I’ve had a few people ask us where the Serendipity’s have gone as there haven’t been any the past few weeks. Well, they’ve been sort of ‘redone’ in a way that will offer a lot more dolls via a raffle type system AND is a fully automated sort of deal (which is a yay! for me – it sends out the invoices and EVERYTHING!). So, from now on now there will be a regular upload (hosted on Big Cartel for now until our new site is ready) and then after we will put up more dolls for sale via raffle on our site hosted by Hyenacart. I hope to split it up around 50/50.
So far most of the response has been VERY positive. We are really digging the ‘OMG- I can’t believe I finally got a doll!!” and lots of ‘I never ever get chosen for anything!!’ – lots of newbies and others who’ve been feeling no hope with our uploads ( slow connection, daytime uploads, etc). We’ve been really liking it.
There has been a few glitches in the system that have come up. Last week 2 people got two dolls and someone told me that someone put their name in and it didn’t show up. These things aren’t the best things to happen – I know – but it seems to be working well for 90% of the time. It’s not perfect but nothing is I’ve realized (lots of heartache over imperfect ecommerce sites!! My one before I switched to Big Cartel would sell the same doll to 3 people! I have a LOT of web traffic and systems tend to glitch a bit when it get’s heavy) . If someone does get two dolls then I put the other doll in the following week – so it works out. And if someone doesn’t see their name then they can email me or Hyenacart support and we can figure it out. I just love the raffle style a lot and so do lots of our customers.
So, now after the upload they raffle dolls will be going up. They will stay up Saturday and have staggered end times on Sunday. There will be previews on Thursday night for both so you will know what is going where.
For the raffle dolls there will be ONE entry per household PER doll. Dulpicate entries will be deleted. If you are chosen you are sent an auto email with an invoice – easy peasy 🙂 You can enter in for whichever dolls(s) you want but only ONCE per listing/doll. On the off chance that you are chosen to win 2 dolls (like what happened last week) then you would choose the doll you want most and the other one would be put into next week’s drawing. I hope this is clear!
Karen, from Hyenacart will be posting on my Facebook wall soon (probably late tommorrow night) about her system so we can discuss if you have any questions. Here is what she has to say about the raffle system 🙂 LOVE Karen from Hyenacart – amazing support!
The way a winner is chosen in the Hyena Cart drawings is random, but deterministic. This means that winners are chosen by a very specific formula, but one in which the inputs are completely random for each listing. Thus, once all entrants have entered the drawing, and the drawing ends, the winning entry is already determined based on information in the database related to the listing, and the number of entrants. This number is calculated as a number only and has nothing to do with the email addresses or user id’s of the entrants. It can’t be influenced by the seller, or the entrants. It also can’t be predicted ahead of time by the entrants as the formula is quite complex and involves several piece of information that are only found in the database and not viewable to the public. Finally, even if someone did know which position in the list of entrants to try for, there’s no way to predict how many total entrants there will be and ensure that that person enters and is in the right position in the list.
So why do we see multiple winners more often then we would expect to? It’s very similar to what mathematicians call the “Birthday Paradox.” It turns out that in a pool of 23 people, there’s over a 50% chance that two people will have the same birthday. Seem counter-intuitive? Here’s a great description of the paradox: http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-birthday-paradox/For Bamboletta drawings, let’s assume that there are 21 drawings, and 200 entrants each. In this situation, the probability that the same person would win two drawings is:
P = 1 – (200)!/(200-21)! x (1/200)^21Surprisingly, that turns out to be 66% or about a 2 in 3 chance that there would be a match!The chance that there would be two matches is 66%x66% or 43% and the chance of three matches is 29%, still better than 1 in 4.
So as unlikely as it seems intuitively, the odds are actually quite good that there will be someone who wins more than one drawing in a short period of time.
Thanks!
Christina
Leave a Reply