Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Giveaway suggestions

Everyone is caught up in the bloggy giveaway this week and I almost forgot about Works for Me Wednesday!

With all the hoopla over the giveaway, and I have been into it as much as anyone, I would like to make a few suggestions for those participating, both in the offering and in the trying to win.

If you are commenting to try to win:
  • follow the directions! If it says go to such and such a site and pick out something, do it! I look over comments, not only on mine but on others and so often people do not do what they are supposed to. One said send an email to her, but people commented asking to be counted in.
  • Make sure there is a way to contact you. Last giveaway I had someone picked and there was no way to get to them. I tried and finally gave up and picked someone else.
If you are offering a giveaway:

  • Make your directions clear. I have hunted through some blogs where I was not sure when the drawing was or even if a comment was all that was needed. It was not clear.
  • relax your spam filter. I hate wanting to try for a prize, go through all the one site to another, pick something or comment on something and then have the filter tell me something I wrote seemed like spam. Most I have no problem with, but one in particular was very difficult and I was disappointed.
  • Make sure you have the right link on Mr. Linky. Several of them were errors and I could not get to the post. One had the name in twice on the same line and after trying all kinds of things I made it to the blog, others I could not get there.
These giveaways are fun, as are the carnivals and other blog interactions, but they could be less frustrating for all with just a little more carefulness.

You may be wondering where my giveaway is on this blog, well, I hope to have it up in a day or so, Check back. In the meantime, you can go to Meet Me In The Garden to try for my giveaway there.

Check out Rocks in My Dryer for more WFMW posts.

4 comments:

Jendeis said...

Very good points; I totally agree with you.

Mom2fur said...

Good ideas! I have 2 giveaways going on, and made a big mistake in that I linked to the top of my blog rather than directly to the posts. I fixed that, and now I know. As far as a spam filter, I think I'll go check and see about that. I'm not sure it's on. You could post to me, being a fellow Blogger, but I know, for instance, that when I try to write to Homeschool Bloggers I never get a visit back from them. So in those cases, I left my e-mail address. Written with the words "at" and "dot" rather than the way they actually look...I'm not giving my e-mail away to some robot, LOL!

Heart of Wisdom said...

Thank you for pointing this out! I have two Giveaways at 2 blogs. One is a new blog focusing on home organization
http://heartofwisdom.com/heartathome

so on the new site the direction say subscribe--but everyone is just leaving a comment Very few followed the directions. (maybe 20%).

Thanks,
Robin

Peggie said...

Heart of wisdom, Is it possible some have subscribed through the button on your address? I usually do that and put blogs I like on my reader or google home page.

However, I have seen many where people did not follow the rules. Maybe you need to pick from those that did, many of the giveaways say if you do not play by the rules you will not be counted.

I know it gets hard when you just sit here and go down the list filling out. I read them, but I can see where someone would just go down and not read. It is obvious when you see the comments.
It sure is a lot of fun though!