I received a lovely email recently from 12 year old girl asking if she was allowed to enter giveaways that are hosted on BlytheLife.com.

The official policy on BlytheLife.com (and you and your parent or guardian can find more information on the Privacy Policy) is that we do require that minors have permission from their parents or guardians prior to entering giveaways. I do not require individuals to mail in identification to validate their ages and honestly, I don’t want to take that route either. The moment that anyone enters a giveaway on BlytheLife.com, the person is declaring that they have read the giveaway information and other relevant (read: Privacy Policy) information on the website, and thus agreeing with having either permission or being in the age of majority.

If you would like to enter a giveaway on BlytheLife.com and you are under your own country’s age of majority, please ask (and receive!) permission first. This is especially important as if you were to win a giveaway, you would be required to provided your mailing information (name and a valid mailing address) to the person/people sponsoring the giveaway.

If you are the parent of a child who loves Blythe and would like more information regarding how giveaways are handled, please contact me.

This question has been asked more than once in more than one type of wording, so I figured I should better address it.

The answer, in short, is yes. If you’ve won a giveaway previously, you can enter a current on-going giveaway. Having won a giveaway does not decrease your chances of winning again (it also doesn’t increase it), as winners are chosen randomly by an unbiased and random internet website.

Some giveaways may have more restrictions than others (i.e. only people with USA or Canadian residency may enter), but other than that, everyone is free to enter as many contests as they wish – provided you only use one (1) valid email address.

Anyone caught using multiple email addresses for a contest to get more entries will be disqualified without wait for an explanation and will be further disqualified from future contests held on the BlytheLife.com website. So don’t cheat!

I was asked recently, via emails and a comment, why Twitter is used as one of the methods for entering giveaways that are held on BlytheLife.com. The short answer is: because it’s easy to track entries (plus it’s a great way for getting the word out about contests).

Twitter is a fantastic method for getting the word out about contests due to simple math. If I tweet on the @blythelifecom account about a contest, that message reaches over 100 people. If even a quarter of those people retweet to their followers, that’s ~25*(average number of their followers) = way more people than the people who follow @blythelifecom. By making retweeting a method for one of the entry methods in a contest, it both gets the word out and it’s very easy for people to do.

Now, it has been brought to my attention that not everyone uses Twitter or wishes to use Twitter. You don’t need to follow specific accounts or tweet in order to enter a contest. Those are bonus entries and the most important thing is enjoying the interview and commenting on that. Everything else is gravy to me because the most important thing to me is that people read the interviews and articles on this website.

Since the first few giveaways, I have incorporated other methods of entering contests (beyond commenting about the interview itself) and those include (and are not limited to): commenting about someone’s website/shop, subscribing to a website’s RSS feed, making suggestions, etc.

If you have any suggestions regarding what other methods of entries I could try to implement into a future giveaway, please let me know by commenting either below or via the contact form!

I’ve been contacted a few times by visitors via the contact form who have asked if I follow any sort of schedule when it comes to posting.

The short answer? Yes. And no.

I know, it’s confusing, but if I do a little breakdown, maybe it’ll make things more clear.

Just an example of when posts generally go up:

• Blythe On A Budget, which is a weekly article column, used to be sporadic in terms of which day it went up, now it’s pretty much set onto Wednesdays.
• Interviews generally go up either on the first of a month or on a weekend.
• Contests last for a week, unless otherwise arranged with the person providing the prize, I announce the winners the day after the contest ends.

I aim for about 3 posts per week: Blythe On A Budget, maybe some of my musings, other site news or contests or articles or just things that I think should be mentioned. I always welcome guest posts! If you’re interested in contributing to BlytheLife.com, you can check out more information here for general contributions and the ways you can give back and the guidelines for writing articles. Some weeks obviously have less than 3 posts and there is the occasional week where there are more 3, it does vary quite a bit. I don’t blog daily due to other commitments and time constraints. Any non-giveaway or interview posts will generally go up on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays.

The best way to know when there are new posts is to either follow @blythelifecom on Twitter (all new blog entries are tweeted there with a link!) or to follow the BlytheLife.com RSS feed – you can use your RSS reader of choice when following via the RSS feed.

You can also access BlytheLife.com on your mobile phone, if you have data/wifi access, as I’ve installed a plugin that allows you to view the website in a mobile-friendly version while catching up on all the latest news – the URL for the mobile version is the same as the one you entered to get here.

I have received more than a few emails or comments through the contact page from people asking why I don’t mention new Blythe releases or show the photos here on BlytheLife.com. I’m sure it seems like a pretty standard thing to do, a new Blythe is released and this is a Blythe fansite, so why don’t I include the information about it?

There are a lot of different places that you can get informed about new Blythe releases that include, and are not limited to: Flickr, other blogs, the official Blythe website (in Japanese and English), on Blythe forums and even Twitter (depending on who you’re following).

I made the decision when I started BlytheLife.com to do everything by the book. That is, if you look at the very, very bottom of the page, I’m try my best to respect the copyright and trademarks regarding Blythe when it comes to Hasbro, Cross World Connections Ltd. and Takara-Tomy.

I did try contacting Takara-Tomy over getting written permission to post the promotional photos of new (and old) releases on this website and since asking them (in July 2010), I have not received permission to do so and thus I have decided not to do that.

All photography used on BlytheLife.com is with the permission of the owners of the photos. All photos used in articles and interviews are used with permission (for all interviews, the person that I am feature is responsible for gathering photos and seeking permission from the photographers).

If I were to copy the promotional photos from the official Blythe website, that wouldn’t be doing what I set out to do, nor would copying and pasting the information regarding the new releases.

If you are interested in finding out information regarding new releases, you can find the official news at blythedoll.com.