twist my arm

So, you all want me to lower my own chances of winning by revealing my secrets, huh?

OK. :-) I mean, if someone other than me is going to win a giveaway, it might as well be a buddy, right?

I search for giveaways on Google using three different search terms. The first is simply "blog giveaways" and I'm assuming you all already tried that after reading my post. :-) That pulls up sites like this one that track other people's giveaways. If there's something specific I'm looking for, I will search for that, i.e. "organic giveaway May 2010". The final term I search for is "giveaway linky" which is another way of finding a master list of current giveaways. That will direct you to sites like this one where people can add their own giveaways to a centralized list.

Once I find the giveaways, my main strategy is not to waste time on giveaways that already have a billion entries. If something already has 300 or 400 entries when I find it, I usually won't waste my time entering unless it's something I really want.

Really, once I got my foot in the door via the Google searches above, the way I find most giveaways is through other giveaways. The big time giveaway bloggers give you extra entries for posting their button on your blog, which means they all have each other's buttons out for display. So if I find a blog I like, I click on the buttons on their sidebar and I usually find similar giveaways on other people's sites. I have added a couple of giveaway blogs to my reader to track their posts that way, but the bulk of the giveaways I enter I find just by surfing.

Now that I know that so many people reading this blog are interested in giveaways, I may post links to some here and there. That's another way you can get extra entries - advertising the giveaway on your own blog. I've never done that before, but now that I know y'all wanna get in on the action... ;-)

Good luck and please let me know if these tips help you win anything!!

p.s. Loco, I can't remember the name of the restaurant but I can picture it and I remember the chicken salad on brioche like it was yesterday. Ugh. Oh, and yes, you can totally have the playhouse when we're done with it, unless our little linebacker destroys it. Or you can win your own here or here.