Blingo Buzz: Winners

A recent Blingo winner sent us this nice email:

My friend had told me about www.Blingo.com and I didn’t believe her until I won. Then I thought it was just a joke until I actually received a $25 dollar Visa card from www.Blingo.com! It works!

Thanks Blingo!

Congrats, Abninder! We hope you enjoy your Visa Gift Card.

Here's what Christopher Lynn says on his blog:

Alright, I had my skeptical moments. Time after time I used Blingo to search and never did I feel a sliver of luck. But today I won! Yesseree, I won a $10 iTunes gift certificate.

Hey congrats, Chris! Read the whole post.

Once again people are sharing photos of their Blingo prizes on Flickr (Yahoo's photo sharing site):

• here's someone showing off a new iPod Nano,
• and even a Jedi Knight likes a free trip to the movies.

You can find more pictures of Blingo prizes just by searching Flickr for Blingo.

Did you know that if you win one of the larger prizes on Blingo, like an iPod or a PlayStation, you have the option of getting a Visa Gift Card instead? That way you can get your own prize, anywhere that accepts Visa.

That's what Megan did. She won an iPod Nano but took the $149 gift card instead, because she had a little something else in mind. What, you ask? Look at her site.

Congrats!

One of our biggest fans, Jake McKee, has a great job: according to his blog he helps the LEGO Company understand and communicate with its adult fans. Nice, huh? Since Blingo is located at the edge of Silicon Valley, we've run across many, many adult LEGO fans in our days. A choo-choo going around a programmer's desk is a fantastic motivator. No seriously.

Jake recently posted about his Blingo winnings on his blog, a frequently updated site full of interesting tech news and observations (and powered by software that Jake developed). We discovered his site back in April when he wrote lots of nice things about us, here, here, and here.

Thanks, Jake! We're glad it's paying off.

When Jaime started using Blingo as his regular search engine in September, he seemed pretty skeptical. But just a couple of months later, we won him over:

I questioned whether I would ever win after my previous post about Blingo, but sure enough tonight I hit the jackpot (if you consider a $10 iTunes gift certificate a jackpot). I don’t think a $10 gift certificate is too shabby for just doing a search that I needed to do anyways.
(via his blog)

Cool. Oh, he also mentions that he forgot what he was searching for when we interrupted him. No worries, Jaime. Next time just click "return to your search" after you claim your prize and we'll take you to your results as if nothing ever happened.

Hey look, a picture of an actual real live winner — not just the prize but the winner herself.

Congrats, twodolla, and congrats to your pals, and still more congrats to the other winning Flickr users who we've already mentioned.

Update: another winner appears.

This nice note arrived in our email box this morning:

i just got my $100 VISA Gift Card and wanted to thank you! Thanks to you, I was able to buy Mario Kart DS, a star wars collectible, and 2 large pizza pies for my friends and I. I still have $20 left! This was the very first time I've ever won anything and it feels great!

Congratulations! For some reason this note made us hungry.

We love the way people take pictures of their Blingo loot and show them to their friends online. Did you notice that Blingo photos have started popping up on Flickr? We noticed because our kind and excited users sent us the links.

Click here to see some of the recent photos and screenshots posted by Blingo winners. Then click "view as slideshow" in the upper right corner to see them fly past your face, Blingo style. And be sure to click some of the photos to see more by the same person. Neat.

(We found a few more using a Blingo advanced search.)

We know that Blingo sounds too good to be true — a search engine that returns some of its revenue to its users? Crazy. That's why we love to read reports from people who've finally been convinced. Check out this blog post:

For months, Golf Widow [one of Blingo's biggest fans] has been imploring us to join “Blingo” which is a Google-powered search engine .... I said, “no.”

But he continues:

Today, I went onto Blingo to search a user name from Buzz Net because I knew the user took it from Greek Mythology and I wanted to refresh my memory on that particular character. I won ten dollars for iTunes for myself and another ten dollars for Golf Widow.
(see the witty blog here)

Another recent winner has this to say:

Well, you know all those sites that if you use their search engine, or spam their links, etc that you could win prizes… Well most are of course spam and you never win, however I took a chance and signed up for Blingo.com. It looked okay. What they do is at random times through the day they pick winners who search. I’ve searched on it for about 5 days now and not won at all! However, at work this morning, i get a call from Melissa saying that she just won an IPOD Shuffle or a $100 Visa Gift Card. I was a little shocked. It was from blingo. She searched and won! What the hell? She wins and i don’t. My normal luck. However, on Blingo, for those on your friends list (ones your invite), if one of your friends wins, you win the same prize. So, she picked the $100 Visa Gift Card and i picked the IPOD Shuffle.
(see the blog here)

Congrats, to all of our winners! By the way, five days is not very long to be using Blingo. Most people don't win quite so quickly. At five days, you're still a newbie in our book. To those who haven't won, be patient. Over time your odds of winning are pretty good, but don't get frustrated if it doesn't happen immediately.

Have you seen our tips for winning?

From an iPod Shuffle winner that chose a Blingo Visa Gift Card (see the blog here):

Check it out...I got my Blingo VISA Card today :) $100 buck-a-roos. It took about 3 weeks to get here. I’m goin’ to the mall to spend it!

From another Blingo Visa Gift Card winner (see the blog here):

Cha Ching...Today I got my free Blingo Visa Gift Card in the mail.

