Bloggy Giveaway Carnival GUIDELINES

The next Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival is July 28-August 1!

Obviously, you can hold whatever kind of giveaway you want at your own site.  But if you're going to link up with this one, I ask that you follow these simple guidelines:

1.  The Bloggy Giveaway Carnival is simply a carnival. You host a giveaway at your own blog, for anything you like--something you've made, something you've bought, etc.  Be creative!  Make it something that is reflective of you. 

You will ask readers to leave a comment ON YOUR POST in order to be entered in your giveaway.  Then you'll leave a link to your giveaway post back here at the main "catalog" of giveaways. 

If this still doesn't make sense, you can go here and see the version of this Shannon did at her blog last summer.

2.  Go live with your giveaway anytime during the week of the carnival.  Leave a link directly to your giveaway post at the Mr. Linky at Bloggy Giveaways--it will be going up at 8 am CST on Monday, July 28.  Also, and this is important, you must link directly to your giveaway post in my Mr. Linky with a permalink.  Here's how you do it.   

3.  The post containing the links to all the participants will be at the top of my blog all week.  The idea being, of course, to direct as much traffic and comments your way as possible!  ;)

4.  Open your post for comments, and you can draw a winner from the comments you receive. 

5.  Please, this is a giveaway, not a SALE.  Items offered for sale instead of for free will be removed from the list.

6.  Please hold your drawing sometime during the weekend of July 28-August 1.  I will host a different Mr. Linky here beginning that Friday (August 1) so you can link over to your post announcing the winner, just to make it easier for everyone. 

7.  Please have your contest open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

8.  Items that will not be accepted as part of the giveway:

• Anything of a non-family-friendly nature.  If I'd be embarrassed for my kids to see it, I won't let you link to it from here.
• "Percent off" coupons.  Item must be offered entirely for free.
• Items that require any type of payment (even for charity) in return.
• Items clearly meant to poke fun at the intent of this giveaway carnival.  And I'm the final judge of that.

9.  As part of your giveaway, please cover the cost of shipping to your winner.

10.  While I expect that the majority of participants will be from the U.S., please note there will be several international participants as well.  I leave it up to you whether you want to open up your contest to international participants--the shipping, of course, would be more expensive.  Please be up front about this in your giveaway post. 

11.  Want to put the button on your site?  Just use this code:

<p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/2py6dg" target="_blank"><img alt="Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival Button"  src="http://tinyurl.com/2pespy" border="0" /></a></p>

12. Please place a link to BloggyGiveaways.com on your blog. Just placing the button in your post isn't enough. You need to have an actual link back here that is clearly labled Bloggy Giveaways.