Hi all and thanks for reading!
In my first posts, I wrote about how Stone Evan’s Plug-In-Profit Site was my first experience with Internet Marketing. As I started, I began subscribing to newsletters from many Internet Marketers to get a better feel about what IM was all about.
Shortly I began receiving invites to Giveaway Events. Of course, at first I had no idea about what they were, so I took a look. I joined a few and was simply overwhelmed about the tons of products I could get for free! Then, I began to be invited to join as a contributor but at first I passed up all the invitations because I was simply scared to death to be a contributor. I mean, how could I ever compete with all the big names I saw were contributing gifts? It would be a lost cause, or so I thought.
As I kept reading and learning about Internet Marketing, I began to be more confident and decided to join a giveaway as a contributor. I *think* it was the Easter JV Giveaway. The thing is things went so well that I decided to join a whole bunch of other giveaways, that’s why I don’t recall which was the first.
So do giveaways work? That depends…
If you organize it:
First of all you need good software or a good script to manage it. And by good software or script I mean made specifically to run this kind of events. I haven’t used any software or script yet because I’ve never organized this type of events, but most of the ones I’ve seen lately use Giveaway Manager 2 by Brad Smith and Guido Nussbaum. These guys have hosted this kind of events and I’ve been a contributor in a few, and it has always worked great. So even though I haven’t used it, I´ve seen it work and it works great. In fact, if I ever host a giveaway I’ll buy it; it’s not cheap, but it seems to be well worth it!
So what can you expect if you host this type of events?
If you take your time to promote it properly and have due diligence finding good contributors, you can expect tons of subscribers. That’s why you should get good software/script to manage your giveaway, so you can get more time to promote and find good contributors. Also, you should put your thinking cap on and think about prizes, rewards, competitions, etc. to make it more attractive for your contributors and make them really want to be on your event.
Also, you should have a one time offer, not having one is really leaving money on the table. So, worked properly, you can also make a nice amount of money. Ussually, in giveaway events contributors are required to have a minimum of referrals to prevent their gift from being deleted, so it’s becoming ussual in recent giveaways to make a one time offer that ensures that your gift won’t be deleted no matter how few referrals you get. Good idea 
If you’re a contributor:
You’ll get subscribers. Period. You’ll get them because you will get them. Of course, this is provided that you set up things the right way and not give a crappy gift. Maybe not hundreds, but you’ll get subscribers. That’s the main benefit from giveaway events, but it doesn’t have to be the only one.
Of course, first you should get an autoresponder. You need to keep your susbscribers’ information somewhere right? And saving their information to contact them manually is plain silly. You need an autoresponder with good deliverability, so your e-mails don’t get eaten by the spam gods. So far, the best ones I know of are Aweber (the best in my opinion) and GetResponse, but recently Aweber raised their fees quite a bit so if you’re on a tight budget you might want to stick with GetResponse.
Also, you should fill your autoresponder campaign with a few messages -preferably no sales pitches yet- so you start to build a relationship with your subscribers, get to know them and get them to know you.
So basically what you have to do is join the giveaway as a contributor, confirm your e-mail address, log in, and fill the details about your gift. But before you enter your details, make sure you have set up the page where people will sign up to get your gift, the page to thank them for opting in, and the page where they will download your gift. If you’ll make a one time offer -which you should-, make sure to have it set up correctly too. Try to make it as easy as you can for people to get your gift, the smoother you make your system run, the more proffesional you’ll appear both to people who join the giveaway and event hosts. The pages don’t have to be anything complicated, but try to make it appealing both visually and about the gift description to entice people to get your gift.
Always remember to check the gift you plan to give away to make sure you can actually give it away, check the product’s license for restrictions.
If you just want the gifts:
Well get them! Go ahead, sign up and get your gifts However, always try to be very organized. What I do is make a new folder named after the giveaway, and subfolders with categories related to the gifts, so I keep them organized, help prevent gift/information overload and other such disasters and can check more easily to prevent downloading the same gift from different giveaways. Also, don’t try to simply download gifts for the sake of it, try to be selective or all you’ll get is wasted hard drive space.
So giveaway events really mean a win/win situation for all involved, and can be a very profiatble experience but keep in mind your subscriber signed up to get free stuff so they are not necessarily the best source of buyers for your products, but some always do, that’s why it’s important to build a relationship with them, so they begin to trust you.
Well that’s all for now, I hope you found this post interesting and, as always, feel free to share it
Right now there’s a giveaway going on at:
http://www.emarketingresourcesonline.com/recommends/fathersdaygiveaway
It’s a giveaway mainly comprised of Private Label Rights products, some unrestricted, which you can get for your personal use or to use later as gifts if you join a giveaway.
And if you want to get your feet in the water, here’s a great giveaway from my friend Reed Floren which will start next Friday. His last giveaway was a huge success so this is a great opportunity to build your list, or to start one if you haven’t already. I really recommend you join it, it’s very easy once you get the hang of it and it can be really fun
http://www.emarketingresourcesonline.com/recommends/theimgifts
To your success,
Antonio Gutierrez
webmaster@emarketingresourcesonline.com
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