And more quotes from around the blogosphere:

I won Blingo!! Really didn’t think I would and I was extremely shocked. It’s my default search engine on FireFox. I knew it wasn’t BS because my friend already won a VISA gift card and I got to chose between a movie ticket or a gift certificate for iTunes (picked iTunes). I’m pretty pleased :) Everyone should sign up; gift cards, ipods, playstations OH MY!
(see the blog here)

It really works...And yes, they really do send you one, and yes, a movie theater near you probably will take it. It’s awesome. That’s why you’re missing out if you aren’t using Blingo.
(see the blog here)

I was searching for “house training boxer puppies” this morning, and ended up winning a $25 VISA Gift Card through Blingo. Do you see how close I was to winning a damn iPod Nano? That would have seriously made my Monday a whole hell of a lot better.
(see the blog here)

Yep, I got my prize from Blingo today.
(see the blog with photo here)

OMG OMG!!! [from an Ipod Shuffle winner]
(see the blog here)

It works...Remember my ranting about Blingo a few weeks ago? My friend Katie signed up as my Blingo friend and then won me a $10 iTunes certificate. I just cashed it in and got a CD. It’s not a scam!
(see the blog here)

From a two-time Blingo winner:

You may remember that I had won a movie ticket from Blingo, which promptly got here within 3 weeks. Today I’ve won my second prize, a $25 Visa Gift Card.

See the rest of the post, including the winning screenshot here.

To prove Blingo works, this winner posted a picture of his prize. From his site:

Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Blingo delivers my two prize tickets as promised:

See the full post here.

From Robyn, an iPod Shuffle winner from Collinsville, OK:

When I won an Apple iPOD a few weeks ago, I elected to take the $100 Visa gift card instead. My daughter's birthday party is today, and I thought about how much that card would come in handy.

There are so many men, women, and children who will never celebrate another birthday, or relative's birthdays because of Hurrican Katrina.

This morning I donated the money on my check card to Habitat for Humanity to help aid in rebuilding efforts.

Thank you Blingo.

From Tamela, an iPod Shuffle winner from Covington, KY:

My Blingo Tale
I must confess, when I first received the email invitation from my niece to join (Blingo Friends), I figured there was some hidden catch, but I still downloaded the toolbar, and started using Blingo to search. Lo and behold, before a month was out, I won the choice of an iPod or $100 Visa gift card! I couldn't believe it! And my niece won too! She had signed up under her friend, figured it was too good to be true, and never downloaded the toolbar. Imagine how surprised she was to learn she won just because I used it and won! Now she uses it for all of her searches! I figured that when I went to claim the prize, I would be asked for money/credit card info for that notorious 'shipping' fee. Not so! I confirmed my email address and home address, and that was it! I chose the $100 gift card for my up and coming vacation. Thank you Blingo for coming through with your promises! I have spread the word!

Congrats, Tamela.

Another happy winner:

Yay! Drew won an iPod Shuffle from Blingo this morning… and you know what that means? I win one too!!!!! Yippee. I chose the $100 VISA Giftcard instead because I’d rather have the money and Brad has a Shuffle already. It should be here in less than 8 weeks so when it arrives I’ll take pictures and post them on my site :) . I’ll take some screen shots when I get home tonight if you guys don’t believe me ;) Until then, keep the dream alive and search your little hearts out on Blingo!!

See the blog here.

Nice blog post from a previously skeptical winner:

I previously expressed my disbelief that Blingo actually worked. I was surprised that I won my second day of searching. I’m telling you, after winning multiple prizes, Blingo is for real, so please don’t hesitate on taking an invitation from a friend.

There's more -- he also won an iPod Shuffle. Read the rest here.

Nice picture of some "Blingo Loot" from one of our winners.

See the full size photo with comments on Flickr.

Every once in awhile we get a real nice handwritten thank you letter.

Thanks Pamela!

This lucky Blingo user searched for his own name and took home a $25 Gift Card:

I had a vanity relapse yesterday and searched for myself in Blingo. I was hoping that my blog would rank #1 for my own name, but then again, I don’t really say my name very often in my blog...So I hit search, and noticed that parker posey and some other unrelated results came up. To refine my search a little, i just quoted my full name and hit search again, and BLAMMO!

See the post here.

An email from a HAPPY winner.

Oh my god, THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH. I was searching for information on Bluetooth tonight at like around midnight, and SUDDENLY I WIN A YEAR OF BLOCKBUSTER! OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH. I chose the gift card instead, and I am DEFINITELY going to keep using Blingo :)

You're welcome.

For awhile now I've been wondering what our winners (almost 4,000 of them) would look like on a map. So I decided to make one and I think it's pretty cool. It never ceases to amaze me how word spreads through the Internet -- Blingo winners are truly everywhere (a winner in every state).

Here it is - just click on it for a larger version. (A quick note to you detail-oriented folks who will try and count the pins: the pins represent zip codes vs. individual winners, so pins often have more than one winner.)

In the course of sending out thousands of prizes (we've sent out over 4,000 so far) you're bound to get a few returned. So far though we've only had three letters returned (seems pretty good). I have these three prize letters sitting on my desk, so if you're one of the following people please contact us and I'll send you your prize.

P Smithwick of Mesa, AZ
J Bosco of Pittsburgh
L Rayra of Shelby, MI