If you have been thinking about email list building and visited some list building blogs in order to learn how to build your email list, you may have come across some posts about Online Giveaways.
There is a post on Online Giveaways which I wrote some months ago on this blog which is fast becoming to be known as the list building blog.
The post is about what giveaways are and what one needs to participate in them as a contributor which is a good way to build your list.
I highly recommend that you read the post Email List Building, Online Giveaways.
If you are like me then you have probably been intrigued and a bit unclear as to what online giveaways really are and how using them could advance your list building efforts even after reading a number of good list building blogs and articles on the subject.
Generally the best way to understand something fully is to get closely involved with it.
It is very likely that unless you participate in a good giveaway there will always be some doubt about them in your mind.
By participating in an online giveaway as a member first you can get a good understanding of how giveaways are presented.
While doing that you can find some incredibly helpful products that are free and ready to be downloaded right away.
After taking a closer look at a good and well presented online giveaway such as the current Original Products Giveaway you’ll be better prepared for using online giveaways to build your list as a contributor.
If you haven’t read my post where I describe what the contributor to an online giveaway needs to have please click on online giveaway contributor needs.
I hope that this will help you to take the plunge very soon and that you’ll start building your list using online giveaways.
If you haven’t yet followed the link to the current giveaway which will go on only till July 15, 2010 please do so here. Update July 20, 2018: The link to that long ago giveaway was removed. I’m not sure if these kinds of giveaways are still conducted these days. There is a very good tool for you if you are wanting to build an email list. I wish it was around when I originally wrote this post. It’s ClickFunnels and you can learn about ClickFunnels here.
Your comment on this post is needed and appreciated. Have you participated in any online giveaway yet? Did you have a look at the one suggested here?
Are you going to use online giveaways as a way to build your email list?
Please tweet and bookmark the post for others to have a chance to find it now and to share their views.
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Authored by Vance Sova
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Filed under: Email List Building, Opt In List
Thanks for the great post. I have been working on some products
to include on giveaways and this one sounds great.
Building a list is one of the best ways to make your Internet business a success. If you are looking to build your business, make sure to set up a good squeeze page on your site that offers something of value free to your website visitors and your list will grow much faster.
Vance Reply:
July 4th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Hi N.C. Lady,
I’m glad that you like my post and think the giveaway I point to sounds great. Have you visited it yet?
I totally agree with you that list building is important to any internet business success. It is important in the brick and mortar business too. Offline they call a list most often leads.
Having a squeeze page on your site does help and giveaways make the list growing faster.
Welcome to my blog and thanks for the comment.
Vance
Before reading the article, I was actually not aware of those giveaways. So I checked out the links and in my opinion the idea behind them is definitely nice. I got to a course called “Business in a Box” for just one dollar. It seems to be a great offer and I will consider it. Using such tactics when it comes to list building can prove very effective.
Daniel Sharkov@Top Earning Tips´s last blog post ..SEO Lies – Myths and Truths About SEO
Vance Reply:
July 5th, 2010 at 12:54 am
Hi Daniel,
I’m glad that my post was helpful to you. Giveaways are a good way to help list building efforts.
Be careful when you use $1 offers. Make sure that they are just that and that they don’t lead to any future and continuous billing of much higher amounts. This will likely not be the case in the offer you mention but always make sure that it’s just a one time payment.
There are usually a lot of gifts in a giveaway that are completely free.
It’s OK to pay for some gifts that have a discounted price or for some up-sells when they are something that you feel you can use.
Thanks for commenting.
Vance
Hey Vance really good ideas for building your list giveaways are the way to go
Thanks
Davy
Vance Reply:
July 5th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Hi Davy,
Nice of you to comment. Could you expand on it a bit? It almost smacks of a lip service. I could be wrong but from what you wrote it’s not clear that you really read the post. Maybe you have but I’d like to hear more from you.
Vance
Hi Vance,
I’ve joined one giveaway so far and added a couple of subscribers to it but am finding it difficult to 1.) put up some OTO offers and 2.) promote it to prevent my gifts from being placed on the bottom. I’m just not sure on how to go about promoting it when I don’t have that many people on my list and also the people that are on my list are people from another giveaway. Any tips you can give me would be much appreciated.
Anna
Anna Haller´s last blog post ..Do you wANT to succeed
Vance Reply:
July 5th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Hi Anna,
As for the OTO I don’t recommend using them for giveaways. The main purpose of a giveaway (and I believe it should be the only one) is to get people on your email list. Hitting them with OTO as soon as they opt in is not the best welcome to them.
