Free Stuff!

Guess what? My blog’s famous! Well maybe not famous, but at least one company has sought me out for an evaluation and review of their products. I’m excited – I love free stuff. For awhile, I thought the e-mail that turned up in my inbox asking if I’d be interested in evaluating products was just spam. When you live with dial-up you learn that you just can’t click on every link. There isn’t the time. But finally I caved because, you know, it offered free stuff. Well, not exactly free. I have to write a review. And since I’m not used to being offered any compensation for my writing, this seemed like a good deal. Of course it didn’t say that I had to write a good review and there weren’t even any prompts like, “here’s your free stuff in exchange for your glowing endorsement”. I even got to pick which products I wanted to review. Fun!

So the box from Ecostore USA arrived yesterday. Ecostore is a New Zealand based company that has just begun marketing in the US. I’ve contacted a friend in New Zealand for some official verification on their existence there, but so far they seem to be legit. They make environmentally friendly cleaning products for the home and body. The phrase “no nasty chemicals” is plastered all over their pages. I’m assuming that “no nasty chemicals” means that they only use nice chemicals and that some of those nice chemicals might even be organic. Since the box just arrived, I haven’t had time to study the items yet, but I’ll have the chemical engineer in the family give them a lookover. The Ecostore products were delivered by Fed-Ex and true to their word, the bill already said “paid.” Gotta love it. I was immediately impressed with all the environmentally friendly assurances about recycled packaging and paper. It doesn’t take much (especially when you’re giving me free stuff) to impress me.

OK, OK, enough about me and my free stuff, what’s in it for you dear reader? Free stuff! Really! Along with the products, I was also given a $25 gift certificate for products from the Ecostore USA website to award to one of my lucky readers! This trusting company didn’t even specify what you have to do to win – they left that up to me. I like the whole trust element. (There was no clause that said that Nick couldn’t win!). So since I’m hoping that I can get even more out of this promo, I came up with a great way to decide who gets the free stuff.

If you’d like to win $25 in free products from Ecostore USA, all you have to do is give me a good idea for a post. Some days my mind is scattered and it's difficult to gather up my thoughts and figure out what to write. This is my way of getting some more free stuff in the form of good ideas. So you send me an idea for something you think I should write about on this blog and I’ll enter your name in my drawing. If you send me more than one idea, I’ll enter you again for each idea you send. So that we don’t get any duplicate ideas, you’ll need to send your idea in the form of a comment to this post. That way you can see if someone already stole your great idea. When I write my review, I’ll post the name of the winner. Don’t worry, it’s all very official. I’ll let my kids oversee the drawing so that it’s all done fair and square. They’re the experts on what is fair and what is not and dividing things up evenly and what have you. Trust me.

If you’d like to check out all the products you could win, see the Ecostore website at www.ecostoreusa.com. I’ll be evaluating the aloe vera shampoo and conditioner and the automatic dishwashing powder. There are lots of other products to choose from so bring on the ideas!