Now that I have your attention...

May is the 5th anniversary of my publishing of articles, and I'm planning on celebrating it with something special. Part of the something special was to be a prize. I was thinking a nice iPod shuffle off Amazon, since it's practically the only decent thing I can afford; but am annoyed to discover they only ship to US.

So now I have to find something else... your suggestions accepted! I'd prefer it to be something I can get on Amazon, and it needs to be something under $80USD (incl. shipping). I thought puppetry books would be too dull for a prize, but it's practically the only thing reasonable for that amount. I'm keen on using Amazon mainly because I have a gift card saved up and it means I don't actually have to spend huge amounts of money myself. Normally I don't mind, but last month was a large dip in sales and I am trying to penny pinch

Alternatively, if any of you puppet sellers have something they wouldn't mind exchanging/giving to the winner for the $80 I'm happy to do a swap.

How about if you did miniatures of your awesome shadowpuppets?

Why not just make it an Amazon gift card? That way someone could use it for what they wanted.

I'm digging Rikka's idea Na. I'd much prefer a School of Puppetry design over something I could buy myself from the net 

How about if you did miniatures of your awesome shadowpuppets?

I did think of using my shadow puppets, but this prize is going towards something only on School of Puppetry. At this moment, I don't want to cross-promote the two. (It doesn't help that I'm caught between two other large projects at the moment and don't have anything made up)

Why not just make it an Amazon gift card? That way someone could use it for what they wanted.

I did also think of that. Two problems: I can't pay for the gift card with a gift card, and I'm trying to avoid shelling out the dough when I can just use my card to buy/ship to someone else.

The second thing is that the prize is also an incentive to buy patterns in the month of May, because people will get the chance to win it. Something tangible is better than saying "win a gift card" - vs "win an ipod".

I'm digging Rikka's idea Na. I'd much prefer a School of Puppetry design over something I could buy myself from the net 

Thanks! Sadly, you may not represent the typical customer... I know a lot of customers are teachers or hobbyists and might not prefer yet another SOP item but something a bit different. I'm hoping also that with this promotion it will encourage people who might not normally buy the patterns to do so.

Sigh... The one thing I really had in mind was to get someone else to do a puppet version of the SOP character in the logo, say a custom finger puppet or something, but there's no time or money for it. Maybe for the 10th anniversary

I wasn't going to directly say what I'm planning however, to put the above into context: for the month of May the patterns/ebooks will be $5. I was going to do a 'pay what you want' month but April has not been a good sales month. Every customer who has ever bought a pattern, by 31st May, will go into the random drawing to win the prize....

Here is a question... Who are you trying to target here?

I have the feeling that your first instinct of an ipod shuffle was right on mark and it is a shame it only ships to the US.  It would be great I think for bringing in new customers that may not be your traditional puppeteer.  Is that what your looking fro maybe? 

I would offer this... If you want to go with the ipod shuffle and end up with a winner that is not in the US you could have it shipped to me and then I would forward it on to whoever the winner was. I'll even cover the cost of the shipping to wherever it is going for you.

Man, stop doing that! Yes, I thought of that too... however I'm not going to hand over customer details to someone else. Trust is an important part of business, and no matter how trustworthy you are, it's just not right of me to give over contact info of a customer.



You are right though, the prize is to attract less-puppeteer people. The site seems to cater now more for beginners - at least for the moment and unintentionally - so shipping off a book or something might not be so desirable. But also, I think an ipod is more universal, whereas a book on puppet making might not be.

I'm currently looking to see if I can find a camera that might come under the same price range...

I've been making finger puppets to sell at an upcoming exhibition (loads of kids attend and they're far less expensive than my other work!). I'd be happy to give your logo a go if that would be helpful?

Thanks for the offer Lizzie. I'm not sure yet if I want to take you up on it. I have been looking at other Amazon products and have found something that might be suitable. Sadly Amazon doesn't clearly differentiate what products ship to 'certain countries' and what ships everywhere. I might just follow up on this first...

Ok here's something interesting...

Found an item listed under the category of 'international shipping' (as part of audio devices or some such). The product fit the price range, looked like a good prize, had lots of good reviews. And is listed as shipping to 'certain countries'. Unsure what exactly the word 'certain' refers to I checked with Amazon staff who have informed me the only way to know which countries the product ships to is with trial and error. That is, you try to buy it and if it doesn't work based on shipping, you'll find out.

Apparently there list of countries they ship to is only useful per product, and no product I looked at stated specifically what those countries are.

Sigh... Amazon, WTF is up with that?

Anyway, I'm back to being stuck again.