Promotion is very hard when your list is very small or non existent and you are right in not wanting to promote a giveaway to people that just opted in from another recent one.
Some giveaways let you upgrade for a fee so that your gifts don’t end up at the bottom for lack of promotion. Before you enter a giveaway try to find out if there is an option to upgrade.
There are also a few giveaway organizers who don’t penalize people with small lists for lack of promotion. But they are very rare.
One way to promote a giveaway event is by blogging about it.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for commenting.
Vance
Hi Vance!
Thank you for letting us know about this giveaway. I just signed up to promote it, yet I’ve only started by simply adding the button to my blog. Need to elaborate further, to make the most out of it.
Best regards,
Jose
Jose@Notes on Blogging´s last blog post ..Can a free favicon be good
Vance Reply:
July 5th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Hi Jose,
You are most welcome. Let me know how it goes and if you need anything. Send me an email if I can help.
Thanks for the comment.
Vance
Vance,
This kind of give away is not only a great idea, but follows the recent trending of free products and services becoming the norm. With the huge success of platforms like google apps, analytics, and free anti virus solutions like AVG, quality, free programs have become almost standard for most users. Giving away trial ebooks and other promotional materials is an ingenious way to both offer a great product or service to a user, as well as to offer them the opportunity of a premium version in the future.
Good stuff. Thanks for the article.
Vance Reply:
July 6th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Hi Ryan,
Welcome and thank you for the informative comment. I’m glad you found my article to be good. I agree that giveaways are indeed an ingenious way to offer good free products to the user and an opportunity to benefit from future offers.
Vance
The best way to profit from giveaways is to pay the small upgrade fee. There’s no doubt about it. Once your gift is positioned in front of thousands of prospects it’s very easy to get a few hundred subscribers per event.
Thanks for this share, Vance.
Cheers, Remi
Remi Vladuceanu´s last blog post ..How Jerry Seinfeld Can Help You Become More Productive
Vance Reply:
July 7th, 2010 at 1:04 am
Hi Remi,
I think you are right although a lot of people don’t want to pay the fee even if it’s only 15 or 25 dollars.
Getting a few hundred subscribers per giveaway event sounds great but I think that is not an average amount. Usually it’s less but when the event is really great it can happen.
Not every giveaway is a huge success. Most people won’t mind getting a few dozen subscribers per event anyway because it doesn’t take that much effort to participate in one as a contributor. Organizing one is another thing.
Thanks for the visit and for commenting.
Vance
Hey Vance,
Your so right about getting involved in the events to get used to them. I also think the same applies to anything really, I mean how can you learn something without getting involved and taking action.
I agree with what Anna said in her comments. I too am a contributor in 2 events but I am finding it hard to promote the events without my own list.
From your answer to Anna I can see a mistake I made already I did not upgrade so my offer stays near the top of the list.
Classic case of learning from my mistakes!
Thanks for the good post
Adam
Vance Reply:
July 7th, 2010 at 8:05 am
Hey Adam,
Thanks for commenting. Getting involved in giveaways is the only way to really understand how they work and of course to maximize the results after eliminating most mistakes. You’re right that the same applies to mastering anything else. We have to be actually doing it.
We learn best from our mistakes when we do something. I’m glad my post and comments were useful to you.
I look forward to your future visits and comments.
Vance
I did some giveaways back in 2006 and had pretty good success. It is funny that I came across this post because I was just thinking about these… I will make sure to check out all the links you have..
I got 300 subscribers in one event , they really do work!
Larry
Larry Rivera´s last blog post ..How To Create Credibility For Your Work At Home Business
Vance Reply:
July 8th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Hi Larry,
Thanks for the visit and comment. You’ve had a good success with giveaways getting 300 subscribers from an event. That’s excellent.
I’m glad you’ve found my blog just when you were thinking about giveaways again. Did you find it through search engines?
I look forward to your future visits and comments.
Vance
Hi Vance,
Some very good points here. I have only just started using giveaways and have had some success. Upgrading has its swings and roundabouts depending upon which script is being used. I did make a comment to one of the organisers where I had upgraded wondering why my gift was below others that hadn’t upgraded, even though they hadn’t any referrals either, didn’t get a very positive response. Generally have managed to at least make my fee back by submitting OTO’s to the site rather than after they have opted-in.
Regards
Simon
Vance Reply:
July 9th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Hi Simon,
I’m glad to hear that you’ve had some success with giveaways. Like with everything else, not all giveaways are great. It’s a good idea to keep track of the good ones and the bad ones and participate in the ones where the organizers are doing a good job the next time while avoiding events with organizers that aren’t doing a good job.
