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The Background:
How stupid. I have to tell yall….a few months ago, I “met” a blogger online and I did like her, I really did. I asked her to blog with a group debate blog that I had. She said yes..and like a day later, her sister asks to blog with us. I had no problem w/ that, but the first blogger said she would NOT blog with us if her sister did. They both had blogs, and she wanted to be separate from her…she was sick of her sister following her around, etc. So being the nice person I am, I told the 2nd sister we had too many bloggers, I really didn’t need sister drama, kwim? I should have realized there I was dealing with some extremely immature people…sometimes my 30 year old brain works slow, I’m bad at trusting people quickly. Its a downfall of mine.
Anyhow, we chatted on the phone and I really liked her for the most part. She was constantly complaining about a blogging group she was in, and her sister stealing her “contacts” out of her email, all of this stuff….and I let her vent, who cares, it wasn’t my drama and it WAS quite funny. She then invited me to blog on HER blog, which I did as a guest. I took the time to find some contests and really get involved and then her sister piped up that I was “taking over” the blog (haha, i put up, like 5 posts? LOL), so I decided to open THIS blog separately and came up with a name, concept, etc and invited the 1st girl to assist me. She got upset when I opened it up to other bloggers and refused to participate. No problem. I am old enough to know that life isn’t about ME. I want to help OTHERS succeed.
I want to be a PART of a group. I am not stuck on “This is mine, its all mine”, its OURS as a group. I could NOT run this blog without the assistance of a LOT of people (toni, alicia, heather, bridgette, and erin)…I currently have five people that assist me and I hope to have more in the future (begging laurie and kailani right now) We do it for fun, not for profit.
Well, during our course of talking, this blogger had a lot of huge giveaways and it occurred to me…could someone FAKE a giveaway. I learned from this blogger that she NEVER picks a random person, and as soon as she told me that, I realized, omg, bloggers could be doing giveaways and giving them to their FRIENDS or KEEPING THEM! How naive have I been!! She told me of her sister giving them out to her friends and how they exchange stuff, or pick specific blogger buddies. Its honestly not that shocking. She isn’t someone I could ever associate with in real life and most certainly not online, and we do not talk anymore. But the funniest part is, I wake up today, and someone calls me and say that I was BLOGGED about.
ROFLMAO
She blogged about me asking that question on what “kind of person” would ask ”if bloggers fake giveaways” (*raising hands, me!)…well, the one who just listened to you tell me that you give your prizes to your friends. LOL! I know this comes because we have about $4500 worth of prizes for our launch and she is jealous, but we have been working our BUTTS off around here!
In fact, here is a photo of my desk…check the sponsor spreadsheets. This was the only way we could keep this organized. Thats EIGHT PAGES for August listing our contacts, emails, website, gift and value of gift on each page.
The Now and Ethics:
First of all, I went to college and have a BA In Criminology and a year of Paralegal school. I am about the most honest person you will meet (minus that whole high school incident)…my entire life has been associated with studying CRIME. I have worked for Dayton-Hudson in security cameras (target) and then when I left that field, I worked in the education field where I signed people up for medical and legal classes. I also run an online business, and I would venture to say 10% of you have been to my site or bought from me, and you already know how serious I take my business- I bring the same courtesy here.. I wanted to make clear that THIS site does not fake giveaways….nor will we be passing out prizes to blogging “friends”. In fact, I am a forum girl, so I don’t really have that many blogging people I know well (yet-trying to get to know YOU!). And yes, we WILL have contests where I pick the winner who gives me the best answer, but you will KNOW that so you can provide the best or most creative answer, but the majority of MomDots contests will be done by Random.Org with lots of oppurtunities to enter.
We list our sponsors on the side and any one of our companies would vouch that not only are they providing us with a giveaway, but that we have asked them to HOLD ONTO THEIR PRIZES so we do not come into contact with them personally. We do not have items sent to us unless its for a review, but instead, ask all the companies to keep it until they are given contact info. After we have a winner, we ask them to join the forum or email the momdot email address and we then email the company and the person together in the same email and intro them to each other to take care of their exchange. We have opened a forum so we know for sure that our winners have received their items and the companies have followed through on their giveaways and that our users can interact with each other and provide information on how that giveaway went. Additionally, its our responsibility to make sure if someone won something, that they get what they were told they won, so we believe its professional to have a follow up system to make sure all gifts were recieved.
