New! Now you can host giveaways for your products and services right here in your online craft room on Tip Junkie! {happy dance} Here’s an example of a giveaway on your Tip Junkie profile, which I call your online craft room. It’s a great way to quickly gain exposure and buzz for your products and services. Especially if you don’t have a blog or keep up with one.
So if you have an Etsy shop or online store, hosting a giveaway right here on Tip Junkie can be a great way to expose yourself to a brand new audience and clientele. You can see all the current giveaways and winners on our Mom-preneur Monday Giveaway Winner’s page.
Host Your Giveaway on Tip Junkie!
Why would you host a giveaway on Tip Junkie? What are the benefits?
- If chosen for feature, Tip Junkie will promote it via all social media channels and featured on home page.
- Introduce your product or services to a new readership and potential customer base
- It’s easy. Not much to loose but a product or two.
- It will generate your own URL tat you can use to promote on your own social media.
1. Clickable Title
I’ve hosted hundreds of giveaways over the past 10 years on Tip Junkie. Over the decade, I’ve learned a thing or two on what resonates with readers.
The first thing to understand is that Tip Junkie readers are not bloggers. They are creative women who love to make beautiful things. So keep things simple, to the point, and always about them.
$75 Target Gift Card Giveaway! {comment to win}
The title of your giveaway should have:
- $ Value
- What you are giving away
- How to Win
You’ll also want to use words like: Free, Giveaway, Freebie, Win to entice readers to click on your link. Regarding your product, if your brand name isn’t as recognizable as what it is… then use the product name rather than the brand name. For instance, if you’re giving away a $100 Tip Junkie Bracelet, you’d want to describe the bracelet like a “Sterling Silver Bracelet” as not everyone might not know what the brand “Tip Junkie” is. However, for my example “Target” is a more powerful brand which resonate will the majority of readers. Therefore, it’s important to make it more about Target than the gift card.
2. Giveaway Description
I have found that it’s important to keep the description text in the Project Information box as short as possible. People are already skeptical that they will win so to get them to interact it’s important to keep things concise and clear. If readers have too many questions, then they will not enter.
What do you need to include in the description?
- $ Retail Value
- Product Name and how to use it
- How to Win
- Contest Dates
- How Winner is chosen
This giveaway is not the time to go into huge explanations of the benefit of your product. If this is too long, you won’t have many entries, buzz, or eyeballs for your giveaway. Which defeats the purpose.
Tip: If you host a giveaway here on Tip Junkie then be sure to to a different project explaining how to use your product, why it’s amazing, and more about it. Or you can link it to your blog or shop if that information is already there.
How to Enter?
You can use a giveaway widget or you can simply have people comment on your giveaway post to enter to win. What every you do, keep it very simple. It’s better to the required entry super simple and then have bonus entries for loyal customers who already know and love your product. It’s the super fans who will like your Facebook page or join your newsletter.
Tip: If you do have them leave a comment, make it very relevant to the product you’re giving away. Also keep it simple. You can ask them to click over to your shop and tell you what color {or version} they you pick if they won. This way they have a natural reason to check out your shop and engage with you. This will also give you feedback on what your most popular colors or products are with Tip Junkie readers.
To enter, simply follow the prompts in the widget below.
At the bottom of this post, I’ll show you how to add a giveaway widget to your project. My tip on using a widget, is to also tell readers that they should see one. {giggle} Some devices take longer to load or won’t show them at all. So be sure to tell readers if they should see a widget and give them a link to click if they don’t see one.
Discount Code
Including a discount code exclusively for Tip Junkie’s is a great way to entice orders after your giveaway has ended. Consider a discount code, percentage off, or free shipping. It will be a great way to generate buzz before, during, and especially after your giveaway.
This is option but highly recommended.
When Does Contest End?
Continuing to follow my example, in bold tell Tip Junkie’s when your contest will end, day and time.
Contest ends Saturday, Sept 30th at midnight.
Don’t forget to tell Tip Junkie’s how will your winner be selected?
- Random number generator?
- Randomly via giveaway widget?
This builds trust and loyalty. When you pick the winner be sure to screenshot it as to prove your giveaway wasn’t rigged. {snicker}
3. Featured Image
A square image is best for the site but any image will work for your giveaway. The best images to use are the ones that make it obvious what your giveaway is!
