All things eco make for good publicity, so little wonder there's an ever increasing number of green awards and competitions popping up.

Here are three of the latest.

As ever with competitions, before entering read the smallprint to check that ownership of your Intellectual Property will be protected. Or that even if you're going to give away rights, or equity (ownership of the business), the terms are going to work for you.

The Walmart / Edison Nation Live Product Search

There's a $25 fee to enter this but look at it as a fair admin charge to pay to have some experts assess your product idea for a giant in the giant US market.

You'll stand to win a minimum $2500 upfront payment and expert help from Edison Nation to develop your idea. Plus a share of the royalties on sales into the future.

Entry closes 31 July 2009, and is open to entries from outside the US

Even if you're not ready to enter a competition, it's well worth reading Walmart's product guidelines. They show what the mainstream market is definitely looking for and should give you food for thought for must-have elements in your own eco idea.

Read more about the Walmart / Edison Nation competition here

The Yahoo / Edison Nation Live Product Search

Yahoo are sponsoring this search for a product that has an innovative "good" element so there's a reduced fee of $10 per entry.

Edison Nation's expert panel will assess your idea for supply into any of the large manufacturers and US retailers they have connections with. It gives more chances of success and reach than just the Walmart competition.

Again the prize deal is $2500 upfront, help developing your idea and a share of royalites on sales.

Entry closes 30 June, and is open to entries from outside the US

Read more about the Yahoo / Edison Nation competition here

The Good Entrepreneur

Financial services provider Allianz and financial news channel CNBC have partnered to launch a new business competition to recognize entrepreneurs across Europe who have environmentally responsible business concepts.

There's a prize package of 250,000 Euros, which tells you this competition is aimed at scaleable, big-time ideas.

Even if you just make it to the final, being featured in a four-part TV series that will show across Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia is going to get you and your idea off to a brilliant start.

Anyone based in Europe can enter through the Goodentrepreneur website www.goodentrepreneur.com You'll need to complete an entry form and submit a 60-second video pitching your idea.

The competition just kicked off on 8 June, the closing date for entries is 31 July 2009, with three finalists being announced in August 2009, and TV broadcast in the autumn.

Read more about the Good Entrepreneur Competition

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Tips for Winning

Just to stress, ANY innovative product or business idea has more chance of winning a competition, or even investment, business partners or licensing deals, if it meets a number of key criteria, see some of these below:

• It's more than just a good idea. Many customers must be clearly demanding this type of product or service already.
• You've developed it past being simply a concept in your head. The more work you've done in describing it, researching the market, documenting your research, drawing out your idea etc, the more credible it becomes.
• It has a compelling and unique feature(s) that is strongly protectable. A patent gives stronger protection than a registered design, for example.
• Its features must work for the "middle men" too. So it must, for example, make sense alongside a retailer's existing products or in their display systems.
• It's development or prototyping costs shouldn't be so high that the whole project becomes too risky.

You can read more about the key ingredients of winning new product ideas here