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There are some great contests going on around the blogosphere right now so check these out: 

John Chow Has Impressed Me … Again!

By now most of you know that John Chow stopped by here to show his support for my quest to become Blogging Idol and even went on to blog about it. Well, now he REALLY has my attention. He is holding the best online contest I’ve ever heard of and quite frankly if you don’t participate you just might not have a heart.

He has teamed up with a company called XR.com ~ they are the newest and greatest Tiny URL company and they’re really starting off with a bang. In fact, if you are the drawing winner, they are going to donate $5,000 to the charity of your choice AND give you $1,000 to spend as you please. If you don’t know what a Tiny URL is you’ve got to check this out. It’s a service that will shorten URLs for you ~ so instead of seeing http://www.johnchow.com/6000-contest-from-john-chow-and-xrcom/ you will see xr.com/nvg and it will link to the same page. Pretty darn cool huh? If you use Twitter this is especially helpful since you only have 140 characters for your tweet but they can also be used in forum signatures and all kinds of places online.

If I’m the lucky winner I will donate the $5,000 to Teen With a Dream which was started by a friend’s teenage son, Spencer, during his battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. After experiencing, “extended periods of social isolation in a less-than-cheerful environment” he realized the need for other pediatric cancer patients to have laptops, games and activities, candy to help alleviate the bad taste chemo can generate, cool hats for those coping with hair loss, gift cards, and other items to help children keep their minds off this very long and painful process. This charity does a whole lot more for these kids and you can read about that on their Teen With a Dream website. As for the $1,000 … I think I’d have to go with a pink laptop! Go ahead and laugh but if I’m going to stare at the darn thing 15-20 hours a day … it might as well be pretty (and my boring black on is crapping out on me)!

So … go read the rules and good luck “paying it forward” this year … it’s the right thing to do and you know it!

Nspeaks.com ~ Ninja Affiliate Plugin

If you were eyeballing the Ninja Affiliate Plugin that was in my drawing but you weren’t fortunate enough to win a copy … you have another chance. This is a great plugin! In fact, I really want this thing for myself so you’re lucky I’m even passing this contest on to you. LOL. Go check out Nspeaks.com and all you have to do is subscribe via RSS email and leave a comment that you’ve done so. If you win … you owe me … I mean … you’re welcome!

StandoutBlogger.com

This one is not quite as easy to enter but there are some great prizes and it’s different and fun! Tom with StandoutBlogger.com is hosting a Film Festival for Bloggers and it’s going to get pretty good. I can’t wait to see the creativity everyone comes up with. Go check it out and if it’s something you’d like to do but you don’t know how to make a video … let me know in the comments and maybe it will prompt me to do a post on some video basics … enough to get you started anyway.

A Purse Inside a Purse? Why Didn’t I Think of That!

Sandy, with Organize with Sandy, is hosting a great giveaway of a Pouchee and I really want it! Ladies … this thing is awesome! You can organize all of the necessities for your purse and it fits inside your purse and then when you change handbags all you do is move the Pouchee out and put it into the other purse. Guys … you don’t have to “get it” at all … but you should know that this thing makes an awesome gift so go check it out anyway. If you win … you’ll be a hero (or feel free to send it right to me). LOL Earn drawing entries for subscribing to her blogs, adding buttons, blogging about it … you get the idea and you can read more and enter here.

A Market Leverage Contest on SuzanneFranco.com?

Today I received an email from Dina with Market Leverage letting me know that they weren’t able to “sponsor” me for the Blogging Idol contest but that they’d be interested in helping me out with a contest here on SuzanneFranco.com. Wow! That’s cool. If you’re not familiar with the super prizes that Market Leverage puts up for grabs … trust me … you’re not going to want to miss out. In fact, let me know what your favorite ML prize is so I can go to bat for your guys! Stay tuned …

OK … that’s it for now. Are you hosting a contest? Do you know of any other great contests going on? What do you think of these? Do you plan on entering any of them (other than the John Chow/XR.com because you just HAVE to do that one … I said so!)? Let us hear from you in the comments. *SmiLes* Suzanne