![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coreyhulse.com\/corey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/MyKindle.jpg\" "\\"MyKindle\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I won a free Kindle, and I just wanted to say thank you.<\/p>\n
Yes, this sounds like one of these spammy posts where you see banner ads saying “CLICK HERE FOR FREE GIFT CARDZ*” with the fine print indicating you need to take a three-hour survey, get twenty other people to sign up too, sell your first born child and give your Social Security number to a Nigerian prince.<\/p>\n
This is none of that. \u00a0I won a Kindle by playing a game and guessing correctly at random once-a-weekday pop culture questions. \u00a0I also got help from a few of my friends, who I also want to thank.<\/p>\n
First, about the game. \u00a0It’s called Prediction Monster<\/a>. \u00a0There’s one question every weekday, and\u00a0It’s like ESPN’s Streak For The Cash<\/a> but with Pop Culture, Politics, Sports, etc.<\/p>\n There’s a daily question, and if you get it right you get one point. \u00a0If you have currently have the longest winning streak, you win a $5 Amazon gift card. \u00a0If there’s a tie for the top, the $5 rolls over to the next day and the next until you have a single winner.<\/p>\n Examples of recent questions:<\/p>\n There are also bonus questions they post on Facebook and Twitter, and if you get those right you get a bonus point. \u00a0If you get them wrong there is no penalty against your streak.<\/p>\n They have a weekly $5 prize as well to the person who got the most points in a given week which is reset at the start of each week.<\/p>\n Incentives should tell me that I want less people playing because if there are more people, the odds decrease of me winning. \u00a0However, they’ve added a referral program that if you include my name in the “Referred By” section on the registration, then if you win $5 then I also win $5. \u00a0So now, I’m telling all of you.<\/p>\n So far I’ve won $165. \u00a0Insane, right? \u00a0Some wins were thanks to my good guessing, and the rest came thanks to the referral program.<\/p>\n So I’d like to thank my friends Matt<\/a>, Ryan<\/a>,\u00a0and Stephanie<\/a> for their pop-culture prowess.<\/p>\n And, it doesn’t hurt to do some geeky analysis while we’re at it.<\/p>\n This chart shows total winnings and contributions by me and my friends over time. \u00a0You’ll notice how the individual bumps contribute to the total winnings. \u00a0I won first, followed by some wins by Ryan in late July, followed by a huge win by Matt in August, followed by an even bigger win by Stephanie in September. \u00a0I followed up in late October with a new streak, and currently sit at the $165 total. \u00a0You’ll notice that it’s been a bit of a plateau the past two months, so it looks like I need to try harder to win more.<\/p>\n Thinking about that last point, I plotted out my winnings vs. the possible winnings. \u00a0Each weekday there’s $5 up for grabs, and a $5 weekly prize, totaling $30 a week. \u00a0There’s also another $30 each week given out to the\u00a0referrers (this assumes that each day the winner also has a referrer, which isn’t exactly true but without going through all my e-mails it’s the best I can guesstimate).<\/p>\n The light purple line is the total dollars won. \u00a0The green line shows overall percentage of my winnings vs. total given out. \u00a0I broke this into two categories, where the blue line represents where MY question answering earned me the prizes, and the red line is the referral percentage for when my friends did the work for me.<\/p>\n So, while I crushed it in the beginning in terms of how often I was winning, you’ll see that I haven’t been doing as well lately. \u00a0What I have benefited from in the long-run was my friends doing well which contributed to my winnings. \u00a0Each time one of them won, you see the bump in the red line. \u00a0Overall, I’m very happy to say that I’ve won about 12% of the time, considering how many people seem to be playing on the site.<\/p>\n My goal from the beginning was to win a Kindle. \u00a0When Amazon announced the new Kindle Touches, I jumped on the opportunity to get one. \u00a0I could have just gotten the wi-fi version for free, but I figured that I would pay the few extra dollars myself and I get the 3G version instead. \u00a0So TECHNICALLY I didn’t get an entirely free Kindle, but I could have if I wanted to get a cheaper model.<\/p>\n Now the next thing I need to figure out is how to hack my Kindle to get custom screensavers on it…<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coreyhulse.com\/corey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/PredMon_Winnings.png\" "\\"PredMon_Winnings\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coreyhulse.com\/corey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/PredMon_WinningsOverTime.png\" "\\"PredMon_WinningsOverTime\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coreyhulse.com\/corey\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/PredMon_WinningsVsPercentPossible.png\" "\\"PredMon_WinningsVsPercentPossible\\"")
<\/p>\n