Hey all, I am trying to promote a site I have up and running by giving away free t-shirts and maybe mugs in a contest. The key is they need to use the service, which is very easy to be entered in a draw. Any thoughts? Thanks!
I did something like this last year. And i am proud to say it worked. I wanted to promote a blog and i had 3 usb sticks and 3 t-shirts. Who wanted to win had to put one of my banners on their site. At the end there was a draw. The traffic was clearly growing. Good Luck.
I didn't think of the banner thing...but that could work well too....how did you advertise this contest?
It is a double edged sword. You need traffic to know about the contest and you want to do a contest to get traffic. In my experience, the only time it works is when you already have a traffic flow and want to increase by getting referrals or you want to get RSS sign-ups. If you are going to spend money to advertise a contest, you will be better off spending it to advertise the site. The other downside is that traffic decreases once the contest is over unless you have something to keep them there.
Perry is right on here. I've done about every promotion you can think of (in a forum platform) and never got a worthwhile result. Thousands of visitors a day, prizes worth BIG $$.....most winners took their prizes and were never heard from again. The content of your site is what keeps people interested and returning.
Its a double edged sword alright. The reason I asked is one of my sites is giving away free mp3 players with the only "condition" on sale that they cover the cost of shipping. No upsell, no downsell, no forced continuity, no tricks. To me the product has high value - what do you think? Its a 2GB MP3 Player & if the orders get to the numbers I expect - they will be upgraded to 4GB.
Yes these sometimes do drive a good amount of Traffic this is usually when the free give away is something nice and people like it. > Things like free Facebook coupon codes
Giving free content / services is a very good and targeted why to obtain an email list of subscribers.