By nickel

As you may or may not know, my personal finance weblog turned two years old on May 1st. In celebration of this momentous event (and in hopes of generating a bit of a buzz) I decided to host a giveaway. While it hasn’t yet run it’s course, things are shaping up quite nicely.

Thus far I’ve received over 400 comment entries, and nearly 40 sites have linked to me as a direct result of the giveaway. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. While it’s not quite over (there’s still time to enter, so hurry over and take part), I thought I’d go ahead and put together a list of tips for hosting a successful giveaway…

1. Offer great prizes. If you want your giveaway to have a major impact, you need to make it worth the trouble. Often times you’ll see a giveaway where people are handing out some low value trinket. While this might generate a bit of interest, you’re selling yourself short if you don’t dangle something really enticing. In my case, I decided to go for multiple prizes, including some pretty nice stuff. Here’s the list:

- iPod nano
- iPod shuffle
- 5GB USB Microdrive
- Encyclopedia of Financial Planning
- Time is Money (Here’s my review)

2. Make it easy to enter. In my case, I was primarily interested in generating excitement as opposed to making people jump through hoops. Thus, I made it dead easy to enter — just leave a comment (and promise to tell at least on friend about my site) and you’re in.

3. Reward others for helping with the hype. While I wanted to make it easy to enter in order to encourage broad participation, I also wanted help getting the word out. Thus, I promised people with a blog of their own an additional three entries if they wrote a review of my site. To keep things on the up and up, I included specific linking requirements, including my front page, my welcome page, and the contest announcement. I also gave them the option of digging through the archives and picking out a few articles that they’d like to highlight and/or rebut if they’d prefer that over a straight up review. I also link back to all such entries, such that people that choose to participate in this fashion get a bit of an added boost.

4. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself. It’s your contest, and you’re the one footing the bills for the prizes, so don’t be afraid to “sell” your site to contest participants. Encourage visitors to check out your archives, invite them to subscribe to your RSS feed, etc.

5. Do whatever you can to create a buzz. When you first go live, consider sending a friendly announcement to friendly bloggers that might be interested (see also Tip #3 as added encouragement). Post regular updates/reminders. I even went so far as to post a sitewide link at the top of all my pages in order to draw in the random surfers that happen upon individual post pages and would otherwise miss out on the fun. The goal here is to convert random visitors into regular readers, so play any angle that you can.

So there you have it. While the dust still hasn’t settled, my investment is already paying dividends. I’ve seen a nice bounce in traffic and subscribers (both RSS and e-mail) have likewise been on the rise. If you’re looking for a fun way to promote your site, I heartily endorse doing a giveaway. But if you’re going to do it, do it right.