Do Giveaways really work?

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So if you are on Instagram and care about growing your following, I’m sure you’ve heard of giveaways.

Now I have heard of several people talk about giveaways in both positive & negative ways. I want to be able to give you guys everything I know so that you can make your own opinion.

This is 2019 and I realize we all won’t feel the same way about certain topics and that’s okay. The beauty of it all is being able to discuss things in a mature way and at the same time not make anyone feel bad for having certain opinions.

So let’s get right into it, Do giveaways really work???

I think it’s important to describe the different types of giveaways because there is many different types!!

Solo Giveaway

This is where you decide to host a giveaway for your current followers. Last year I gave away $150+ worth of products to one of my followers. The rules were they had to follow me, subscribe to my blog, and tag some friends in the comments. This giveaway can be done with maybe overflow of PR products (Sivan, popular lifestyle blogger, does this often), gifted products, or you spend your own money.

GAIN: This giveaway is not necessarily for growth but more so to give back to their followers. You could gain a little bit by them tagging friends and those friends actually following your profile after. Many have done the bonus part where you share the page on your stories which could help with exposure.

Brand Partnership Giveaway

This is where you may see people partnering with brands to deliver the giveaway. The brands(s) will gift the influencer items to host a giveaway on their own page. The rules are you have to follow both the influencer and the brand to increase growth for both parties involved. People will do this with hotel stays, beauty items, hair care products, workout equipment, beauty services, food & beverage products, etc etc.

GAIN: Some times the brand will put it on their page too but for the most part the influencer many not gain that many followers. It’s something that they believe their audience will like and enjoy.

Blogger Partnership Giveaway

Now this giveaway is like the one I am currently hosting with 8 other blogger babes to give away one ticket to Coachella. One blogger babe basically facilitated this for us, reached out to everyone, collected the money, and purchased the physical ticket online. Many bloggers do this where they team up with however many people they want and giveaway a Sephora, Starbucks, Target, or Amazon gift card.

This means bloggers are indeed ” teaming up with their favorite bloggers,” if they choose them.

Keep in mind that this language can be used in loop giveaways too. If you do enough research you could figure out whether they really know each other but I don’t think you actually have that much time on your hands or that it really matter/affects you in anyway.

The idea is you want to pick profiles that are similar to yours so that you know your audience will enjoy following them!

Anyone can organize this, it just takes one or a couple people to facilitate for everyone else.

Loop Giveaway

Loop giveaways are when a host giveaway profile facilitates the giveaway. They announce it on their page and they give all the bloggers the instructions, time, and posting language. The person or people behind this page actively recruit people to join their giveaway and each person or people that host giveaways have different objectives.

Who runs these loop giveaways?

For the most part it’s fellow bloggers that want to make the process easier or make more reputable giveaways available for everyone.

Eventually as it grows those same bloggers or influencers run it more as a business. They may have a website, active recruiters, and run several in one month.

Some people who run these also may not be the most ethical and all they care about is money. We will get into that more later and how to spot these!

Lets give you guys an example:

For instance I could create a giveaway Instagram profile called, “Boss Babe Giveaways.” Side note: I did want to start a page the could help bloggers facilitate this process. I just haven’t actually done it.

Anyway…

As the admin of that profile I could reach out to 20 different bloggers to advertise a giveaway for a $600 gift card to Target.

I could charge $30 for each person and make no profit. This is usually the case for e gift cards or anything that doesn’t require any shipping & handling fees.

A second option would be to charge $35 per person which is $700 and the extra $100 can be used to sponsor the giveaway on Instagram to reach more people.

Another option would be to create different categories:

Normal spots where you post on your feed: $23 per spot, 15 total = $345

Secret Spots where you post on your stories: $35 per spot, 3 total= $103

(Good for people that don’t want to ruin their pretty feed)

Ghost Spots where you don’t post at all: $76 per spot, 2 total= $152

(Also good for people who don’t want to ruin their feed and secret spots are not available)

SO $345+$103+$152= And still $600

Just to give you guys an idea!

Different types of Loop Giveaways

Now there are several types of loop giveaways and honestly I’ve seen it all!

Small loop giveaway: The gain can be anywhere from 200-800 followers. Typically these small giveaways are just like the one I described above. A giveaway page will host it and deal with everything. This means you may not know who else is joining the giveaway. Some may disclose people who have paid but some may not give you this list.

The price for these can range anywhere from $15-$75. Could be more or less just depending what the prize is and how many people are participating.

Small loop giveaways with a Sponsor(s): The gain for these can be anywhere from 400-2.5 k followers. Now in addition to all the bloggers who participate/post on their page, the host can add 1 or 2 different sponsors. Sponsors are people who have a relatively larger following and they get paid to post it on their profile. Now the gain will increase depending on how many sponsors there are.

Depending on how many people participate, the buy in can also be more expensive. The host has to pay for the give away prize as well as a payment for these sponsors to post on their profiles.

The price for these can again range anywhere from $15-100. If they have a long list of people participating then it can be pretty cheap.

Large loop giveaways with high ranking sponsors: The gain for these can be anywhere from 1.5k-10k. Yes, that is a very large number and yes, it’s true! High ranking sponsors are people who have anywhere from 100k-5 mill followers and have really good engagement. The gain varies because it all depends on the prize and on the actual sponsors. For the most part, you may not have to post for these giveaways and they rely strictly on the sponsors.

Now this could turn into an international giveaway if the sponsors are from a different country or they have a large following from a different country.

