Bloggiesta Mini Challenge #1

Mini Challenge #1

How to Host a Giveaway

1. So the first step in creating a giveaway is deciding what you are giving away and why. Maybe it's a book you loved, you're contemplating joining a Giveaway Hop or you've been asked to giveaway an item via a Blog Tour.

2. Next, you need to figure out if you want to post it alone or tag it onto a review/interview or other type of post.

3. Then, you have to figure out who is sending it out and how to fulfill the prize. With publishers, they usually have shipping restrictions. If you want to ship it yourself, you are better off shipping locally within your country, or you can use a website like The Book Depository, which has free shipping to many different countries.

4. Once you have all that in mind, you set up the post. Make sure you include information as to how long the giveaway will last, where it can ship to and what the item is with a nice visual image to go along with it.

5. Add in how people will enter. I've used both Google Docs and Rafflecopter in the past for giveaways. You can also use a linky tool like Inlinkz, just make sure to hide your entries. All of these are free tools! Once you've set them up, just click on Source or HTML to add the code it generates. If this is overwhelming for you, you can also have people enter via the comments. Make sure to tell them what you expect – email address, etc.

6. Extra entries. Sometimes it's nice to get people to follow you on twitter, etc. Rafflecopter makes it easy to add in extra entries, but you can also include them in your instructions (leave links to what you want them to do – follow via twitter, etc) or add them to your Google Form.