Viral Storytelling with The Story Lady, Ronda Del Boccio

Wow do I have a story for you today! Yes it’s about Top Affiliate Challenge, as you can no doubt tell from the title…and well they say money doesn’t buy happiness, but throw enough money at the show and you can get on even if your average vote is less than a 3 out of 10. Oh yes. You can check out this audition and see for yourself. I’ve got nothing against this contestant. He’s a delightful person.

So how does someone whom the voting public does not favor make it to the top 10? He’s in a voting triumpherate, and they’re throwing a LOT of money into super votes. I would like to thank my most worthy “adversary” Ty Hurd for pointing this out on his blog post “Top Affiliate Challenge - Pay to Play???”. i had not looked at the statistics in a while. And I bet this is one reason the servers had been slow as molasses in January for several days.

3 of the top 10 have 160 super votes or more as I write this. $5 X 160 (the lowest of the 3) = $800 We have people spending over $800 for super votes

What Are Super votes?

Ty goes into this in great deatail, so you can also check out his blog pos… Super Votes allow you to pay $5, which goes toward production costs of the show, to boost the score of 3 contestants. yes you pick 3, and each of them gets 25 perfect 10 votes. A number of people have bought them for me. Now I have not pushed people to buy votes, though I am giving a $500 course away to one of those who does!

hey, Big Spender!

Some people have taken the buying of votes thing to a whole new level. It makes me think of the joke about Chicago politics - vote early & vote often. Throw hundreds of dollars at the show and you’re in. This is all well and good for the ones who buy their way to the top with super votes, but not for everyone else.

The sun will still rise Sunday morning no matter who is in the top 10, but let’s be real about what’s happening. If you want to see anyone’s stats, you would click on their audition and look at the upper right corner where it says “show stats” in small letters.

What Does It All Mean?

Ty Hurd is in first. He got the highest video base score of 9 out of 10 and his “open vote” average (meaning taking out the perfect 10s for the super votes) is 6.47 as of now.

Big Jason Henderson, in 2nd, has an average of 5.25 and 200+ super votes.

Jonathan Van Clute, in 3rd, has an open vote average of 7.07 and 100 super votes.

Chad Van Norman is currently in 10th and has an open vote average of 5.85. Now he has done something that is earning him some low votes from a bunch of people. He is the one who complained about Molly Flagtail having an audition and taking votes from others because of I’m on the show, so is she. Well she may be boycotting. I’m told by a number of my fans that they don’t like his video and don’t like that he goe Molly off the show. Of course, Thor Schrock shot the original audition video and sanctioned her inclusion in the first place, so… ??? Molly had over 40 super votes, and let me tell you - those votes did not transfer to me when her audition got unceremoniously dumped from the show. Read about that here.

Chad video got an 8. In it he makes fun of most of the contestants on the show and acts as if he’s eating a bagel out of the toilet. Very mature. Two other contestants got an 8 as the judges base score for eating things out of the toilet too.

And What’s up with the Fluctuations?

I wrote about voting strangeness in the post: “Your Vote Counts - Or Does it?” yes OK the scores are supposedly daily averages. Yesterday my score dropped more than 8 full points for several hours, then came back up. (that’s full points, not hundredths or tenths.) I was in 11th, then 20th, then 8th, then 11th. Numerous members of the organization I am supporting with part of my winnings from the show have emailed me and the Chairman Emeritus about the slow servers, the difficulty voting, and the fluctuation of my score.

One of the officers of the World Association of Persons with DisABILITIES is convinced that the show is a scam because of the fact that dozens of people were trying to vote for me between Saturday and Tuesday, and the server was so slow that many had to give up. I can’t blame them. He thinks the super votes and the fact that the money goes to the show makes it a scam. He even said, without seeing all the stats, that the show must expect people to buy their way in.

A scam? The show will happen. Thor has some amazing sponsors and prizes lined up. but imperfect - you bet! The producers seemed to defy their own words in th e strategy guide as to how the judges’ base scores would be determined. When you see some of the scores under statistics, you’ll understand what I mean. Some of the best videos got lower scores than one would think they should based on the strategy guide.

What about the Story lady?

So what about The Story Lady? How do I stack up against the rest? My stats are that I FINALLY managed to get a 7 for my last video, miracle of miracles. My open vote average is currently 6.99, even accounting for the fact that I know some other contestants are doing their very best to vote me down. I have 40 super votes, mainly from other people and a few from 3 of us going in together to support each other.

That means I’m getting higher popularity averages than 2 of the 3 the potty video creators. My open vote average is higher than most of the top 10 (Gaj, Jani, Chad, Carl, Tom (4.6) and even Ty.)

I made my own videos and am among the highest open vote average contestants, and I’m currently in 11th where 3 have bought their way to the top. Hmmm…

Now I feel even better about how I’m doing in Top Affiliate Challenge. I humbly ask you to vote me a 10 today, tomorrow and Saturday.

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