I’m not in favor of OTO’s in giveaways unless they are completely separated from the free offers and it’s clear to the members that they don’t need to go to the paid section at all in order to get great products.
Otherwise it’s kind of sneaky and not a good way to treat new subscribers who were attracted to the event that is supposed to be free.
Thanks for the visit and for the helpful comment.
Vance
Good Grief! This Giveawy looks so spammy, I signed up (thanks God I used a disposable email address) to the first stage and had to navigate my way around all these super-duper last minute offers to the free gifts section. I checked only two, but each one of them required me to sign up to yet another list. Certainly not anything that I want to inflict on my readers. As for giveaways, what is wrong with creating your own, valuable product and offering it on your own site against an email address? Sorry, this looks just sooo spammy, SY
Vance Reply:
July 9th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Hi SY,
This will perhaps be the first time we don’t completely agree. I do agree that some giveaways overdo it with OTO’s which is what I commented on in response to another comment here. Unfortunately there seem to be more and more OTO’s in giveaways.
As for having to sign up for each offer that is a necessity. Surely you would agree that the person who is giving a free gift has the right to know who downloaded it. This is how he or she builds email list. What is spammy about that? If you like the gift you don’t mind giving your email address or if you don’t you won’t.
Furthermore, you can unsubscribe from that list anytime you want to. So what would you be inflicting on your readers? Honestly I’m a bit puzzled. But there you did it. You gave a disposable email and wanted something for it. Nobody needs someone’s disposable email.
But it’s a smart move if you aren’t serious and suspicious or want to get something for nothing.
There is nothing wrong with offering your own product on your blog or a site. Giveaways, if you want to read my other post about them, are speeding up the list building process. There is nothing spammy about them. You will not get any unwanted emails for any length of time since you can always unsubscribe. And, if you liked the gift you downloaded you’ll probably want to stay on the gift creator’s list.
I do appreciate your visit and comment.
Vance
Hey Vance,
I’m in quite a few giveaways at the minute and getting subscribers as well. I have also signed up for the one that you have here I know Keith as he is a past member of the mentor program I’m in.
This is a great blog a lot of info
Thanks
Glyn
Vance Reply:
July 9th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Hey Glyn,
Welcome, I think this is your first visit and certainly your first comment here. It’s good to know you are using giveaways to grow your email list. I know Kieth to be a good guy which is why I contributed to his giveaway.
I’m glad you like my blog which I hope means that you’ll be reading it regularly and contributing relevant comments like this one.
Vance
Hey Vance-
I stumbled onto your website by the starnge ways of the internet. I love it! I have participated in giveaways this year. I jumped in full steam! It has been wild ride, with my subscriber list growing, but not quite as fast as I want! (Isn’t this true for all of us). I like that you are promoting that people join GOOD giveaways. It is hard to identify them at first. Perhaps you can do a posting for the benefit of your viewers of what makes a giveaway good! I know this is something that I am still working on….and every little insight helps!
Jerry @ TheOnlineSuccessProgramBlog.com´s last blog post ..Respect…always give it- you never know when it will bite you in the –
Vance Reply:
July 10th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Hi Jerry,
I’m glad you found my site and thank you for commenting. It’s nice to hear that your list is growing. I can’t really tell you how to identify good giveaways other then paying attention to who organizes them and if you haven’t heard anything bad about them go ahead and participate. Your own experience is the best guide and you’ll know if you want to join another giveaway put on by the same people or not based on that. After participating in a good number of different giveaways you’ll get to know which ones to join and which ones to avoid.
I hope this helps.
Vance
Giveaways are pretty much mandatory for list building.
You rarely see any list forms that don’t offer an incentive to sign up.
Vance Reply:
July 10th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
I’m not sure if you’re talking about opt in forms on a site or a blog that offer a free incentive for the opt in.
At least it seems like that’s what you are commenting about.
If so I’d prefer if you commented about giveaways which are the subject of this post.
Vance
I like the efforts put into your post. I’ve been looking for ideas how to generate traffic and I think giveaways are one of the many great techniques that can surely attract a good number of customers/readers.
Felicia @ No deposit poker´s last blog post ..World Cup Mob Betting – Final Weekly Leaderboard- 4 Matches Left
Vance Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 3:30 am
Hi Felicia,
Welcome and thanks for commenting. I’m not sure what you mean by liking the efforts I put into the post but I’ll take it to be that you like the post. I’m glad because that is why I write. When people interact and get something out of it so do I.
