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How To Promote Your Business For Free By Hosting Your Own Online Giveaway

Guest post by: Teresa Bohannon

Article Overview: Have you ever wanted to find a unique way to market your website or business or services, or thought of joining a "free" online marketing cooperative known as a Giveaway? Have you visited online giveaways or seen them advertised and thought they were a great idea that you would like to try yourself; but just were not sure how or where to begin or what to expect? Well come along with me and I'll take you step-by-step on my journey as I start and run my very first Old-Fashioned...MyLadyWeb's Free Gift Giveaway event. You can learn from my triumphs and mistakes and decide for yourself if freely and cooperatively marketing your business and that of others through participating in—or even hosting—your own online giveaway is right for you.

How To Promote Your Business For Free By Hosting Your Own Online Giveaway

I have been actively in business online for nearly 14 years now, but for most of the last ten years most of my time and efforts have been concentrated elsewhere. About three years ago I was suddenly faced with the necessity of either revitalizing my aging online business or calling it quits. I opted for revitalization and gambled on the world of online giveaways as the fastest route to success. It turned out to be a successful decision, and one that would eventually lead me down the path to setting up MyLadyWeb's Free Gift Giveaway and inviting you to come along for the ride.

I originally had no intention of running my own giveaway site. After all, I knew it would be a lot of time-consuming additional hard work to set it up, and operate it. But then one day fate intervened and I ran into a great deal on software that would not only run a membership site, but also run a giveaway or even a combination of both. So to make a long story short, I decided to host my own Old Fashioned Giveaway where people could join together for the common good, "for free" and promote their businesses and websites by giving away a free sample or "gift" to people who were interested in the items or services they had to sell.

Why do I call it Old-Fashioned? Because the name and venue may be updated, but the concepts involved date back to ancient times. Whether you call it a bazaar, street fair, festival, flea market, main street, shopping mall or online giveaway, it is still just a marketing cooperative founded on co-location to draw larger crowds. The same is true for the notion of giving away a sample to advertise your wares, again the medium has been modernized so that the samples are generally electronic or virtual but the concept is the same. Combine these two time-honored marketing ideas and you have an online giveaway--i.e. co-location and lots of free traffic-drawing attractions for the common good of all involved.

So...should you start your own online giveaway or simply join that of someone else? I'll leave that for you to decide after you have learned what is really involved.

First, be prepared to be unprepared. When, I announced MyLadyWebsGiftGiveaway I thought that I had everything ready to go…. As it turns out I was only half right. All the big stuff was ready to go, it was just the small details that needed to be fine tuned…and fine tuned some more, and then guess what… fine tuned some more again.

So here a few suggestions you might want to heed before announcing your first giveaway.

* Have a few total novices go through it for you and let you see it through their eyes. Things that you think are simple or self-explanatory are often not that way for someone who is just getting started online.

* Then have a few seasoned online veterans go through it and have them weigh in with their opinions and observations. I say have them weigh in because their ideas of how to run a giveaway may not necessarily mesh with yours, but that does not make their experienced insight any less valuable…so listen carefully to whatever they have to say.

* Set your parameters for submissions carefully. Some people will deliberately take advantage of your inexperience if they can, and others will accidentally mess up because they did not know any better…or you did not know to tell them any better.

Here are a few steps you will need to take and questions you will want to ask yourself and know the answers to before you open your doors.

#1 Will you be paying out any commissions or cash prizes to contributor's? If the recipient is an American citizen the IRS says you need to have their SS# before you pay them over $400.00 in a single year.

#2 Determine what kind of gifts you will accept. If you choose a particular theme stick to it. If you let some people contribute a gift that does not fit the mold, other contributors will be upset. MyLadyWebsGiftGiveaway does not have a specific theme because it was set up simply as a free marketing venue to allow people to showcase their online businessess and websites. However, even if your theme is generic like mine, you still need to decide if you will allow free trials, memberships, software, Ebooks, graphics or all of the above.

#3 Determine the details of submissions. For example, if your script does not automatically limit or resize the images that contributors list with their gift, you probably will want to set a maximum height and width for pixels.

#4 Determine the length of the blurb or text description your contributors are allowed to post, and read them to make sure they do not say something that you do not want posted on your Giveaway.

#5 Test all submitted gifts with anti-virus software. McAfee’s Site Advisor is a handy tool and so is Avira Virus protection, and both are free.

#6 Sign up on all contributor's mailing lists (with a separate, coded email address) and check to make sure everything works properly before you approve their gift.

#7 Tell everyone the rules up front on their login page and on their acceptance email. Do not take it for granted that they or anyone else will read your disclaimers and terms and conditions pages.

#8 Be prepared to spend time sincerely and cheerfully answering a lot of questions. A FAQ will save time, but the personal touch goes a long way when someone is new to the world of giveaways and wants to contribute their first gift.

#9 Be prepared to receive some criticisms from some people who choose–for whatever reason–to be offended by some facet of your giveaway.

#10 This last one should be obvious…but I managed to forget it.... Prominently post the dates of your Giveaway.

Finally, plan on a lot of long hours and tedious work...and longing for the good old days when all you had to do was submit your gift and let someone else do the hard work:)

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874 ? 1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915

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  Why Your Online Income Opportunities Websites need to be Self-Hosted
  Build Your List with Joint Venture Giveaway Events
  Tips For Running A Retail Giveaway

Article Tags: bazaar, business online, co location, crowds, fate, festival flea market, free gift, free sample, free traffic, gift giveaway, giveaways, intention, last ten years, marketing cooperative, marketing ideas, notion, revitalization, shopping mall, wares



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