Feb17

So What’s All The Hype About Giveaways? Part 1

by Barry Ranns on February 17th, 2012 at 10:16 am
Posted In: Giveaways
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So, WHAT is all the hype about giveaways?

Well, What is a giveaway?

A giveaway event is where a group of marketers get together and offer various gifts FREE to anybody who would like them.  The only cost is to join the giver’s email list.

Well, can I give something away?

You certainly can. There are only a few things you need in place to be a contributor, and I will tell you about them now.

Can I make money from them?

Not enough to retire. There are optional upgrades when signing up to a giveaway event. These upgrades vary in price from event to event, and can be as low as $1 or as high as the organiser thinks the market can pay. Money is made if one of your referrals chooses to upgrade. Your commission would depend, 1) On the particular event, and 2) On the level of your upgrade.

So why take part?

It is an ideal inexpensive and reliable way to build your list, and to get your name known amongst Internet Marketeters, particularly those who also include Giveaways as part of their business.

Will I get a big list from giveaways?

That depends on how well the giveaway is promoted, and on how desirable your gift is. I have had less than 5 new list members on some giveaways, and over 50 on others.  The thing is, as in any venture it takes time to build a responsive list.

But won’t all those who sign up just want the free stuff, and then unsubscribe?

You will always get a degree of people  who are ‘freebie hunters’ and that is normal when any list is built with free offers, but you will find more stay members of your list than unsubscribe.

Right, I’ll just go and sort a gift out!

Slow down tiger, you need a few things in place first, such as,

  1. Some type of web hosting, and preferably, but not essential, a domain name.
  2. Somewhere online to store your gift.
  3. A Thankyou page
  4. A means of contact by anybody who has a problem with your gift
  5. An Autoresponder
  6. Your Gift

Now, lets break these down a little.

Web Hosting 

is not overly expensive. For as little as 99c per month you can get some basic hosting, and only upgrade as time and funds permit. There are free web hosts, and if you choose to go that route, that’s fine, but bear in mind, many free hosts put some kind of advertising on your site. Not only that, they will have far more clients on each server than paid web hosts. This may not be a problem, but you may sacrifice website availability, or down times for the sake of a few cents.

Domain Names

A domain name can be bought for as little as 99c for one year, although ideally you want a country specific TLD (Top Level Domain),  a .com, or .net. Again, get what you can afford, but try to avoid hosts who give you a free subdomain, e.g. yoursubdomain.freewebhosting.com. It looks far less professional than www.yourdomain.com.

Online Gift Storage

Now, we have got to be careful with this one. Do you remember a couple of weeks Megaupload was taken down, and the owners arrested, and just today a music sharing site *allegedly*  in the UK was also taken down. Now I know that many people use these file sharing sites with the best intentions, but honestly, a few cents a month for web hosting is not a lot to pay for peace of mind, and the knowledge that your files won’t suddenly disappear.

Look, if you really want to use one of these  online storage sites, nobody can stop you, but I really recommend against it.

Thankyou Page

A thankyou page, whilst not essential is advisable. Whenever you receive a visitor for a free gift, just giving them the gift is, potentially, throwing money away. A thankyou page is the ideal way to promote something, your latest ebook, or program, a report or an affiliate link, or a One Time Offer (OTO). The main thing is, don’t overdo the adverts on the thankyou page. A couple of banners or linked images is enough, or the OTO, which may comprise various things, all part of the same offer.

I would also suggest that you don’t have pop-ups stopping the visitor from leaving your page easily. The last thing you want to do is annoy a new list member.

Essentially, you also need a link to the gift download again.

Now don’t worry if you are not very skilled with web page design or coding, I certainly aren’t, but there are ways around this.

You could download a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). This kind of program lets you put on the page whatever you want, including images and links, just as though you were using wordpad, or other suchlike editing program.

In fact, if you have cpanel hosting, if you go to the file manager, there is a WYSIWYG built in there with the html edit link.

A Means of Contact

You need to have a way for the free gift recipient to contact you if they have a problem with the gift, such as the download didn’t work, the zip file didn’t open etc.   An email address is fine as a point of contact, but if you really want to look the part, then get yourself a ticket support system, and osTicket have such a system which is available free. If your host has Fantastico,  osTicket is one of the programmes which can be automatically installed.

How much more impressive will a ticket support system appear than an email address.

You may wonder why go to all this trouble for a free gift which has cost you time and money to organise. The simple answer is you need to be professional. If you ignore their requests for help, they won’t stick around long. There is also the possibility of them being made aware that if you go to all this trouble for a freebie, how much more will you put yourself out for a paid product.

An Autoresponder

Basically, an autoresponder is a web based email handling service. There are choices of paid, free, or having your own with your hosting. The full services offered by an autoresponder is a subject too large for this post, so I will just cover the part involved with giveaways.

Having your own sounds good, but there are a lot of legalities involved with emailing subscribers. You have to be very careful to ensure all the requirements are in place, or you could easily find yourself being prosecuted.

Paid autoresponder services vary in price, and they offer differing services. You need to look around and see which one other marketers recommend.

Free autoresponders differ in their services and efficiency, but what they all have in common is using adverts to support their services.

When you have decided which autoresponder to use you need to ensure they are using double opt-in. This means the person wanting the gift have to confirm they are agreeable to joining your list.

Lastly, you need to have a follow up message arranged to be sent immediately after the new list member has  confirmed their opt-in, which includes the link for your thankyou page, where they can download your gift.

The Gift

The gift you offer should, ideally, be unique, relatively new, downloadable and if possible one you have made. The kind of gift you offer would be an ebook, a report, a program, web design tools, graphics, PLR (Private Label Rights) or educational, preferably related to Internet Marketing. Some giveaways allow you to offer membership sites, or web hosting as a gift also.

I would suggest that you join a couple of giveaways as an ordinary member to see the kind of gifts being offered. You will often see the same gift being offered repeatedly in different giveaways by the same person.  This does work, and it is something I do.

This post ended up being far longer than I envisaged, but I hope you find it useful.

Would you be involved in a giveaway after reading this post?

 

 

 

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