Giveaways are helping traffic indirectly but their main purpose is to build a list.
I hope to see you visit again and comment.
Vance
Hi Vance,
I was recommended by a fellow marketer Sally Neil to come over and check your site out as you have some useful information.
Well what can I say. Your most recent post is about JV Giveaways. I have just started using them. They are a great way to add more subscribers to your list. My first one was OK 5 new subscribers, but my second is being so much more attractive.
21 new subscribers and it is still running. I just joined up for my 3rd giveaway. I have been testing the water with PLR products and original product created by myself. The original is by far doing better than any other I have submitted so far.
Thanks for the great content, will have a little look around and will definitely be back.
Cheers
Craig
Craig´s last blog post ..Put Your Email Marketing On Auto Pilot By Using An Auto responder
Vance Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the visit and great comment. I’m glad that you’re doing well with giveaways. Even five subscribers is better than nothing and your second one with 21 and still running is quite good.
I’ve heard of some people getting as many as 300 from one giveaway but that is an exception.
I’m glad that you like my content and will be looking forward to your visits and comments.
Vance
I’m new to the Internet Marketing game Vance, but your post hit the nail on the head for me.
I’ve only just started to focus on list building, and WILL be giving away free products in the future. However, first things first. I haven’t even created a Squeeze Page yet. 😉
I shall return for more list building tips. Thanks for creating such a useful blog Vance.
John
John McNally´s last blog post ..Which SQUEEZE PAGE is Best
Vance Reply:
July 18th, 2010 at 8:42 am
Hi John,
A very warm welcome to you. Thanks for visiting my blog and for leaving a relevant comment. I’m so glad that you recognize the importance of list building and that you find my blog useful. I’ll be delighted to have you visit for more list building tips. I suggest that you download my free ebook the Basics of List Building anytime you feel like it and definitely after reading all the posts on my blog.
There are more posts coming not only about list building but also anything I think is useful to know about internet marketing.
On Monday I’ll be publishing a post about networking at live internet marketing events.
I look forward to your next visits and comments.
Vance
Hi Vance,
Thanks for blogging this article, this idea was really great. I might try this tactic by giving some online freebies when I implement my email marketing campaign.
Thanks,
Nessa
Vanessa @ Email Delivery´s last blog post ..Organized Mailing List for a High Email Delivery
Vance Reply:
July 18th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Hi Nessa,
Welcome to my blog and thanks for the comment. I’m glad you found this post useful and I hope that you’ll come back for more.
Tomorrow I’ll publish a post about the importance of networking.
Vance
I’ve noticed a lot of online giveaways going on lately, most of them featuring iPads. I wonder how long that’s going to continue?
Laura@Gobankingrates´s last blog post ..What You Didnt Know About Wall Street Reform
Vance Reply:
August 10th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Hi Laura
Welcome to my blog. I appreciate your visit and comment and I hope to see you here again.
I think that iPads are one of the most desirable things that people want these days together with the new iPhones. They’ll continue to be given away until a new more desirable gadget appears.
Vance
Everybody loves something free. Free products and services make the world a better place:) And giving something away for free can also be a very good marketing strategy. Giving something away for free is a great way to show people you appreciate them and also one of the best ways to build up your email subscriber list.
Vance Reply:
August 19th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Hi Tamara,
Welcome to my blog and thanks for commenting.
People do like to get things for free and they are not likely to subscribe to an email list unless they are offered something gratis.
It does make the world as better place to be sharing things but giveaways are not a pure charity but a part of a marketing strategy.
Most people understand this although there are some who expect to be getting everything for free and are surprised that once in a while there is a price attached to what is being offered.
Vance
You are absolutely right and they are also great for building blog following.
Scarlet´s last blog post ..Nature’s Hand Granola Introduces Go>Nola and a Big Granola Giveaway
Vance Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Hi Scarlet,
Thank you for commenting. I’m glad you agree with me even though you are doing a different kind of giveaways. The principle is still the same.
Vance
I think this is great advice. It’s also a good way to get twitter followers, by having contests where people retweet your stuff. I’d follow that 🙂
Vance Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
Hi Jane,
I hear and read that contests work. I may try them too at one point but I tend to think that organizing them may be time consuming.
If you had any contests on I’d appreciate knowing how they went for you and what it took to put them on.
Vance
I’ve only ever tried email marketing/list building twice and I failed miserably both times. Here’s hoping that this advice makes the third time a charm, huh? 🙂