We have checks and balances on MomDot, and work with people we know AND new people we just met, so we can all keep each other accountable, check the spreadsheets, and make sure that this site continues to give Moms out there the best in Blogging, Boutiques, Reviews, and Contests! Rest assured, I don’t believe the majority of bloggers take their prizes and keep them, but there will always be a small percentage that gets into it just for that.
We had SO many sponsors for our giveaways and I posed this question, that one one sponsor who offered six of an item, I specifically asked her if I could give three of those to MomDot Team Members for their hard work and do a giveaway for 3 of them, and she said yes. Please know that every effort will be done to check and double check that the person who won, did it fairly, and the person we give it to, we are not affiliated with (as a team member) unless it has been approved by a sponsor. We do allow our forum Moderators to enter their blogs into blog contests, because they do not actually write or come into contact with any sponsors, they are only for assisting bloggers with questions on the forum on “how tos” on their pages, and putting up fun content.
I also wanted to mention that MomDot does all of this for free. Yes, we do have paid advertising for front page 125/125 ads for those NOT sponsoring contests, but its very minimal and with three people working on this blog, we may make 2cents an hour if someone buys one..not glamorous.
Its all for the LOOOOOOOOVE.
Trisha
ps i thought i left the drama behind in the forum.
pss our site is not about contests, btw..its about the bloggers. We are just lucky enough to score some fun giveaways for all your help in supporting us. There is no way on this great earth we can give away 5K worth of stuff monthly..its been very, very time consuming.
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lmfao! oh, blogger, that is too funny! I think you sound like the most patient person in the world. I am so glad I happened upon this story, it was very amusing. I know, I know: it can’t have been that amusing for you and for that I am sorry. But you must know that this whole story makes this crazy pair of sisters look bad: not you! As I said, in reading this account I can tell what a patient person you are.
Me, personally: I enjoy blogging alone. I am one of my only fans, personally and my blog is so juvenile that nobody would want to be on a team with me! lmfao! but I do understand where you are coming from and I’m sorry you fell victim to crazy bloggers.
Rock on! Love this story!
Wow, I guess I am a trusting person also, I never would have guessed that people fake a giveaway. Sheesh, what is this world coming to!
Trisha I dont know if I missed it before haha I’m a Criminology major right now! I should e-mail you about what’s going on in our apt complex right now-it’s lots to analyze if you will!
wow. this is some crazy drama!
I run A LOT of giveaways on both my blogs and have heard about people running bogus contests just to increase traffic. However, I never thought it would hit so close to home.
I have had a couple of situations where 1. the company went out of business & 2. the item that the company sent got lost in transit. In both cases, I ended up compensating the winners out of my own pocket. It’s the fair thing to do.
If you’re going to hold giveaways, it’s your responsibility to make sure it’s fair and the winners get what they’ve won. Period.
OH, why can’t people just grow up??? It works so much better when we all work together to help each other. I love promoting others blogs on my site and having guest bloggers. No DRAMA allowed!!!
I also cannot believe people would FAKE giveaways!!!!! I love doing giveaways and seeing all the happy readers of our blog win stuff. I can’t believe someone would do this. Yes, I’ve had friends win stuff but they need to enter like everyone else and I use random.org and they just may be lucky # picked to win but I cannot believe someone would fix it. ERRRR!!!! It makes me so mad that stupid people would do something like this that would then call all bloggers into question. Can you tell I’m MAD?!?!?!?
That’s a sad little person that would do that. Glad you found her true colors when you did. I BELIEVE most people are honest. At least I hope they are.
I vote for a new mantra…
“Save the drama for your Momma”
Dawn, i know you are..i did a giveaway w/ you for my business!
I definatly recommend you, you were great to work w/ .
trisha
All of my giveaways are legit! Typically, I have the boutique owner who is giving way the prize pick the winner or a random number, whatever they choose to do, since, ya know, it’s their prize. On the rare occasions I have selected the winner, I ask someone to pick a number between 1 and… It works for me.
jeez!!! sorry she was like that.
really why waste your time with drama that’s not needed in your life, come on ppl.
