Giveaways – Key Elements for Contributors
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Any marketing effort where something is given away can be called a giveaway. But usually a ‘giveaway’ is a bigger event that some marketer organizes and many marketers join as a contributor.
The intention is to give something away in return for a subscription to a newsletter or email follow up series.
Basically it works this way.
- The organizer of the ‘Give Away’ event sets it up (usually using a script) on a couple of pages or even a special domain to host the event.
- In the pre-launch phase, before going public, this host invites other marketers to become their partners and contribute a gift like an Ebook, report, mp3 recording, free memberships, software, or whatever, that can be given away in exchange for an email address. These partners should also promote the event to bring subscribers to it.
- These marketers will prepare subscription and thank-you pages for visitors to sign up for their mailing list and to download their free gifts.
- The organizer of the giveaway compiles all contributions inside the member’s area where the visitors will be redirected to after signing up for the giveaway. From there they can select the gifts of their choice. When they click one, they will be taken to the contributor’s subscription page.
- Contributors and hosts promote the giveaway URL to their subscribers and visitors.
So, in giveaways the three parties that participate are the organizers, seasoned marketers building their lists and subscribers (in the IM niche often newbies or intermediate marketers looking for useful and valuable stuff to become seasoned too).
The organizer gets all the email addresses from everyone who signed up, both contributors as well as the subscribers to the event. The flip side is, it’s a lot of work if you want to do it good. IF they’re successful however, they DO have a great list of contributors though!
The intention is to add as many responsive subscribers as possible during the giveaway event.
When this phenomenon started to take off online, anyone was interested in everything, but today the playing fields are so immense that organizers more and more tend to subdivide their giveaways into niches. It gets them more responsive subscribers.
As you can determine from the basics described above, the contributors are list builders. They can benefit greatly from a giveaway event.
First of all, because they can profit from each others lists. They have to promote the event and the easiest way to do that is to send an email to their lists. So, they send their subscribers to the giveaway!
Which makes a perfect opportunity for the other contributors to get a great number of these responsive subscribers on their lists. That’s the heart and soul of the giveaway for contributors.
Therefore, if they take their subscribers serious, they contribute an outstanding and unique product to convince their newly won subscribers of the quality info they deliver.
Too often I see them fail by adding worthless rehashed PLR products. That proves that they didn’t get the essence of the giveaway.
For subscribers the main benefit is that they’ll instantly get high quality information or products for free. And maybe a lot more along the way, if the list they’ve subscribed to is good and valuable. Joining a good giveaway could steepen their learning path and start building their network.
Mind you, to have a perfect giveaway, the organizers not only should they be very scrupulous selecting contributions, but also keep an eye on every little detail. Like graphics for instance.
Possibly due to the vast number of giveaways, graphics seem to play a more important role.
Because many of the scripts resize them, a lot of giveaway graphics get distorted. Contributors may not know this (although they always should check), but the hosts should be aware of this and give directions to avoid that.
Because subscribers have to skim through a huge pile of offers and sometimes they look at the graphics to make their selection.
Quality products + good graphics = more subscribers.
For the subscribers a giveaway event may very soon lead to information overload. If there are many contributors, the subscriber has to make a selection. Which is a great idea anyway, otherwise their hard disk soon will get filled up with products they’ll never see again.
As a contributor, you should be aware of this.
I know, I know. Right after a sign up, offering an OTO is a great idea.
But maybe not in a giveaway. Because subscribers not only have to decide who they give their email address to, they also have to go through all the tedious confirmation processes. After spending only ten minutes on a giveaway membership page, they just DON’T KNOW what they signed up for.
As a contributor you have to make your profits at the back-end. The problem you face here is to find out where or when that back-end starts.
I’ve seen contributors offering an One Time Offer (OTO), a second OTO and a third, ‘lighter version’ OTO in case the first two were declined. My personal reaction to such offers is to immediately unsubscribe. No exceptions.
That’s the risk you take offering too much at once in a giveaway event.
So, instead of aiming for an impulsive buy, you’d better develop a good relationship with your new subscriber. Which is difficult enough, as she has to wade through hundreds of emails and gifts to get an idea of the quality. As a contributor, you have to stand out! Personalization will certainly help.
Huge giveaways can bury your contributed offer. Especially when some huge list owners participate, as the are placed nearer to the top because they’ve sent more subscribers to the event.
On the upside in such situations, everyone who takes your offer is a TARGETED and probably responsive subscriber. After all, they went to all the offers to find yours.
How do they find you?
Headlines, keywords!
If you’re offering PLR articles, then use PLR in your headlines (again: do NOT use rehashed products that can be got from many membership sites; it’s lame, lazy and a terribly wrong strategy).
Make your headline unique, include keywords and provide a great looking graphic.
If you’re thinking about participating in a giveaway as a contributor, check this one out.
This is an example of what I think is a good giveaway.
I know one of the organizers, Kevin Riley, and he’s synonym for quality.
They’re going to check your contribution to assure high quality, but the organizers are not going to compete with you!
Since part of the generated income will be contributed to charity, they hit you with an OTO first, but that’s the only downside I’ve found so far.
There’s a lot of contributor help inside, including some great videos that lead you through the different steps.
Check it out and let me know what you think of it.
Post your comments below.
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I guess that’s why when someone well established in internet marketing launch something most other jump to offer prizes , nice article
Giveaways are definitely one of the many good ways to promote your products and services. I think it is best to find a situation where you can be the only sponsor of a contest/giveaway, otherwise the exposure you get might be drowned out by all the other giveaways. Nice post… stumbled…
I haven’t joined a giveaway as a contributor, but I remember my first one clearly, before I could even define internet marketing. I think I signed up for every single offer. I did learn a lot, and I’m still on some of those lists, but I am lot more picky before grabbing a product now.
Great photo – that’s the kind of thing that a giveaway should ideally be accompanied by… something that could go viral and generate word of mouth.
Giveaways are definitely a harder sell these days but they can still work very well. You do need to have a follow-up plan in place though to gain the most from it.
There is no doubt about it. If you want to attract traffic and visibility to the site you will have to plan for some give aways first…
I like the post
it is ok to use give aways but just if you are someone in the internet. if your site has got…let’say less than 500 visitors per day…give aways are pretty useless!
Be picky on which list to join. Some giveaways are simply repeating the same information from a copy of others. Seen many of these tricks.
Rif Chia
Obviously give aways are necessary for starting the marketing effort form our side & attracting traffic to our site.