At the beginning of the competition, Discovering Dad had 279 subscribers, so you can imagine my dismay when the subscriber count plummeted from a high of 309 to a low of 274 last week.  I don’t quite understand how Feedburner tracks the counts, but it always seems to fluctuate over the weekends.  Wackadoo, right?

Well, I’m proud and thankful that the subscriber count is back on track and hit a new record high today at 330 subscribers, or 51 more than when I started and a 19% growth in a little more than 2 weeks.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Wrong! Discovering Dad might be in the top third of the 108 contestants, but it is not even close to the leaders.  I’ve got a long way to go, and I need your help!

There’s only 12 days left in the competition, so it’s time to kick it into a different gear.  If you like the content and services provided by Discovering Dad, I need your help in getting the word out about the site and encouraging people to subscribe.  Tell your friends, neighbors and family members – there’s millions of parents out there surfing the Net, so the potential is HUGE! How is it that tech and money sites can get a bazillion subscribers, but parenting resource sites struggle to pick up a few dozen?  There’s definitely more parents than there are techies and accountants!

If you have a minute, please send your contacts a message about subscribing to the RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/discoveringdad or enter an E-mail at http://discoveringdad.net/subscribe.  If you have a website or blog of your own, I sure would appreciate a link or recommendation to the site.  I try to provide leads to great sites and posts as often as possible, and I genuinely appreciate the favor in return.  Thanks to everyone who has posted a badge or written a review – you all ROCK!

In addition, there is a benefit to those who you recommend and to you for referring.  As I stated last week, the Top Referrer Monthly prize pool was expanded to include the Top 3 Referring sites and a random subscriber will be given a prize each week, including a $50 SmartyPig gift card on the final day of the competition (July 31st).

Random Weekly Winner for this week is:

Stacey from Real World Mom

Congratulations Stacey!  You win a free t-shirt from Lijit Search!

And, here is the status for the monthly competition based on Google Analytics tracking results:

Top Referrer for the Month of July

1. Whiskey In My Sippy Cup – 226

2. I Am Husband – 152

3. Mom Generations – Jane’s Blog – 72

*Note: Somehow I got nominated as one of the Hottest Male Bloggers over at Jane’s blog.  No big surprise, but I didn’t win (I was stoked to get a few votes though).  Congratulations to Peter Shankman on winning. I did get this cool badge for being part of the competition though:

4. Momo Fali – 65

5. Secret Agent Mama – 62

Honorable mentions and not too far behind are: D is for Dad, Dad of Divas, Jogging In Circles, Honea Express and Mommy Daddy Blog.

What are the prizes for the Top 3 Referring Sites?

I’ve expanded the prize packages from the Top 2 to the Top 3 Referring Sites based on the addition of a new contest sponsor.  I also anticipate sweetening the 3 prizes throughout the month, as I get additional sponsors to contribute more prizes.

Top Referring Site for the Month of July – $50 SmartyPig Gift Card, a t-shirt from Lijit Search and a Featured Review of your site by me on Discovering Dad.

2nd Top Referring Site for the Month of July - $10 Joe’s Crab Shack Gift Card, a t-shirt from Lijit Search and a review of your site by me included in the normal rotation of posts on Discovering Dad.

3rd Top Referring Site for the Month of July – A prize pack of 8 popular books from Hachette Book Group USA, including A is for Atticus: Baby Names from Great Books, The Marriage Benefit and six others.

Assuming I have the kind of readers and blog friends that I do that can kick this contest into a whole new dimension and recruit droves of parenting friends to subscribe – WHEN I win Blogging Idol I will throw in another $100 American Express Gift Card to the Top Referring Site!!! (I have to WIN First Prize in the competiton for this to happen though )

Once again, I would greatly appreciate your help in getting the Subscriptions cranking, so that I can catch up to the leaders in the Blogging Idol competition.  I know that this is achievable, but I can’t do it without your help!  Let’s make a Dad site the first ever Blogging Idol!  We can do it!

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