I love contests and raffles of all sorts but I won’t do another giveaway on my blog or anyone else’s.
That may come as a shock to you but there are a lot of reasons. When you’re first starting out as a business owner, it can be tempting to say yes when someone asks if you want to take part in their giveaway. But most times that leads to more disappointment than sales.
Giveaways encourage people to look but not to buy. If you’re in the running for something, why would you buy it? Generally you wouldn’t want to end up with two identical necklaces, so why would the contestants?
The contestants don’t come back if they didn’t win. Even if the blogger is good enough to post about the winner, most people don’t return to the site to see if they won since they’ll be expecting an email if they win. So even if they had the intention of going back to the blog to see your work again, they’ll most likely forget.
Most giveaways aren’t marketed well. Some blogs DO get a lot of traffic and they may pull in hundreds of views, but most only get a few lookers. Is your product really worth 20 views?
Some bloggers will take advantage of you and ask for your product to review and THEN ask for one to giveaway. This just means they’re using their blog to rack up free things. You’ve worked too hard to just give it away!
You could end up sending a package to Malaysia. Sadly, I’ve been in this exact situation and it cost me over $40 to ship a $20 item.
So what am I doing instead of giveaways? I’m focusing on blog features instead. Each week I pitch my work to blogs, sharing the purpose behind my work and also my excitement about a new item. The blogger in return shares that same excitement and writes a great feature! It’s free publicity and it encourages people to look AND buy. Yes, there’s a bit of work in it for me to pitch so many blogs but it all adds up to some great coverage and I don’t have to give anything away!
{Featured image via Color Issue}
Why I Won't Do Another Giveaway,
Agreed 100%. Giveaways are a cheap way to get a short spike in views, but have little lasting impact.
I completely agree w/ you! great post:)
I think I will still do some giveaways. I was doing them every 2 weeks and I saw some of what you were talking about. However, because I have such niche biz and am only doing giveaways for my own products. I got a huge jump in rss and email newsletter subscribers. I think I was doing them too often, maybe less often make it really special, like it doesn’t happen often…it could work to your advantage.
I disagree and here’s why: Those problems can all be fixed and giveaways can result additional business and new fans. I just ran a very successful giveaway at the beginning of October that helped drive quite a bit of business to my shop and gained me new blog subscribers, facebook fans, and email list subscribers.
Problem: Giveaways encourage people to look but not to buy.
Solution: Have your giveaway item be one of a kind. I did a giveaway recently that had one of my necklaces with a special scene related to the giveaway theme painted on the pendant.
Problem: The contestants don’t come back if they didn’t win.
Solution: In the giveaway entry form (I use google documents to create one) put an optional checkbox to subscribe to your email list. Then after the giveaway ends you can take import the email addresses of those who opted in to your email list. I also mention subscribing or liking my facebook page in the blog post for the giveaway as a way to encourage new visitors to not forget about me.
Problem: Most giveaways aren’t marketed well.
Solution: This is pretty obvious: improve your marketing.
Problem: Some bloggers will take advantage of you and ask for your product to review and THEN ask for one to giveaway.
Solution: This one I actually agree with you on. I only run my own giveaways though I do approach other blogs to cover my giveaway (and since I run giveaways alongside sales I ask them to cover the sale as well) but only as a request I don’t offer or give samples for the coverage.
Problem: You could end up sending a package to Malaysia.
Solution: Only offer giveaways to residents of your own country, this is generally a good idea since laws vary widely around the world when is comes to things like giveaways.
I agree!! Been there done that.
Thanks for posting!