Hey Guys… check out this article written by Pamela Cowan for the Regina Leader Post, birth-town newspaper. Pretty cool!

EX-REGINAN WINS ONLINE GAME SHOW

Pamela Cowan, The Leader-Post
Published: Friday, November 23, 2007

Jaime Luchuck got closer to fame and fortune after winning The Next Internet Millionaire — the world’s first online reality show.

Luchuck was among 12 competitors who faced Internet marketing challenges on the American reality show. Dubbed The Apprentice Meets YouTube, the show involved the weakest member being eliminated every week and sent home.

When the final episode was shot last Friday, the former Reginan faced off against YouTube celebrity Charles Trippy. To win, Luchuck’s online sales of her book, From Cubicle Slave to the Next Internet Millionaire, had to trump the sales of a video series Trippy created.

“He made a video series about how to make videos and how to make them popular,” Luchuck said. “He is one of 50 people that YouTube actually pays to make videos and he has quite a following so I was definitely the underdog.”

In the final judgment room, Luchuck’s confidence started slipping as host Joel Comm focused on Trippy’s success. But in the end Luchuck triumphed for selling $70,000 worth of her product compared with Trippy’s $39,000.

“I was quite surprised when I was announced,” Luchuck said. “We had gone on a hot air balloon ride over Colorado earlier that day, I guess they were thinking of stuff that we could do, and he had brought his girlfriend and he’d proposed to her in the hot air balloon and she accepted … Luckily he got something and I got something.”

Although the show was named The Next Internet Millionaire, Luchuck won a briefcase stuffed with $25,000 in addition to a third of the sales from her book.

“All of the people who taught on the show, these 12 experts, are multi-millionaires over and over again and what they are teaching you is the capability to do this,” Luchuck said. “And our joint venture doesn’t stop. Since the deadline when I sold $70,000, I’ve sold about $25,000 more and the books will go into bookstores and they’ll get some promotion so it will keep going. I think that $25,000 is just pocket change and we’re going to keep climbing.”

The downside of her newfound fame is an unexpected backlash from people she’d previously thought of as friends.

“It’s very disconcerting to read bad things about yourself online,” Luchuck said. “If you’re on a show I guess you’re fodder for everyone’s comments so I’ll have to develop a thick skin. It’s not like I’m Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. I don’t think I’d want to be so famous that people would be stalking me and following my every move.”

Since her win, she has had job offers in the United States but plans to remain in Toronto for now and run her company.

“My next step is to teach my family how to do what I’m doing because I’ve learned so much and I want to help them all,” she said.

She’ll start by helping her brother Ryan Luchuck, whose Toronto band has played gigs in Regina.

“He’s opened up a singing studio and teaches, so together we’re going to use my skills and his skills and develop some products to help people learn to sing online,” Luchuck said.

© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2007