Update: This contest is over! Check out the winners below and keep your eyes peeled for more epic giveaways coming soon ;)

Alright, it’s time for another kick-ass contest here on College Info Geek!

To help promote the launch of the Photoshop CS6 beta, Adobe asked me if I wanted to do a contest. I got all wild and crazy-eyed, and was all like,

“Yes.”

So we got down to discussing prizes. They were like, “How about Ritz crackers?”, to which I countered, “One of the Hollywood sign’s letters.”

Eventually, we came to an agreement. As you can tell from the title of this post, I’m giving away one 16gb wi-fi iPad (the new 2012 one), and one wi-fi Kindle Touch. Which means… two of you will win. 

This is the widget you’ll use to enter the contest. Before you start clicking around, though, please read this entire post to make sure you’ve got all the details.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Alright, let’s get down to brass tacks. I bet you want to know how to win these bad boys. Well, I’ll start with the Kindle…

How to Win the Kindle

I’ve made entering to win the Kindle pretty easy. It’s, like, level 1 difficulty.

Just use the Rafflecopter widget above to do the following things:

  1. Like College Info Geek on Facebook
  2. Like and Share this blog post to your Facebook Wall.

That’s it. Do those two things and you’re in for the Kindle Touch.

If you want to increase your chances of winning, you can get more points by doing the other things listed in the widget, like following me on Twitter, sharing the post to your wall (with a tag to the College Info Geek Facebook page), subscribing to my email newsletter, and tweeting about the giveaway (which you can do once a day).

Note: If you choose to subscribe to my email newsletter, know that I will never share your email or spam you. Learn more about my newsletter here. If you’re already on the email list, enter your email anyway so you can get the points. Your email won’t get added twice.

So that’s that. Now, let’s find out…

How to Win the iPad

The iPad is quite a bigger prize than the Kindle, so I thought I’d do something a little different for those who want to win it.

Basically, there’s something I think every student (and every person, really) should do. Something that will set you apart from everyone else, help build your personal brand, and show off your ambition.

This is something I think you should do no matter what. However, to give you an immediate incentive to start, I’d made doing it the condition for winning the iPad…

You have to build your own personal website.

Now, don’t get too worried. Building your own website isn’t hard, and you don’t need to know how to code.

There are plenty of ways to get your own website up and running. You can go the easy route and just set up a website using WordPress.com or Tumblr.

Or, if you want to be legit about it, you can set up a self-hosted site with your own domain – just like mine, thomasjfrank.com. If this is the route you want to go, I’ve written a guide to help you out.

Here’s my complete, step-by-step guide to building your own website.

Remember – your main motivation for creating a personal website should be to build your personal brand and enhance your online presence. Read more about why you need to build a personal brand.

Having the iPad as a prize is just icing on the cake. Sweet, sweet icing that lets you play Draw Something and touch the web.

So here are the details on how to enter for the iPad:

  1. Create your personal website, using my guide or any other method.
  2. Create a blog post or page that links to this post, in order to prove that the website is yours.
  3. Use the Rafflecopter widget above to enter your site’s URL. You must use the URL of the page that links back to here.

That’s it. As an additional benefit, making your own website will net you 10 extra entries into the Kindle Touch drawing.

What This Means

Obviously, building your own website is a bit more involved than just liking a Facebook page. Logically, that means less people will do it. I’m guessing a lot less.

Even though making your own website is really important in today’s world, I know a lot of people just aren’t going to do it. Which means that those of you who are go-getters - those of you who know how to kick ass and get things done - will have a lot less competition for the iPad.

Plus, you’ll have a website you can put on your resume :)

So Get Going.

The contest ends at 12:01am EST on May 1st, 2012. That gives you just under a full month to enter. Once the contest is over, I’ll randomly draw the winners. The iPad drawing will come first, then the Kindle. Full details and terms are listed in the Rafflecopter widget. Go!

Important note: If you’re picked as a winner, I’ll be emailing you via the email address you use for your Facebook account. Be sure to check your inbox and spam folder for that email on May 1. View the terms in the widget to learn more.

Also, I just want to mention how grateful I am to Adobe for giving me the opportunity to run this contest. Show them some love by giving Adobe Students a like on Facebook. Remember, if you’re planning on investing in Adobe software, you can get 80% off as a student.