Here are some thoughts and tips that I wrote up after completing my first MIVEST giveaway, and of course, check out the "how-to" blog post on our members-only blog written by Linda: http://mivestmembers.blogspot.com/2010/05/step-by- step-how-to-do-giveaway.html
Pick an item to give away that is representative of your shop. (If 90% of what you sell is widgets, and 10% is whoozits, then definitely give away a widget!) Also, I recommend picking an item that worth a medium amount, so that people feel like they're winning something significant. Don't give away that $80 retail bracelet, but don't giveaway a $5 pair of earrings either. (For example, I gave away a bobby pin trio that I would sell for $16 in my shop, but only cost me about $4 or so to make.)
Think about what you want to get out of the giveaway. Maybe you want more blog, Twitter, or Facebook followers, or simply more views and hearts, to help get your shop noticed. For me, I wanted more Facebook fans, and I wanted to encourage those Facebook fans to share my shop with their friends. So two of the ways you could enter my giveaway were to become a fan of my Facebook page and then leave a comment that they did so, and to post my Facebook page on their Facebook page for their friends to see, and then leave a comment that they did so.
The third way you could enter my giveaway was to go to my Etsy shop, pick your favorite item, and post a comment telling me what your favorite item was. The benefit to having them do this is (a) you get people to look through your shop, and therefore possibly come back and buy something in the future, and (b) it is interesting to hear what people like best, from a "market research" point of view.
You can keep it simple in terms of how people can enter (that might be good for your first giveaway), or you can get really fancy, like Kelly did in her giveaway here: http://vermontetsystreetteam. blogspot.com/2010/05/giveaway- 5-organic-exfoliating-soap. html She got 111 comments/entries, so it definitely worked!
If you don't promote your giveaway, no one will enter. So get out there and let it be known that you are hosting a giveaway! When I did mine, I was pretty busy for the first week of it and therefore did very little promoting (just on my own Facebook page), and I only got about five or six entries. Then I got a little panicked and entered it with two of the websites that Linda recommended in her blog post - the Etsy Giveaway Blog and By Hand Giveaways. Once the giveaway was posted on those websites, the entries started rolling in. I also did a little bit of promoting in the Etsy forums, and got a few entries from that. And of course, we will all post your giveaways on our Facebook pages, or twitter about it, etc. In all, I got 67 entries.
To pick a winner, I suggest googling "random number generator" and use that widget to pick what comment is the winner. The winner of my giveaway was so excited, she said that I made her day! So...it's a win-win situation all around, and it was a fun thing to do.
Good luck with your giveaways!
