Often bloggers organize giveaway contests to build up traffic surge to their websites. But is it actually feasible to use this strategy. Most of the audience in this case is coming to you for an incentive. Will they remain loyal readers after the contest is over? I have tried a couple of them and while they were good from instant traffic point of view, they did not quite add up to the authority of my website. What are your experiences on giveaways?
Definitely, and is something I will be utilizing myself down the line.
It depends how you go about it. If you giveaway a prize every week then people will come back to see the contests. You will however get the giveaway junkies that only care about winning something for free.
To make it worth your while you need to create an action people need to do in order to enter.
Say you ask them to comment on a posts with their opinion in a certain amount of characters. This will off-put the "free riders" and should also stir up controversy between your loyal readers.
You also have the bonus of some people who come just for the giveaways who then end up being regular readers. The key is making the prizes related to your blog. So having a camera giveaway for a camera blog would be perfect. But an iPad giveaway for a gardening blog won't.
It's good for whichever company is donating the product being given away. There sure seem to be enough of them doing it...
There are some powerful strategies in doing giveaways.
Here's one example:
Say that you're using Rafflecopter for this. You may approach a company and say that you are willing to giveaway 1 or 2 or more freebies in exchange for a little bit of value depending on how many have registered for the contest (E.g. 250 participants will give you $100, 500 participants will get you $200, 1000 will get you $500, etc). You can show them how many page views you have and how big is your fanbase to get them conviced. Then if they agree and you do the giveaway, ask the company what they would like to know about their potential customers (think of it as they are paying for a survey and getting new leads). And there you have it.
Another case considers using the losing participants to buy the product at a cheaper price while you get a small commission.
Its very profitable actually.
