter would be really tough, but in reality it couldn’t be any easier.

Good Luck!

How To Have A Very Merry Christmas

Img Credit: Cyron

1. Stop reading blogs and go do something.