Thursday, September 12, 2013

el giveaway

No, I am not hosting one so sorry if I got your hopes up.

Actually I recently won a giveaway and today I am going to write a little ditty about that.

You see, long before I ever had a blog of my own I was an avid blog reader. I still am. There are many blogs I read every single day when I need a little break from reality at work.

Honestly I love reading anything; the newspaper, books, blogs, magazines, you name it I want to read it. So it is no big shock to me that I am really into reading blogs. One thing I have learned in the year or so I have been a reader of various blogaroonies is that there are a ton of giveaways going on.

Before I started my own blog I was slightly confused by them, so for those of you who don't read a zillion blogs or have your own allow me to explain.

Just like anything in life blogs are often advertised. Some folks I am lead to beleive are even able to make a little extra money off their blog. That my friends is called awesome. One way they make money is by having "sponsors" or advertisers. A great way to get people to advertise with you is to have a lot of followers on your blog via the various blog following methods.

So sometimes blogs host giveaways to promote other blogs. Basically you can win free shit if you follow people on Facebook and the twitster and bloglovin and whatnot. Despite my love of free shit I almost never enter giveaways.

I just don't follow blogs I don't want to read. That is not to say I never enter though. For example, the blog Helene in Between recently hosted a giveaway and I entered that bad lad. Why? Well for one Helene the author of said blog is one of the nicest internet friends I have ever met, and two pretty much every blog participating in that giveaway was a blog I would like to read. I checked them all out and the ones that I was not already following I decided to follow. And guess what?? I freakin won.

I know many of you probably suspect Helene rigged the contest because I am just so awesome, but the truth of the matter is, the old saying "nice guys finish last" is just spot on. I am not really very nice, so cool things tend to happen to me a lot.

If you are questioning whether or not I am nice, I will have you know I recently gave a woman at work the old talk to the hand. Like right up in her face because she was annoying me. Not nice.

The grand prize was $100. Now that is a whole lotta money to a girl like me. I thought long and hard about how I would spend those smackaroos and came up with the perfect solution. I am a firm believer in not spending surprise money on anything you actually need so I have decided on a plane ticket. That $100 is going to cover almost half of the cost of my flight to St. Louis.

Why St. Louis? Well that is where my best boyfriend from college lives and my best girlfriend from college who lives in Michigan is going to meet me there. It is going to be a shit show, and I am excited.

I talk to these two via group text message everyday, and our reunion cannot come soon enough. Thank you Helene for bringing three degenerates back together.




12 comments:

Lizzy @ Lizzy's Luggage said...

I really agree with you on only following blogs you like. I just don't like to follow blogs that I'll end up passing over when going through BlogLovin'! Great Post :D

xoxo, Lizzy

Kerry @ Till Then Smile Often said...

That group message was hilarious!! I am all about following only blogs that I will actually read! Congrats on winning!

Miss Riss said...

What an awesome way to spend surprise money!! Helene is great isn't she?!

Jess @ Living On Sweet Tea said...

fantastic idea! now I kinda wanna go too... haha

Kathy@MoreCoffeeLessTalky said...

you're so lucky! i've only ever won ONE thing and i think it's because i was the only person who entered?

and i'm like you; i ONLY follow blogs i like and that i can relate to.

-kathy
Vodka and Soda

Monica said...

I won a giveaway once and then never got my prize. Not cool but it didnt deter me, I still enter them but like you only follow the blogs I can actually see myself reading and I dont really mind following people on Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest so I always do those.

Kim Brown said...

Yay- congratulations! Have fun :)

Carly @ The Pinot Project said...

I'm with you on not entering giveaways! I was entering a ton and found myself with a bazillion random blogs I did not read in my feed, so I stopped entering. Now I only enter if I already follow people or if I check them out and actually want to read them.

Savannah said...

How exciting! I'm terrible with surprise money or gift cards. I agree that it should be something I wouldn't normally/have to buy but then I end up stressing myself out on that "perfect" splurge thing haha

Helene said...

this is awesome in about 100 different ways- get it?! I heart you and so glad you won!

Unknown said...

Love it! And STL!?!?!?! That's my neck of the woods :)

shannon said...

WE'RE NOT ON SPEAKING TERMS BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T COME TO MILWAUKEE.