Blog Giveaways: a Do or a Don’t?
Running a blog is a great option to begin building a steady passive income source. As a blogger, you’re free to write on the topics of your choosing and, in time, can develop a strong following.
However, running a successful blog also requires making many important decisions such as how you will monetize the site. One important decision commonly faced by bloggers is whether or not to offer giveaways. Here are a few benefits and drawbacks of giveaways in case you are currently facing this dilemma.
Blog Giveaway Benefits
- Audience Appreciation – One benefit of giveaways is the opportunity they provide to show your appreciation for the commitment of your audience members. You could offer a giveaway only to those viewers who register for your e-mail newsletter or to other audience segments you feel are worthy of freebies.
- Follow-up Sales – If you plan to giveaway a short e-book or other blog relevant content, you can structure the giveaway to increase the chance of follow-up sales. When audience members are intrigued by the free content you provide, they’ll be more likely to return and purchase the products you’re selling.
- Increased Blog Popularity – Advertising a blog giveaway is a great way to increase your site’s popularity. Most people find the allure of freebies irresistible and will gladly browse your blog for the free items.
- Higher Credibility - If you’re just starting up your blog, offering a giveaway of content you intend to sell in the future can be a great way to build credibility.
Blog Giveaway Drawbacks
- Increased Work Hours – One drawback of offering blog giveaways is the increased work hours the promotion will likely cause. For example, if you offer a free e-book, you’ll likely receive a stream of inquiries regarding failed downloads and other issues.
- Loss of Sales – One reason some bloggers refuse to offer giveaways is the view that they detract from potential sales. If you’re offering content that could have been sold for free, you could face a loss of revenue.
- Temporary Traffic Increase – While a properly advertised blog giveaway can increase traffic to the site, this traffic increase may only be temporary. Many visitors may only visit the blog for the giveaway and never return.
Deciding whether or not to offer giveaways can be a difficult dilemma to overcome. One option is to feature a giveaway and assess how well it achieved your intended purpose, such as generating blog traffic. If the giveaway was successful in its intended purpose, you should continue offering them. However, if you deem the giveaway as unsuccessful, try other options for the blog. This personalized approach to the giveaway dilemma can provide a more solid solution and will show which option is the best for you.
Shayla Ebsenis a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on earning your social worker degree for the Guide to Online Schools.
Category: Blogging
About the Author (Author Profile)
Shiva Chettri is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. He intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing stuffs and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to becomes successful. His other interests includes Web Designing, Wordpress and Music of almost every genre. Send +Shiva an email at admin@netchunks.comSubscribe
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Giveway is the good strategy to make charm in our blog or in the sale products. The benefits you have defined here have much importance than drawbacks……………..!
latest world recently posted..An Intelligent Crow
Yup you are right mate, Giveaways can certainly act as a great traffic and reader puller. Thanks for the comment
Shiva Chettri recently posted..The Noob’s Guide To Internet Marketing
Twitter: pradctgign
says:
the benefits are much more then the drawbacks but the most worst drawback you listed is Temporary Traffic Increase.
But what would be the correct time to start a giveaway ? what do you think ?
Pradeep recently posted..Questions to Consider Before Starting Your Own Business Blog
Pradeep, Well as the author has said, Giveaways can give you only temporary traffic but you can leverage this temporary traffic.You will need to make the full use of this traffic and capture as much subscribers you can in your list
Shiva Chettri recently posted..Blog Giveaways- a Do or a Don’t
Twitter: pradctgign
says:
Thanks for your suggestion
Pradeep recently posted..How to Stop stealing of Bandwidth or Hotlinking of Images
I am usually an advocator of blog freebies and think they help with connecting with your audience further, but one has to be careful, if you post too many freebies of too low quality, people may loose interest and disappear quickly.
You are right Andreas, too many bad quality freebies can certainly put a bad taste. I think it is usually good to take a longer span of time and giveaway a quite useful and valuable stuff
Shiva Chettri recently posted..How to Find Good Web Hosting for your Blog
I think givaways are a must! It makes the people excited to be apart of what your doing..
Tanya recently posted..PHP Benchmark – Memcached with pecl-memcache & php-memcached – redis with Predis & Rediska Part 2
Definitely this is marketing evergreen, from my experience I know that giveaways, freebies and discounts work most of the time and increase number of returning customers.
Jerry recently posted..Injured Retain a fresno auto accident lawyer
You are right Jerry Giveaways help a lot in building the trust of the people, but it is really important that you should giveaway only things that are useful…
Shiva Chettri recently posted..How to Find Good Web Hosting for your Blog
Never gave freebies, mostly because i believe contests have a higher success rate. Doing contests you also get rid of the temporary traffic boost, because people will have to return and check the results, and maybe they’ll come back to see if you started some other contests. This is because the price (being only one, not like giveaways) can have a higher value.
It also helps in link building in case the contest assumes some form of link posting on the contestants blogs.
Alex recently posted..Ruched Ruffle Holiday Party Cocktail Halter Dress
Some great points that you are trying to show Alex, yes Contests are beneficial but one should take care that he/she giveaways only valuable things
Shiva Chettri recently posted..Getting and Tracking Leads through Social Networking
All too often I see giveaways that have no relevance or relation to the topic or subject of the blog, or worse, the giveaway is positioned on the blog so as to dominate the site. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “Free Ipad” links for sites that had nothing to do with technology, Apple, or anything remotely related! To me, it’s better to do no giveaway and engage your desired audience than to set up a giveaway that does not engage the audience that you are trying to attract to your site.
I agree with you Alicia, It is really important for people to giveaway things that provide value to their users and are related to their niche. Providing anything and everything would only cause the blogger a disadvantage
Shiva Chettri recently posted..The Mediated Community of the Blog
It requires your valuable time for the giveaways on the blogs. inspite of getting a temporary blog traffic time should be devoted to other techniques which would help in blog exposure and increase in the traffic which is helpful in long run.
MBBS admission recently posted..MBBS Colleges in Tripura
Giveaways are a good idea but these giveaways should be somehow connected with the topic of the blog or site. And return on investment should be reasonable and profitable in future.
Thanks for having such a great giveaways benefits and drawbacks. Its look likes a good idea but I don’t know what exactly to giveaways. My gosh you share such great information sincerely. I think it helps us to promote the blog and get huge traffic. Nice Post!
Lakshmi Muralikrishnan recently posted..Coolhandle
Also, if you are just starting out and don’t have a lot of traffic yet, is the giveaway even worth the very small increase in traffic you will get?
Lilith recently posted..Wickely Lovely by Melissa Marr- Young Adult Fantasy Book Review
Twitter: mohdaatif90
says:
I will go with do
benefits are much important in my opinion .
aatif recently posted..Roundup Of Best WordPress Plugins Social-Catalog
In regards to temporary traffic increase, you can make it continues. You just have to follow up your blog with good and interesting posts. That way you can also show your talent in blogging and not just o get the attention of your followers.
I think you should know first whats your target on your blog. Creating interesting to read post so that you will attract visitors on your site and start monetize.
If done correctly, I think giveaways are worth the effort. I saw nice increases in e-mail subscribers after giving away free stuff.
Cristian recently posted..69 sexy things I learned about blogging in 2 years