4. Category = Giveaway
Go ahead and choose Giveaway for your category.
If your giveaway is approved for feature on the main site and Tip Junkie social media channels, then I will manually update your category to “giveaway” so it will also be featured in the Giveaway category on the site. Whoohoo!!
There’s no need to add Materials for your giveaway as that will just confuse readers.
5. Service Name and URL
If you’d like to add the link to your blog or shop where they can purchase it if they don’t win…. but this is optional. Including a link in the description which displays at the top might be a better choice.
However, if you’d like to add a link to your shop or Etsy product where they can purchase it directly, then under Service Name put the text you want to display… like the name of your product. or “Get 20% Off Using TIPJUNKIE” for the name and then in the Service URL field a direct link to where they can purchase the product.
6. Cost
Choose the total cost or retail value of your giveaway. If you are giving away several products in order to qualify for the over $100 prize to be featured on Tip Junkie, that’s no problem. Select the total value of what you are giving away. These are your options:
- Absolutely Free
- Cheap = Under $25
- Reasonable $25 = $50
- Steep = $50 – $100
- Expensive = Over $100
7. Difficulty
Choose Easy for the skill level as all they have to do is enter their name, email address, and click some buttons. {knuckle bumps”
8. Time
Select 30 Minutes for the estimated time to finish. Yes, it will only take them a few seconds but typically to make a project takes more than that… so that’s the best option.
9. Person
Anyone over 18 years old can enter to win a giveaway on Tip Junkie. This is according to the FTC and United States regulations. So please select all three age groups who can participate:
- 19 – 24 years
- 25-50 years
- 50+ years
Please make a note if your giveaway includes United States residents only, or if it will also include Canada, or even international entries.
11. Terms of Use
You’ll have to click the check-mark box to agree to Tip Junkie’s terms of use, sweepstakes policy as well as our privacy policy in order to publish anything here on Tip Junkie. That’s to protect everyone. {wink}
12. OK to Feature
If you prefer to keep your giveaway to yourself and on your Tip Junkie online craft room then don’t click this box. However, if you’d like me to look it over and consider it as a feature on the home page, weekly newsletter, and social media then be sure to click that cute box. It will automatically flag us that you’d like to be featured.
There are a couple things your giveaway will need to have in order to be approved…
- Retail value over $100
- Sharp picture of your product
- Family Friendly {this is a PG rated site}
- Relevant to women who love to create
I’d wish I could promote everyone no matter what… but then I wouldn’t have any readers. {snicker} Thanks to Pinterest, you Ladies can be kinda picky. {said lovingly, of course} So take your time filling out your giveaway, have a great image, and make it short and fun! Don’t worry, I’ll help you out and make a few tweaks and edits to set you up for success. {if needed}
I reserve the right to delete anything inappropriate or doesn’t follow the terms of use and policies. It’s simply my responsibility to protect all of us and I promise there’s no malicious intent.
13. How to Close Your Giveaway
When you close your giveaway, you’ll edit this project from your Tip Junkie profile. Edit the title and add the word {{closed}}. Then upload the screenshot of your winner and the name of the in text to the bottom of your project.
If your post is selected to be featured, then I will also announce it on our winners page.
Optional: Giveaway Widget
If you want to generate a giveaway widget you can use Rafflecopter or Simple Promo {which is what I used}. It is a little fussy though as it uses an iframe.
To embed a widget into your Tip Junkie online craft room, click the text tab in the project introduction box. This will allow you to embed the HTML code, simply copy widget code then paste it to the end of your text. The trick is that you can’t click back to the visual tab. This will mess up the code and break the widget. So I would suggest that you create your giveaway just the way you want it. Publish it and double check that everything is the way you want it to be. Then as your last step copy/paste the widget code into the text tab. Then click publish to update your project. View it to make sure everything makes sense to Tip Junkie readers.
If you don’t see the giveaway widget, then click this link and it will open it in a new window.
Tip: Simple Promo will also give you a page link for the widget. I would suggest that you also add that page link or URL as text in case readers have a problem viewing the widget on their device.
This is what your widget should look like when you’re dome.
Another thing I like about hosting giveaways via Simple Promo is that you can have BONUS entries so loyal fans of your products can like your Facebook page, sign up to your newsletter, and leave a comment on your blog for extra opportunities to win.
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