Offering prizes?

[glitch]

I know some forums have done this to boost activity and user sign ups and it has worked out well. What about for a blog?

Would it be beneficial to offer a monthly prize each month for people that sign up for your news letter and leave comments on posts? My wife is considering this. I am not sure it is really worth it though.

 

[Grant]

I love doing giveaways and contests, but you need to know when to use them and not. I wouldn't rely on giveaways as a way to bring users in, as most will join, enter the giveaway and will peace out afterwards. Most people who join for a giveaway, leave once they announce a winner. Some may come back for future giveaways, but usually you'll find people who only want to enter the giveaway.

Giveways are nice, and an added bonus for users, but it's not a good way to bring new users in. It's a nice way to increase traffic for a bit, but that traffic will die down.

Your best bet is to create engaging topics and content so people keep coming back, and then you can do giveaways for those users who keep coming back. That's what I prefer doing.

 

[Nomad]

A lot of bloggers offer free ebooks to build subscriptions for newsletters. However, thoise who subscribe in a hope to get a free ebook might not use their best email and might be using email that they might not even checking. People will grab every free offer, but they are not going to stay with your website once they get their free items.

 

[Grant]

A lot of bloggers offer free ebooks to build subscriptions for newsletters. However, thoise who subscribe in a hope to get a free ebook might not use their best email and might be using email that they might not even checking. People will grab every free offer, but they are not going to stay with your website once they get their free items.

The sad truth, is that with most giveaways you do, will result in many of those career contest enterers to join. When I did some giveaways for a community I worked for a while back, we would share the giveaways on social media and in some sites that featured giveaways. We got a good bump of traffic, but one of the winners of the giveaway we did, turned out to be one of those people who do nothing but enter giveaways. I found out by going to one of the winners twitter pages, and all the posts are re-tweets to enter this giveaway or that one.

And I think it works for them, because I think some of these guys do this for a living. Scouring the net for giveaways to enter in the hopes they win. I think a lot of them look for small giveaways or ones being done by smaller communities. So you're going to see a lot of this with those type of people, because they will enter every giveaway they can, whether it be a bit one or small.

They very rarely stick around. When I did it for the site I mentioned above, we'd get decent traffic, and then we'd see tons of people leaving our Discord for example, which is where they'd join as it was one of the requirements to enter said giveaway.

 

[Nomad]

Incentivized traffic never works. Once you stop offering incentives, the traffic will stop. Likewise, incentivized activities also never work, once you stop giving incentives for activities, these people will stop being active. It is also not possible to always provide incentives for traffic and activities. The best way to bring traffic is by providing valuable content. If you offer something useful, people will come to your site.

 

[Monster Masterpiece]

I know some forums have done this to boost activity and user sign ups and it has worked out well. What about for a blog?

Would it be beneficial to offer a monthly prize each month for people that sign up for your news letter and leave comments on posts? My wife is considering this. I am not sure it is really worth it though.

The threads should be promotional threads means advertiser is running promotional threads and giveaway for comment on a promotional thread not regular posting thread and giving out prizes and money as I think the most logical solution.

 

[btaliat]

It can be frustrating when we don't have traffic to our content and we may truly want to engage in different ways of getting traffic like offering giveaways but we just need to know the exact time to embark on this.

 

[Shortie]

The way I look at any idea is that you never know if you do not try. I can't see why a contest with a prize for signing up to a newsletter and commenting on blog posts would not work, most people are happy to do small things like that for the chance to win something.

I would definitely tell your wife to jump at the chance and give it a go, it could be something that does take off and it may be something she could do every so often in the future as well.