These giveaways are typically more expensive because you have multiple sponsors posting it on their page. It could be anywhere from $75-$500. I have heard of it being more expensive but I personally haven’t seen any advertised for more than $500.

Could you imagine if Kendall Jenner did a giveaway with her audience and you were one of the people to follow?? I have no clue how much that would cost but it would be really really expensive.

Now my experience & my story

Personally, I feel like not all giveaways are created equal. While I am a fan of some, I’m not fond of others. I’m not saying I don’t like them based on someone else’s opinion, I’m saying I don’t like certain ones based off of my own experience!

Now when I first started I had no real guidance about giveaways or any real information on them. I did couple that I honestly regretted and I wish I could take it back!

Why am I telling you this? Because I would rather you learn from my mistakes.

Several of my blogger friends would ask my opinion and I would tell them all the stuff I’m telling you here so they can make the right decision. I would say be very cautious because you just never know. I never asked a million questions or knew what to look for.

As of recently I started doing giveaways with other babes to help gain exposure as well as the small loop giveaways. In my personal experience I’ve seen that these get me real followers. REAL ACCOUNTS WITH REAL PEOPLE. The gain is usually pretty small but it helps to get exposure. If they stop following me after the giveaway I do not take offense. I see it as my profile was not serving a purpose or value in their timeline. After all its my job to show to these new followers that I am worth their time. Turn over rate depends on your content, type of profile, the value you provide, and how they can relate to you!

Many of your favorite bloggers do these giveaways and there is nothing wrong with them considering they have the right intentions.

How do you know when it’s a good giveaway?

Everyone has different goals for doing giveaways and something could work for one person and not the other. For instance, if you have a makeup profile you may not be as picky as a lifestyle blogger from LA. I say this because makeup is universal right, if you are strictly posting creative looks, you just want eyes on your work. You may already have clientele and you just want to get exposure so bigger brands can notice you.

Food for thought: Do you think James Charles is stingy about where his 14 million subscribers come from?? Yeah, the answer is NO. He’s internationally famous in the beauty community! If you don’t know who he is, he was the first male “cover girl.”

What are your goals for doing giveaways?

Are you looking for exposure for your profile/business, get engaging followers that support your content in likes/comments, future consumers of things you post about, etc etc. Now believe it or not everyone will have a different answer. You can also have different objectives for different giveaways that you participate in. It’s all a business strategy for people who want to monetize their following on instagram.

If you look at travel accounts, people from all over the world follow them to see all the cool places they go too, and hope other people will want to go their too. Their audience does not have to be “U.S BASED,” their audience can be everyone who is interested in traveling.

Anyway OK so questions to ask to find a good one that fits for you:

This will determine which one you should lean towards!

What is the average gain?

Just think of this, the more followers means lower quality, less followers means higher quality, take your pick.

Are there sponsors?

Sponsors to me means more followers. Again, what are your goals, this should help you determine whether you want sponsors or not.

If there are sponsors, ask who they are, ask for their insights aka engagement, and ask for their demographics. If they can’t tell you who the sponsors are I personally would not risk it. You would have no idea where they are coming from and that could mess up your account.

How many people are involved and what’s the buy in?

Do the math. Is there any funny business? Ask if it’s not adding up!

What are they giving away?

This is important. You want to make sure it matches your niche. Any really big prizes attract more followers which again equals lower quality. Stick to gift cards at stores you would shop at, or items you own/would buy, or that your followers would really enjoy.

Many people feel that whatever the prize may be people are only following you to win. While this is true for the most part, making sure the prize matches your target audience is important.

What is their policy on fake accounts?

Now depending on the giveaway people may create fake accounts so they have more chances to win. This is not good for you because this creates GHOST followers. These people never go and unfollow after the giveaway is over because they never check that account, only during the giveaway. So that means yes they will still follow you but they will never see your content.

Always ask an admin what their policy is. You want an admin that will say “these accounts would be disqualified and not eligible to win! You can block those accounts and we’ll let everyone else know who they are too.”

Even better if they include it in the caption rules when the giveaway goes live.

If they say they don’t have one, suggest what I just mentioned.

Can I see a list of partcipating people?

This is helpful to see if the other bloggers have similar style or within the same niche!

Are you guaranteed a certain # of followers??

Now you can never guarantee how many followers you will gain. If they do, this raises a red flag for me. So many things will vary that it’s impossible for them to guarantee anything. If they do, ask how they will do this? Will they run sponsored adds, what countries will they be promoting it to?

Even so I wouldn’t do it.

Do they have proof of previous giveaway winners?

I say this because many people say it’s a scam and people don’t actually get the prize. If they are ethical people than they will have proof of any previous winner which could be messages and maybe a picture with the prize.

I’ve seen some admins ask the winners to write on a piece of people all of the details of the giveaway and then take a picture with it so they can show on their profile that someone is actually winning the prize!

So to sum it all up:

I’ve covered the different types of giveaways, the average gain, the average prices, and even some important questions to find the right one for you.

So much information but I’m sure answered tons of your questions that you have been wondering about.

Whether you decide to participate in a giveaway is all up to you. You can make your own decision based on what I’ve told you here and also the experiences of other people.

Keep in mind that not everyone will make the same choices and that doesn’t mean one is less than the other.

All I have to say is you can’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. And if you have tried it, share your experience along with your opinion. Sharing your experience could help some one else and that’s what really matters!

Thank you for reading this post and I hope it was helpful in someway to you!

It’s been real.

XOXO,

Liz-Laugh-Love