I’ve known Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame for almost two years now. Actually, I knew of his website for that long… I first met him and his lovely wife at a meetup in NYC at O’Connelly’s that was sponsored in part by Text Link Ads back in the early part of this year. A few months went by, and there was the Future of Online Advertising (FOOA) conference, where I got my admission into the event because I was an avid reader of ProBlogger and he had a few “tickets” to give away.
That particular weekend wound up being the first time I did anything for Darren, which was to organize another meetup in NYC (this one was sponsored by Chitika and b5media). He’d just emailed and asked that I do some research to find a place since I’m in the state, and the next thing you knew we were set up at The Speakeasy for Saturday night. What a blast!
This time around, Darren had set himself up for a doozy of a giveaway in honor of his site’s 3rd year in operation. He called it “ProBlogger’s 3rd Birthday Bash” and he had asked me if he could hire me to administrate the giveaways. I’d really never done something on this scale before, but I was up for the challenge and within 24 hours had over 120 forwarded emails with all the prizes that people had offered.
Many people have asked me to write up a few things I’ve learned to keep in mind for online giveaways in the future, so here we go:
We should have prepared for one more week before and after. I wanted to get through the emails and get the giveaway organized and planned out solid within just a couple of days. While my spreadsheet super knowledge helped a little with this (really, I’m not that knowledgeable with them, I just like them for organizing), I think that we could’ve both used another solid week to really plan this out. Darren could’ve used that time writing up extra posts for during and after (as he puts it, we both had one hell of a “hangover”), and I could’ve used it to perhaps better think of ways to manage all the prizes in a more streamlined fashion. I think that grouping them when it made sense was good, but there were so many various ones, it got to “crunching” them together to make it more manageable, which I think frustrated readers when wondering if they should enter or hold out for something they wanted more, or when there was really only one prize in a list of 12 that they wanted, and they won something else on the list. With more time, I likely would’ve selected fewer, larger prizes.
Fewer prizes would’ve benefit everyone more. Sponsors, in return for their generosity, would’ve gotten more focused exposure had we kept the list smaller. With 100+ sponsors, it was easy for them to get lost outside of their particular giveaway’s post. Readers might have been more keen on spending some quality time considering where they entered, rather than just entering every “comment here” that came up, and I would’ve had less people with whom to make sure I communicated properly (instead of 100+ sponsors, 100+ winners, and 4000+ comments).
Still in regards to prizes, I think it’s best to keep them related to the blog topic. We wanted to try to include as many prizes as possible, and really make this an enormous giveaway. In that, there’s no doubt we succeeded. There were 4 iPods, coaching programs, beauty products, vacations, and computer gear. We could’ve cut down the number of prizes by more than half had we stuck to only items that could conceivably be related to blogging and business, with a little “gadget” stuff tossed in. (I can’t imagine how many “Where are the iPods?” comments we would’ve gotten had we not included those!)
Keep it short in length, and keep it during the week. Let’s face it, people spend a lot of their work days using blogs like Darren’s to get away from their work and learn something new. On the weekends, fewer people are at their computers reading feeds and checking in. Many people spoke about how they were going to get chastised by their significant other for gluing themselves to the computer all weekend to make sure they got in their entries. While it made sense to run it as long as we did with the number of prizes we had, in the future I wouldn’t suggest any more than three days in the middle of the week. Announce it Monday, run it for three days, and close out on Friday. I think not only did Darren and I “burn out” a bit, but so did a number of his readers, and it took away from the other posts he had going on.
All in all, I think the whole thing was a really great project for both myself and Darren. I know that my readership has increased (site traffic was up 300% over the course of the giveaway and RSS subscriptions quadrupled) due to the exposure I got just for managing the show, and I learned more about Darren’s readers than a month’s worth of comment skimming could’ve done. I’m in fact thinking of adding a service to our lineup here at Anubis Marketing for managing blog contests and website giveaways. I’d love to hear more detail on what everyone else thinks about the whole event, after having read both my thoughts and Darren’s reflections on the giveaway.
It wasn’t perfect, we had a few hiccups, but what do you all think were the highlights and potholes?
Popularity: 23% [?]
October 11th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I followed someone else’s post to the contest and added several new feeds because of the giveaway. I liked having something to do on the weekend instead of the usual echoes of silence. I don’t know about the contests though. I haven’t heard from the people giving my prize, so I don’t know if it was real prize or just a timeshare type tease. Either way, it was fun. The charity donation was the best prize.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Cathy - thanks for your feedback! It’s nice to hear that someone did like the fact it went over the weekend.
If I remember correctly, you won the Sedona Retreat and Heal vacay, right? I’ll contact the sponsor again to make sure they got your info.
I’m 99.9% positive that none of the vacation/getaway prizes were timeshares. You can tell by going to their websites (their sponsor names linked to them) and based on the descriptions they sent in with their submissions, I really doubt they were teases like that. I’ve been to the timeshare tease things - they’re all over the place in Atlantic City and Florida - and these just don’t give me that “bad vibe”.
I agree - the charity donation was one of the best - it’s too bad it had the least number of responses from readers though…
October 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Well first off I really liked the fact that there was even a giveaway to begin with. That was pretty nice!
I think that you’re right on that it was too much to deal with, even as a reader. It was a great idea to try to let as many people win as possible, but it was difficult to follow sometimes with so many posts. Add that to the fact that I was merely reading them along with my other feeds, and contests could get confusing.
When you say that the prizes should be relevant to the blog, I would agree to an extent. Some of the prizes were completely out of left field. However some of them, while not being exactly related, were still great. The vacations and so on were not exactly SEO-related but they were of such a high value that they would still be worth a post.
Those are some of the thoughts that I had from the whole deal. I also think that it’s awesome that you did it! You did well.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Thanks so much Derek!
I agree that the bigger prizes like the vacations were quite cool “non-related” prizes, and most people loved that giveaway, but without airfare included, it limited the chance to win for a lot of people. That said, I don’t think that’s a BAD thing in this particular situation since we had so much other stuff that was more wide open. But you’re right that anything “big” like that would be okay.
Thanks again for your thoughts and compliments… I had so much fun with that project!
October 12th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Lara,
As one of the prize sponsors who received very timely email replies and information from you throughout the contest I’m convinced you’re Superwoman (and a very gracious one at that). I think having someone like you (or preferrably a small team of Lara’s) on board is crucial to this type of effort. I’m hosting mini-fundraisers in conjunction with my sites on my own and while the scale is smaller I can fully appreciate the efforts both you and Darren put forth. Congrats! You 2 made a little bit of history happen!
October 12th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Melissa - thank you so much for your kind words. I don’t think I’ve ever been called Superwoman before!
It is a lot of work, but it’s so rewarding… I’ve met a lot of cool people throughout, and added a bunch of new sites to my reading list!
Let me know if you ever run into a situation with your sites that you need some extra help, Melissa!
October 21st, 2007 at 7:45 am
Hi Lara, for a first time project of such magnitude, it was very well done. I think you’re right that smaller and more focused would be more effective for sponsors and participants.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:43 am
It is really useful to have this honest feedback on how the event was organised. I think the Monday to Friday is a great suggestion and I am conscious here in the UK that other countries are just getting going as we are winding down. That might be an important factor in some contests if you have an overseas market.
November 26th, 2007 at 10:01 am
DMB - You’re absolutely right, and that was one of the major things we had to deal with on the ProBlogger giveaway - to keep things moving literally 24/7 so that his entire readership had a chance to grab something you know?
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your input! I hope you stick around!