HUGS
Well I might be new to blogging and I’ll be the first to admit I’m a dork and don’t know what I’m doing half the time but I do know right from wrong and have always done right as far as I know! I think it’s rotten of someone to do something like that and it’s just as bad to act like that towards you for questioning it! It never crossed my mind that you guys would ever do anything so low and I’m sure others feel the same way! Have a great day and don’t think about that crazy girl anymore!
WOW!! This is GREAT! Thank you so much for this post. I was wondering how such a nice lady could possibly be posting on that blog. Thanks for shedding some light!
Oh WOW. Count me in the naive group – I have done one or two giveaways myself and had a blast doing it (my son drew from slips of paper)…it never occurred to me that people would pretend to give stuff away and never actually do it – that is totally sad. Sad that they think this is how you get people to like you. Yikes.
I’m going back into my bubble now…
You know, i should put up a black list. Hmm, let me talk to the others about it. But, I think the best way is to just ignore those bloggers. I am afraid i will send them traffic and they are undeserving of ANY traffic whatsoever from us.
Vicki, the funny thing is, I won a gift on her site…and when I said, OMG, i won..i said, you didnt have to give this to me!?? and she said “oh, you won becuase you had the best comment”. In fact, that entire conversation was on a forum in front of other people. I made a big deal baout it and she said that i won becuase i had the best comment….but now I know that she just picks people to please them. If I hadnt gifted the prize to someone, I would give it back becuase its like dirty money.
Honestly I think this untruthful blogger and her sister should be brought to the limelight. It’s not good bloggy practice to keep prizes or give them to friends. I had never even thought of doing that when I’ve given something away. We, as a blogging community, policing ourselves, need to know not to visit these sites in hopes of actually winning something. I don’t know how to go about doing this without bringing publicity, necessary and unnecessary to these bloggers. Is there a way to contact their ISP to let them know they’re stealing? Is there a way to contact their former contest sponsors to let them know that the prizes didn’t get given away as promised? I know that’s a lot of work, but these ladies must be stopped.
NOW. I thank you so much for posting and detailing MomDot’s policies. You girls rock for all the effort and time you’ve put in to this.
Thanks!
so head over to http://www.juststopscreaming.com and you can see the situation i have gone through with blog contests, I dispise dishonesty and lying especially when it affects other people
I can for one stand up and say that Trisha is a very reliable and honest person. I know about 50+ other women who would be here in an instant to back that up also. And Toni, And Alicia, All great women. Honest.Loyal.NON SCAMMING women! Fake Giveaways!?! not at momdot!!!!
Holy crap! It would have never occurred to me that there are MOMS scamming MOMS. That is just mucked up on too many levels.
1. I’m assuming this person/group is not participating in the forum?
2. Certainly any innocent/mis-guided links to them would be deleted from those posts?
Now for the scary part…you are totally freaking me out. We MUST be sisters from another mister or separated at birth or some other phenomenon. Now only do we both love us some finely coiffed big hair, but my background is criminal justice! Seven years as a deputy with our local Sheriff’s Office (pre-mommy).
Rest assured, she will NOT be in our listings here.
No, I was kind enough to not use it…but mainly becuase I wont give her any traffic from us. kwim?
Did I miss a link to this person who’s blogging about you?
Wow, I’m shocked that someone would host a fake giveaway. As I slowly ease into reviews and giveaways, this has me concerned. I would have never of guessed!
Thank you for all of the hard work you do! This is a great place!
Wow! Interesting – I guess I would fall in the honest and niave category as it’s never crossed my mind that a giveaway would be fake. Ha!
Well, I’m just glad I saw your banner on another site and decided to check it out. It’s great here and I’m happy to have joined the crowd.
But really, I guess since bloggers are people too, you are going to get all sorts – hence the blog wars.
Thanks for the hard work – even if it’s not making you rich (yet), I’m very grateful for the work you are doing.
This is the saddest thing I have ever read, that people with whom you have associated have made comments such that you would feel the need to defend yourself and what you’re doing. Anybody who has visited here for 5 seconds can see that it is entirely a labor of love. Geez. Ignore the turkeys.
OMG hahahaha hmmm I should blog about winning and not receiving a prize, being offered another prize from their site then accused of extorting b/c i pointed out a prize I wanted based on them telling me to *wink* about any prize I wanted to win from them to make up for not getting my first prize.