5 Reasons Why No One is Entering Your Giveaways
1. No One Knows About It
Outside of my regular followers, I get most of my blog traffic from Twitter. When I first started using twitter I only tweeted about my giveaways, which yielded fair results. But recently, I’ve been learning that although it may seem daunting, interacting with others on Twitter is much more effective. I also link up my giveaways on any giveaway linky I can find and post on my Facebook Fan Page. Get the word out there and slowly they will come.
2. Your Giveaway Sucks
I’ll be frank, no one wants to enter your giveaway for hemorrhoid cream or the tacky $5 purse you got in the clearance bin. Give readers a reason to enter. I started this blog with a simple Target GC giveaway; you can’t go wrong with Target. Also, you don’t have to take every offer a company sends you to review and giveaway their product. I always ask myself, “Would I take the time to enter my own giveaways?”
3. The 3 Step Entry with 100 Rules
No one wants to write an essay to enter a blog giveaway, unless you are giving away a car or something else awesome. Make your giveaway entry options easy and clear. Nothing bothers me more than seeing a “giveaway” with no clear explanation as how to enter or a 3 step mandatory entry.
4. There is No Incentive
Let’s say you have a decent product, a well-organize giveaway and you are working hard to promote it but entries are still low. Up the incentive. Give people more ways to enter, like bonus entries. Link several giveaways together so if a reader enters one giveaway they get additional entries in another. Work with other bloggers on a special giveaway event. Get creative. Just remember to keep it simple and clear.
5. Your Blog Design is Hideous
I hate to admit it but I’m much more prone to enter a giveaway on a well-designed blog than a poorly-designed one. Even if it’s for the exact same product. Design doesn’t have to be anything fancy but putting a little time and maybe even money into your design can pay off big time. Companies understand this when they design the packaging for their products. No one wants the oatmeal in the ugly,beat-up package, even if it’s perfectly good oatmeal.
Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on blog giveaways. I have had my fair share of giveaways that bomb.
brutally honest! love it!
You are so right on all those points!
Great points! Two more are:
1) Make sure you actually link to the sponsor's web site in your post, especially if the entry requirement is to go to the web site and come back and comment. (I am SHOCKED how many times I have seen this not happen!)
2) Don't have a whole laundry list of leave 5 comments if you follow me on Google Friend Connect, leave 3 comments if you follow me on Twitter, leave 3 comments if you like me on Facebook, etc. Sure there are a few people who have all day to sit around entering blog giveaways, but many other people who want to enter will be discouraged if they see the person ahead of them has just left 30 comments for 30 entries!
Thanks again!
Chrysa
Thrifty Jinxy
#3 and #5, especially. What on earth is with the four thousand font colors and pages that take a year and a half to load? There are some blogs I won't even go near. I don't care how awesome the prize is. I'm entering giveaways for fun, and strained eyeballs are not fun! I also don't want to do a dozen things to win a prize. Keep it simple!
Ha! I love this. I've just started my blog (kicked it off with a $50 Amazon giveaway, natch), so I'm definitely not an expert, but hideous blogs are a pet peeve of mine. So many are completely over-designed and they take for-freaking-ever to load (especially when the busy background, images, fonts are combined with massive amounts of buttons and ads–yikes!). And the "comment 10 times if you do an Alexa review, 20 times if Tweet a picture of yourself doing a handstand in your kitchen" type entries really bother me too–and they always seem to be on those blogs that take 10 minutes to load. I would rather swim through a pool of rusty butterknives than comment 20 times to enter a contest for something I could buy for $5!
Oops, sorry for ranting. I guess you touched a nerve. 🙂 Love your blog, BTW.
Ha, this is great, I love it! So true!
I'd like to add 1 more:
They don't know if they can. Drives me nuts when they don't say if it's US only, US and Canada, etc. As a Canadian, I know many aren't open to me, but it's even more frustrating to not know. And if I don't find it on the giveaway post, I always go looking for general giveaway rules somewhere on the blog, so it's not that I'm not looking hard enough. I don't mind having to go looking for it either as long as there is something to look for 🙂
Great list!
here are mine
1) your site takes forever to load
2)a difficult or time consuming mandatory entry
3) annoying captchas
****also this is the opposite of what you posted but I tend to stay away from entering giveaways on blogs with too many entrants. You know the ones that will get 800 comments for a cereal giveaway. Unless the prize is REALLY good, I don't bother.
I like this post a lot though. I have to admit that I care a lot less about blog design though than clarity in entering. If I don't get what to do or the English is too bad, I can't get away quickly enough!