For the last year, I’ve been a subscriber to a new venture called www.startupschwag.com. For a nominal fee they send out a monthly mailing that is similar to any gift bag you’d get at your typical web related conference – tshirts, stickers, keychains, etc.. all from new companies trying to get their name out there to the masses in hopes of angel funding. Well, when the service was first offered I was one of the original people to sign-up, figuring in the least I’d get something “interesting” from time-to-time, however have up until now been rather disappointed. The shirts are hit-or-miss, the stickers have repeated themselves, and I’m pretty sure the first package had 10x more content than this last one. Included with each mailing is a sheet explaining the contents of your bag and a brief bio behind the company that provided each product.

This week however I opened the bag to find a nice little surprise. Along with the usual tshirt (for Pownce actually – making this one of the “good months”) was the sheet explaining the contents but also including a line that there was also a “little something extra for a few subscribers.” I guess I’m just that lucky because the extra piece of schwag that was found in the mailing bag was none-other than a brand-new iPod Shuffle.

If this was meant as a way to get me posting about your service, well……it worked.

If not – then I’m happy to see that the monthly fees for products you probably get for free has finally come back around and you were able to provide those of us who’ve shelled out enough of our money for a service (which adds up to a lot when you consider the # of months in service and compare it against the quality of merchandise that was sent in return) with something that is in fact, pretty f’in sweet schwag.

Kudos, and thanks for the ipod. I already have one, so am currently thinking of what kind of contest I could offer it up as the grand-prize that would creatively benefit a non-profit. So far I’m thinking along the lines of finding a charity that could use a light homepage refresh/logo redesign and offering up the ipod + other prizes in exchange for contest submissions…. any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, go check-out www.startupschwag.com (and thanks).