I mentioned last week that I was still waiting for one more winner in my giveaway to contact me. Yesterday she did, just in time, as I was set to contact the backup choice today. So now I can announce all the winners!
Prize #1: Funky Fingers Glitter Toppers went to Cindi in Texas.
Prize #2: Salon Perfect Neon Collision Collection is heading to Sweden to join Emelie and perhaps make an appearance on her blog, Nails and All That Jazz.
Prize #3: SpaRitual Trio flew east to New Jersey to be a part of Alina's stash there.
Prize #4: Formula X Sextet was won by Stacy in Minnesota.
Prize #5: Orly Trio joined Prize 1 in going to Texas (it's a big, populous state); these will be gracing Elizabeth's nails there.
Prize #6: OPI Anniversary Duo will be crossing the border to Canada to be with Holly in Ontario.
Prize #7: Sephora by OPI Quintet is also going to Canada, but to Manitoba and Christine's stash.
Prize #8: Selections from Essence Aquatix went to Kathleen in Connecticut.
Prize #9: Essie Trio Featuring Flakies is the third package to go to Texas; they're now with Mel of Delicious Color (or soon will be).
Prize #10: Butter London Fash Pack Set went west to Colorado and Christina's stash.
Prize #11: Rescue Beauty Lounge Duo made record time and is already in Denmark with Maria of Maria's Nail Art and Polish Blog.
Prize #12: OPI Mad as a Hatter and Absolutely Alice will be going to Arkansas to live with Sarah (in a small city that coincidentally I once visited as part of a job I had years ago).
Congratulations to the winners, and I thank each of you who took the time to enter and especially those of you who added comments to your form, from a simple thanks to constructive criticism. I would not kept up this blog anywhere near as actively without the encouragement of those of you who read and comment.
A few data points:
1) Eight of the winners got their first choice prize; the remaning four got their second choice.
2) The most popular prize overall was #12, the OPI Alice in Wonderland glitters, with 18.5% of 1st Choice entries, 13.4% overall. #10, the Butter London Fash Pack, was a close second, with 12.8% overall, though it was third when considering just people's 1st choices, where it had 12.5% to 14.6% for the Salon Perfect prize pack. Third place overall was a dead heat between #2 Salon Perfect, #4 Formula X, and #7 Sephora by OPI.
3) #5 Orly was the least popular overall, with only 5% of entries. I'm curious how that might have been affected if that prize had more bottles in it, as when ranked on an "entries per item" basis, it was not at the bottom, #1 Funky Fingers was.
By the time my 6th blogiversary comes around, I will be retired, which means I should have more time for swatching and blogging but will definitely have less money for buying polish. There will still be giveaways, but whether they will be quite as big as this most recent one, I'm not sure. My current plan is to finally, finally do that blog sale I've talked about forever, and use those proceeds to fund my adventures here. I even set up a storenvy store before the whole Stripe debacle, so now I'm back to figuring out the best way to unload my excess pretties. I'd welcome comments with any suggestions you might have. Where do you look for stash sales? Do you like to buy single bottles or lots or both? If you've done a blog sale, what worked and didn't work for you? I'd love to hear any thoughts.
Congrats to all the winners!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway! There is no one here that carries the Funky Fingers brand so this was soo exciting for me. I love glitter.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe #5 was the least popular! The polishes are all gorgeous! I currently have polish on my fingers and toes, but I swatched them on paper (I know), and they are awesome. I only own one other Orly polish (I know, again), so I'm excited to try out the brand. Thanks again for the great giveaway!
ReplyDeleteCongrats to all the winners :-D
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great giveaway Karen! The polishes arrived yesterday, they look amazing in the bottles and I can't wait to try them! :)
ReplyDeleteI feel so lucky to have won Prize #11: Rescue Beauty Lounge Duo, my first pick - thank you so much Karen for this awesome giveaway!!
ReplyDeleteCongrats to the lucky winners! :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats to all the winners :)
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to the winners! For destash sales, I love buying a few polishes and not just one as shipping would be huge (provided that your destash sale is open worldwide though, it it's only in the US then I don't know how much shipping is). I like paying with Paypal as that's safe - that's all the suggestions I have! :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats on 5 years Karen!! Part of me can't believe it's been that long (I've been following you from nearly the beginning - yay for MUA!), but the other part of me can't believe there was a time KarenD wasn't a part of the nail polish world!! <3
ReplyDeleteI'm still using Storenvy to sell my polishes, so I might be able to help out a bit. If you don't want to deal with Stripe, set your store to not be visible in the Marketplace. I believe if you do that, you don't have to set up a Stripe account and you can just direct your traffic here to your Custom Storefront at Storenvy and just use Paypal.
I haven't updated my blog in nearly 3 years and needed the Marketplace to bring in sales, so I created a Stripe account and have worked with it. It's not my favorite - I much prefer Paypal - but it does work ok. Customers pay Stripe and Stripe transfers the money to your bank account within a few days. If I would have thought ahead, I would have opened a separate checking account for this, so I could easier keep track of my polish budget! Shipping is the stinker there though - Stripe doesn't have a built in shipping manager like Paypal does. I have used both ShippingEasy and Stamps.com and I think I prefer Stamps.com - it's just a bit easier to work with (they have a downloadable program to use that makes things a snap), but they are pretty similar overall. You have a buy a block of postage at once and then you continue to use that until it hits zero, then have to buy a block again. I prefer Paypal's shipping, where I can just pay for one shipment at a time, out of the funds I received. With Stamps.com, you have to input the customer's info for each shipment (to my knowledge, Storenvy and Stamps.com don't have an affiliation yet, so you can't import your orders), whereas with ShippingEasy, you can just import. I still find myself using Stamps.com a bit more though.
Also keep in mind that sales made through the Storenvy Marketplace take a 10% commission fee, and Stripe also takes 3% (just like Paypal), so if you can manage to keep yourself out of the Marketplace, I suggest doing it. I keep thinking I'll pull mine eventually, but then more sales will come in that way and I could always use the money, so I keep it open.
Hope I was helpful - you can contact me at normalgirlnails@gmail if you have any questions! :)