I’m offering prizes and rewards for the best business technology horror stories.

• Did you buy an off-the-shelf software application for your business that didn’t do precisely what you expected and ended up costing you time and money?
• Did you pay for a technology project (like a website, custom software, network server), and the vendor didn’t deliver exactly what you wanted?
• Did you buy an off-the-shelf program or custom-designed application that did what you thought you wanted it to do, but you ended up being its slave instead of making your company more efficient?

These are just a few of the scenarios that can lead to technology horror stories. I’m interested in all of them, and I’m particularly interested in writing about how to avoid them so that other businesses don’t have to keep making the same mistakes.

Here’s the deal. I’m planning a whole series of syndicated articles and blog posts on these topics. For each story I select to write about, I’ll include a link to your website (“dofollow” of course) and your name or company name. Eventually I’ll compile the articles and expand them into an ebook. Your links will be included in the book as well.

And for the very best story (in my judgment) there’s going to be a grand prize (drumroll, please) – three years of web hosting on a shared server with complete cPanel access, approximate value $240.00. Three second prize winners will each receive one year of hosting valued at $80.00.

Please understand that this is not a fiction writing contest. I’m interested in true stories about you, your business, or your employer’s business. You can change the names to protect the innocent (or guilty), but I’ll need your real contact information, not just for the link but also so I can verify that you’re an actual person and not making this up. Entertaining and humorous writing is appreciated but not mandatory.

That’s it. The contest is ongoing. I’ll be writing about your stories as they come in. The grand prize and second prizes will be awarded after the end of the year, in January, 2011.

To recap, here are the prizes:

• One grand prize, three years of web hosting valued at $240.00.
• Three second prizes, one year of web hosting valued at $80.00.
• Mention in this blog and in syndicated articles, including dofollow links, for each and every story that effectively illustrates the theme of “business technology horror story.”

Use this form to submit your business technology horror stories. Fields marked with * are required.

Technorati: AH7CDGAAP5Q6