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Quote: "We learned a lot from last year and as much as we would like to keep Free Day simple and clever, we’re not going to. Here are the rules for Free Day 2011:

1. First and foremost, we want to give back. We grew by over 50% from 2009 to 2010 so we figured we’d increase the pool by as much. We are going to be giving away $150,000 to users and potentially $30,000 to charity. Our Goal: Get as many new people introduced to SparkFun as possible.

2. Numero dos: We have some amazing customers who have been with us from the beginning and we'd like to show a bit of appreciation. We are going to offer $10 credit for every year (365 days) since your first order. Let’s say you bought something on January 2nd, 2006. You will be offered $50 to claim on Free Day 2011. Goal: To reward customers who have been with us since the beginning. You know who you are (Bill aka phalanx, our fantastic forum moderator).

3. We want to educate people of the basics of electronics. We will be asking a series of different questions on Free Day. When you get a question right, $10 in credit will be instantaneously added to your account. For every question you get wrong, you lose $3. Skipping a question is $0. Limit is $100 per customer or when the $150,000 is given away. These are not trivia questions, these will be very basic knowledge questions about hardware and how to use it. We will be describing the importance of the problem, how to solve the problem, and then ask the reader to solve a similar problem. Checkout the Bite Sized Primer tutorials for some of the material we'll be basing the questions off of. If you're a regular user, you know all this by heart! Goal: Educate new users on the basics.

4. On Free Day, you will be given the option to either take the ‘gimme’ money based on your account age or try for $100 by answering questions. You cannot do both. Remember: We may give away all the money before you can answer the full 10 questions. Which will you choose?

5. All credit must be used within 60 days of Free Day: This will give you time to spend your credits on what you really want. It will also help me prevent a mutiny in shipping. Last year's Free Day was wickedly painful for the awesome people in shipping. By spending your credit throughout two months, you will help us spread out the packaging of orders a bit.

6. For every question answered correctly, we will donate $2 to a collection of three local, international, and technical charities: The Gathering Place, The Hunger Project, and The X-Prize. Goal: Encourage education and at the same time give cold hard cash to folks that need it.
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