The Art of the Blog Giveaway (Part One): Why give stuff away on your blog?

I know a lot of bloggers who give stuff away just to give stuff away.

And if your purpose is to simply give stuff away that’s great.

But if you are trying to build an audience, a giveaway is a great tool and you really should learn how to use it effectively. Hence, the next little series on our journey.

This is one I think I’m particularly adept to speak on because: 

1. I’ve had many successful giveaways
2. I’ve had many unsuccessful giveaways

I’m a big believer in failure. It teaches you how to change for the better. Plus, it gives a person(like me) the opportunity to share said failures with you so that you don’t fail at the same things.

So let’s begin at the beginning. Why give away stuff at all?

• Because people like getting free stuff
• Because people will like YOU for giving them free stuff
• Because contests make people happy, even though they know statistically it’s unlikely that they will win
• Because people tend to want to share “deals” (or giveaways) with other people
• Because giveaways can be beneficial for you, your readers and the company whose products you’re giving away

Wait…beneficial for me? How?

In my last series I talked about how bloggers make money. And they make money partly by doing reviews/hosting giveaways. I’m not going to speak much more about that except to say that for the average beginning blogger you’re probably going to do your first giveaway with absolutely NO payment to you involved.

And that’s ok! Sometimes your benefit is to make connections that will later garner income. Simply put: sometimes you have to scratch backs.

But if you structure your giveaway in a strategic way, you stand to also gain visibility, Facebook likes, Twitter follows, Google Adsense income. It really is up to you.

So in this series we’re going to talk about how to run an effective giveaway. But first I should go over the basic principles (in my view) that govern giveaways. I will put the caveat out there right now that most of my giveaways violate these basic principles but I’ll explain why (and how that works to my benefit) as we go along.

1. People are inherently lazy, especially on the internet.
2. People don’t read. That means they probably won’t read the rules of your contest.
3. The requirements for contest entry should be commensurate to the prize given and people expect that (translation: for bigger prizes, people expect to have to jump through more hoops.)
4. People generally don’t respond to giveaways they don’t think they have at least a reasonable shot at winning (even if it is by random drawing)

 So, how does all this apply to you, the blogger who is trying to build an audience? Stay tuned to find out!