Gearing up for our 2nd Birthday Extravaganza here at Startup Princess and I find myself wondering… what is the best way to do blog giveaways? We haven’t really had much experience in this department, so I wonder, what have you done or seen that works well? What doesn’t? We have around 20 awesome prizes to giveaway during the month!! I’d like to do a few prizes a week or so.
To start off the discussion, I invite 3 of my favorite “Sarahs”:
Anyone else who has some suggestions, please chime in as well! We want to hear from YOU! 
I’ve always liked the idea of giving several entries for different things — one for leaving a comment and one for mentioning the giveaway in the blogosphere, for instance. This gives incentive to “spread the love” while also giving people an opportunity to just comment, if that’s all they have time for.
This is a little more difficult to manage, since you can’t just use a random number generator to choose the winner, but you might get more people involved. I’m definitely not an expert in blog giveaways though…just something I’ve noticed!
I have a friend of a friend that is at Tangled and True… a blog about “green” and hip mom products. They do givaways on a fairly regular basis and do it much like Sarah B noted above. You get an entry if you make a comment, then T + T posts the winners on the site a specified date so that they have to come back and check to see if they’ve won. They ALSO give away more entries on some of the bigger giveaways if you post their banner on your blog…a little harder to track, but may help get the word out to more people.
I also know that they use some online random generator to pick the winners.
Anyway, here is the link for T + T’s latest giveways. Maybe it will give you some ideas.
http://www.tangledandtrue.com/search/label/giveaway
Other things that I have seen that work, are giveaway games. Like “Guess the price”, “Guess the creator” and the first person that is the closest wins. Also, things like: “Tell us about your first sale”, “Tell us about your best boss” get people to share stories for what they win and can provide inspiration for others.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to ramble on.
Good luck, sounds like a lot of fun. And congratulations on turning 2!
Hello Sarah and Michelle, Thanks for the great suggestions!
Sarah, you’ve confirmed some ideas I’ve been thinking about–I think we’re going to do a few random number things and use random.org to select the winner
Michelle, thanks for reintroducing me to this T+T blog, I haven’t been there in a very long time. They do have great ideas there, thanks! We’re definitely going to incorporate some of these.
http://www.ThePioneerWoman.com blog has a lot of giveaways, over 8000 in her last one! Learning from her!!
I love contests that make people work for the prizes… but just a little.
My favorite contest (from the perspective of the contest holder!) was one I did for blogging t-shirt slogans. Anyone could enter (it didn’t require a blog) with just a little creativity, and the end result was a bunch of great t-shirts (so more than just a vehicle for prizes).
Every good contest should have some kind of goal, whether it’s increasing traffic, engaging existing visitors, generating leads, or even improving SEO, so the specifics of a contest will vary depending on what you want it to achieve.
With so many prizes, I like Sarah Bray’s suggestion of different prizes for different activities. As I hinted above, I think it’s essential to offer ways to win that don’t require a blog or any particular technical skills.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with!