April 9th is approaching fast, so I want to post this before time runs out. I am offering at least 5 prizes to you during the Reader Appreciation Week that runs from April 9th to April 13th of this year, 2007. You do not have to do anything to participate. Do not even comment on my site if you want to win prizes, if you have already commented before. I will choose a winner and that winner will choose from a list of many prizes. If you are the winner, you can also tell me what you want and I will do my best to rob a bank or some nursery or something to get the prize for you.
If you have ever commented on The Reasoner, you are automatically entered. I will not make you comment more than usual, and I will not make you run around in circles holding a flame in hand to create special effects in the middle of the night. Now that I think of it, I may give you money if you can create such a special effect at night for me. :p
I will award prizes in a special way. I will choose winners, and ask them what they want. If the prizes you want are part of any of the prizes I offer or something similar, I will give it to you. You can choose one prize, even if it is not listed in the list below.
Prizes I may offer for the RAW
Following are the prizes that I will offer, copied directly from the RAW Prizes page, which Ronald wrote so well. I have edited the list to offer prizes that I can definitely order.
Monetary Prize
These can be offered via Paypal, via gift coupons or via money order in the mail.
Non-Monetary Prize Ideas
- Free hosting
- Free advertising space
- Free consulting (blog, design, etc…)
- Reader Spotlight - Write a post about a particular reader
- Create a Readers’ Hall of Fame
- Special invites to non-public betas in the future
Non-Technical Prizes
The following prizes are ideal for readers that are not interested in technical prizes.
Technical Prizes
The following prize ideas are ideal for readers comfortable with the online world and online shopping.
That is it. Please let me know if you want any other prize.
All you have to do to win these prizes is to comment if you have not commented on any part of the site already, and to check your e-mail at least every 24 hours starting from April 8th until April 15th. Every day, early in the morning hopefully, I will announce the prize for the day. All you have to do is to wait for my e-mail announcing that you are the winner. I will also announce the winner in a new post 12 hours into every day of the Reader Appreciation Week, so that you can be sure that if you do not get any e-mail from me for any reason, you can check the post.
How will Bes award the prizes?
Here is a summary of how each day will work:
- Bes will announce a winner. Bes will choose someone randomly. Hitting on Bes might get you more points, and stalking Bes might get you no points. Hmmm, if you are cute and stalking Bes, you might get some points.
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- This point was added later, as suggested by Valerie, to be more clear as to how I pick a random commentor. The random number I choose can be anything. Once I have a random number, I will go to the admin area for this site and into the “Stats” area, which lists all the commentors on my site, ever, in a numbered list. I will use the random number to find the winner who is numbered with the same number on that list. I also created a section called “How do I choose a random number?” because of Valerie’s suggestion. Thank you!
- If you are the winner, you will have 24 hours to contact Z and choose one of the prizes. “Who the %^&* is Z?“, you ask. I am Bes Z, so relaaaaax. Prizes only go to people who are relaxed. If you are a person who does not like to relax, I may offer you a massager or something.
- I may announce more than one winner a day, so be prepared.
- If you do not contact me within 24 hours of the winner announcement post, I will have no choice but to sadly find another winner.
- I will keep doing this until all the prizes are gone, or until we hit April 13th, or until I go poor giving away everything from my savings account.
- After all the prizes have been given away, I will realize I should have used all the prizes myself instead. So I will cry. This stage of the process will not be visible to you, fortunately.
That is it. Please let me know if you have any questions. If you have any more suggestions for any prize, please let me know.
How do I choose a random number?
I also talked about this before as a response to Stacee’s comment earlier. There is a list of commentors in my dashboard which lists all the commentors one by one. I will choose a random number out of the blue and pick that commentor as the winner. The random number will sometimes be computer generated, and sometimes be a number I see on a bag of chips. I am trying to be as random as possible. For example, if the random number is 45 and you are listed in that commentor list as being commentor # 45 [which is not related to the number of commentors at all or even who posted first], you will be the winner of the day. If the number is too large, then I will add the numbers to come up with the first set of winner possible.
For example, if the random number is 59640 and I do not have that many commentors [ 
], I will add all the numbers: 5 9 6 4 0 and come up with 24, which will make the 24th commentor on the commentor list the winner. How does that sound? I am open to any suggestions if you think something else may be better.
Why am I doing this?
Because I feel like it, and because others like Ronald at RA Project feel like it too. I do not yet earn money from my site, but you read my site regularly, so I want to give something back to you. I do not like being treated like another visitor # 4849328 on sites that claim to love their readers but do not do anything for them. Many blogs claim to love their readers by giving them prizes, but those bloggers also make their readers comment more and work more than normal. I do not like that. I do not like manipulation where only one side benefits and the innocent side does not, whether direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious.
Thank you for supporting me in different ways. 49% of my site’s success is because of your support. 51% is because of me. Come on! I have to give myself some more points, no? :p
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The random number for today was 269, and that means Raurie is the winner for today’s 
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The random number for today was 26, and that means Lisa is the winner for today’s 
In order to choose a replacement winner, I thought of a random number from 1 to 100, as that is where most of the active commentors are placed within. The random number I came up with was 4, which is 
I would like to announce that Jerine is the winner for today’s 
I would like to start announcing the winners and awarding the prizes for the 
