The Giveaway Llama

…and how she rolls

What’s all this Giveaway Llama stuff about? I live with an elusive critter who calls herself The Giveaway Llama. Periodically, she digs into my stash and comes up with something wonderful for me to giveaway to one of my readers. (That’s you.) Whoo!

How does the whole thing work? Easy peasy:

• Leave a comment on the specified post. Doesn’t have to be deep or inspiring or earth-shatteringly eloquent. Wave and say hi. Gush over the goodie. Tell the Llama how gorgeous she is. Write a bad haiku about yarn. Whatever.
• All the entries must be on the same post, because I use the number of the comment (you were the third or fourteenth commenter, that sort of thing) for the random number generator.
• I will specify a cut-off date, a time when I close the comments on that post. It’s usually several days later to give working folks and busy moms a chance to take five to comment.
• After the cut-off, I use the blog software to determine a unique number for every comment.
• If you comment twice, I ignore the SECOND comment, but I keep the number in place. (Well, no, I don’t ignore it. I READ it and enjoy it, but it doesn’t get you a second chance in the drawing.) In other words: Everyone gets only one chance at each prize, and I don’t mess with the numbering to make things neat and tidy unless there is a major issue.
• If there is a major numbering issue and I have to re-number, I will let you know.
• I use random.org to generate one random number for each prize. The random number generated corresponds to the number of the comment, and thus, the winner.
• I announce the winner(s) in the next post (next day!), and send off an email ASAP to the winner(s) to let them know and to get their postal address.
• If you’ve won one of my giveaways recently, you have to wait a year before you can win again. You can still comment, and I encourage you to do so as a way of making the odds more fun for your fellow blog townspeople.

 

Tim inspects all packages for bubble wrap. Why? Because All Bubble Wrap Are Belong To Tim.

 

What if you live overseas? If you live anywhere outside Canada and the U.S., and the random number generator gnomes pick your name, then you’re the winner and I will send you your prize just like anyone else. Why shouldn’t you get to play, too? Yarn and fibre are light. Big deal. The Llama and I can handle it.

Where do the goodies come from? Some of them come, as I said above, from my personal stash (I’ve got a lot of nice things, and I like to share).

Some of them I purchase on my various trips around North America; I generally try to pick up at least something from every cool place I go, as a way of sharing the trip with all of you who cannot go along with me.

Some of the goodies are donated, which never fails to blow me away. Indie makers don’t earn a lot of money; for them to gift something to the blog giveaways always makes me feel deeply grateful and wowed by their generosity.

When donations happen, they are spontaneous, in that I do not solicit them in any way. (See what an amazing community we are part of?)

Why do I care where the goodies come from? It’s the law that I tell you up front about the source of any giveaways and prizes. Solid ethical ground, and all that.

Why do I give stuff away? Well, it’s my way of saying “Thank you for reading this blog,” for one thing. For another, it’s a lot of good clean fun, all ’round. For yet another, it’s just a tiny thing I (and, ahem, the Llama, of course) can do to make the world a better place.

The real question, is of course: Why NOT give away goodies now and then to some of you wonderful people?

What other legal things do I need to say?

I am not being compensated in any way for doing these giveaways. In 99% of the cases, I do not work with or for the person who made or donated the goodie; in the rare cases where I do work with the person, I’ll tell you in that post so you know what’s what.

I try to follow all the regional/national/postal rules and laws I know about.

What if the prize is a book/DVD that I already have? If the random number generator picks your name, and you already have the book/DVD, I will come up with another goodie for you. If the goodie is yarn or fibre or something like that, well, we will figure something out. (Besides. Who wouldn’t want TWO skeins of cashmere yarn?)

What’s the catch? You have to leave a comment on the post (thus participating in our little blog community, sneaky of me, right?). And you have to have even just a nanosecond of fun doing it. That’s it.  Oooooh, scary.

And here’s one a lot of folks ask…

Q: But you’re the Paca Princess! Why isn’t it “the Giveaway Alpaca”? 

A: Mysterious indeed are the ways of camelids.