Comments on: Give It Away, Now! Running Giveaways on Your Blog

By: nate

nate — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:18:00 +0000

i have to try it !

By: Mootle read “Distant Land of My Father” by Bo Caldwell | Keep calm….and blog away!

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 01:21:21 +0000

[...] I should do a giveaway of this book in conjunction with this post? I’ll just let my Mootle mind run wild over the idea for a [...]

By: AstroHerbalist Lisa

AstroHerbalist Lisa — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:53:23 +0000

Perhaps someone has mentioned http://www.RaffleCopter.com to keep track of giveaway entries? Also, wondering how on WordPress.com that you can have an automatic message that could deliver a password-protected eBook when someone signed up for the blog’s email list?

By: didibooksenglish

didibooksenglish — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:23:06 +0000

I just finished my first giveaway. I was participating in a Christmas Blog Hop. We were about 15-20 bloggers wrting posts about Christmas. I wrote about bibliophiles and the best originaly gifts to give them for Christmas. I held the giveaway at the same time. The blog hop itself was very successful for me. I got loads of views and 3 new subscribers, but most of all I made some really cool connections, while giving away the book that each participant desired. The participants wrote in the comment the book they would like to win. I send it to them via The BookDepository.com. Easy! I’ll definitely be doing more of them in 2013. Who wouldn’t like winning a free book or two.

By: Torrie Pattillo

Torrie Pattillo — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 02:53:05 +0000

Great post. Thank you

By: Sasha

Sasha — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:48:29 +0000

Thanks for explaining! I think it would be cool if WordPress.com did offer gift cards, though.

By: phdincreativewriting

phdincreativewriting — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:49:46 +0000

Thank you, Elizabeth. I saw the recommendation of “The Hat,” but it seems like a hassle to enter all the names. And I’m not sure she included “proof” by way of an image or link. Giveaways work on the honor system, but the image of the winning number gives a sense of true randomness to the winner.

I saw the Random Number Generator on other blog platforms where it seemed to work fine. Maybe that’s something WordPress can work on, especially considering the number of giveaways that happen…

Thanks again,
Kelcey

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:37:17 +0000

Hmm, it's true that certain code won't work on WordPres.com. Above, SJ suggests using The Hat.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:31:36 +0000

Ooh, very cool idea to make an event out of the drawing itself and post about it!

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:30:25 +0000

True, all the focus on “stuff” around holiday time bothers a lot of us. But check out Eric’s comment above – he used a giveaway to raise money for a charity.

I think that in the case of partnering with a blogger that sells products, the important thing is that you genuinely admire whatever it is they make. If you partner with anyone who approaches you with an offer of freebies, your readers won’t get much out of it.

In most cases, it seems bloggers use giveaways to increase engagement on their blog – what they get out of it is more readers, and hopefully more fans and active commenters.