How To Enter Blog Giveaways

Giveaways on blogs have evolved over time so I am writing this post to help those of you who are new to the “craft” and want to get started. First, a giveaway is either a sweepstakes or a contest. Most giveaways on blogs are sweepstakes. A sweepstakes means that you have the opportunity to enter to win without having any particular skill. A contest means that you have the opportunity to enter to win by demonstrating some type of skill or doing some type of particular task such as taking a great photo of your child for a cutest kid contest.

Most of the time when a blog is promoting or sponsoring a giveaway, they will use a giveaway widget. The most popular widgets are the following:

• Rafflecopter
• Gleam
• Giveaway Tools
• PunchTab

Bloggers use these widgets for several reasons:

• It keeps the giveaway organized.
• They can easy track entries.
• They can allow you to enter using your social media channels easily.
• It makes it easy for you to enter.

These widgets allow you to not only get one entry into the giveaway but many in a very short period of time. Although you are typically entering a sweepstakes that requires no skill, you will have a better chance of winning if you try to get as many entries into the giveaway as possible. To get more entries, be sure that you have profiles set up for as many social media channels as possible. The most common social media channels used on widgets are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest

Sometimes, bloggers will also offer entries that are not based in social media. For example, they might offer entries if you:

• leave a comment on the blog post(s)
• subscribe to their email newsletter
• subscribe to blog updates using sites like Bloglovin

To enter a giveaway on a widget, read the widget for details. It will tell you when the giveaway begins (or if it has already begun) and how much time is left to enter. It will tell you how many entries there already are into the giveaway. Do not be intimidated by this number. Although there may be many entries, there may be few people. Some people are overzealous about entering giveaways because they are sweepers. Sweepers are people who regularly enter sweepstakes and some of them, in fact, do this as a full time job. Their entire income is based in their prize winnings. Don’t be overwhelmed by this because bloggers that use widgets know about this practice and they use the widget because it allows a fair and legal way to select a winner. The winners in sweepstakes are selected at random. The winners in a contest are selected based on skill. I have seen people win giveaways that only had one entry (the required entry) many times!

To start the process, I recommend that you do the following:

1. Read the entire blog post. Although I would imagine most people do not do this, I strongly recommend it. Often times a brand has paid big money to place this giveaway on the blog (or set of blogs) to promote their product. If you read the details about the product or service, it may help you in whatever the entries may be on the widget. Sometimes there will be an opportunity to comment on the blog and your comment will be more helpful to the blogger in generating a conversation. You will also learn more from the post than you will on the widget in most cases including the details on what the prize will be and how you will obtain it if you win. Often times, a blogger will require you to respond to an email notifying you that you won within 24 hours. You will want to know this and not enter the giveaway if you will be out of town when it is over. Why spend your time entering if you won’t be able to confirm your winnings?
2. Scroll to the widget. Each of the widgets have a different appearance but they all essentially function in a similar way.

Here is a screenshot of a Gleam Widget:

At the top of the widget, you can see how many entries you have into the giveaway, the total number of entries earned by anyone in the giveaway, and how many hours remain to gain entries.

Then it tells you that there are 40 various ways to enter. This lets you know that the ways to enter shown here are not the only options, they are just the required options for unlocking more options.

You can see how many entries each item is worth by looking at the 1. You will gain one entry in the giveaway when you complete each of these items. You must do the following to unlock 331 more entry options:

• Share your age. This is often just because of legal requirements. You must confirm that you are 18 or older, for example.
• Refer friends for extra entries. This gives you the opportunity to gain an entry by sharing it with your friends.
• Click for a Bonus Entry. This blogger decided to be generous and allow you to enter simply by clicking the 1! This is very rare, but makes it really easy to enter this giveaway.

Once you complete those three entry options, you will unlock more options. The widget will then look something like this:

You can peruse the entry options and choose those that are most convenient for you. When I, myself, enter blog giveaways I tend to only enter using the Twitter options because they are very fast and often automatically generate or fill in the box. Once you’ve logged into Twitter using the widget, it is very easy. On Gleam it will just complete the task without taking you from this page most of the time. On Rafflecopter or other widgets, the process may be a bit different but is still very easy and takes very little time.

You may also choose to not gain any additional entries once you’ve completed the required entries prior to it unlocking extras. You are already entered into the giveaway, you just will not have as high of a mathematical probability of winning. It is up to you as to how many entries you would like to gain for each giveaway.

The other giveaway widgets operate in a similar way. Here is an example of a Rafflecopter widget:

At the top of the widget, you can see that there are 9 days remaining to enter the giveaway. In the middle, it shows how many entries have been gained by people already. Then it shows you how many entries you have completed and the maximum number you can gain (in this case 130). To begin entering this giveaway, you will click the down arrow and then enter your email address. Once you complete this required entry, you have many more options that appear:

On this particular giveaway, the organizer has chosen to have entire pages of follows. So, for example, where it states “Instagram Follows” you would click that down arrow and then follow the link to another page where s/he has listed several Instagram accounts to follow. This typically occurs when a very large group of bloggers participates to sponsor this giveaway. It gives the sponsors the opportunity to receive social media follows in exchange for their participation in the event. You will usually gain a larger number of entries when taking part in these options.

To check out the latest giveaways I am offering on this site, go here: http://www.womanlywoman.com/category/shoppingsavings/giveaway

To see a list of giveaways offered by several bloggers, go here: https://twitter.com/giveawaysblogs

That should get you started in the process of entering giveaways! If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below and then myself or other giveaway bloggers will respond to give you tips! Good luck!

Here is the original link to this post: How To Enter Blog Giveaways.