SparkFun has just announced a Free Day for 2011. Last year was the first time they decided to give away $100,000 in the form of $100 credits that melted down their servers and made the rest of the world (you know, the non-geek sort) ask what SparkFun was when it started trending on Twitter, Google, and every other form of digital communication.
Well, they’re doing it again this year, albeit quite differently. Mark your calendar for Thursday, January 13th at 9am Mountain Standard Time. But it’s not as simple as having your cart pre-filled and trying to bum rush the checkout pages. Now you’ve got options; take a loyalty payout of $10 for each year that has passed since you registered an account with them, or gamble for a $100 credit. The latter involves answering ten questions, rewarded with $10 for each correct answer and penalized $3 for each wrong answer. If you don’t finish all ten before the money runs out you get zip.
There’s several bits of good news here. First, they just picked up a new rack of servers which should help keep the website from crashing. Secondly, the prize money has been ramped up by %50 to a total of $150,000. And finally, if you choose to answer the trivia questions, $2 is being donated to charity for each correct answer. So study up on your electronic theory and you can help others while trying to help yourself.
[Thanks Diego]
I dont know how many thousands of dollars I’ve spent at sparkfun over the 5+ years I’ve been a customer. They really are a great company even if their markup on some of the smaller items is quite large.
@sev so you assumed that you’d get some free cash. There’s the problem. Your a retard for not understanding free day was a lottery. Seems everyone is entitled to something for nothing these days.
I clicked the quiz and realized that it wasnt happening, to make things worst i couldnt go back and grab my loyalty money. $150,000 for server load testing AND an online marketing campaign is not bad. Even if they sold out and put a single ad on the site theyd make money just by justifying the traffic. I loved sparkfun up until now they got some great products but this “free day” was just ridiculous.