What is a giveaway?
This is generally a website where people are giving away products or memberships free in return for you signing up to a newsletter or to receive emails.
You sign up and give the person who is giving away a free gift permission for them to contact you by email on a regular basis.
All of the emails I have received, or sent, have an opt out link so you can stop receiving the emails at any time you want, but generally you will be getting useful information and the occasional free gift to entice you to stay on the list. You will also be receiving sales letters for products that you may be interested in.
This is one of the many ways internet marketers use to build their lists of contacts and potential customers. Some of these marketers may inundate you with email while others may contact you once a week or even less.
Irrespective of when they last contacted you there should never be any cause to complain that you are being 'spammed' as you agreed to join the list and in most cases through a double opt in system. That is you signed up to join the list and then confirmed your email address, thus giving the marketer permission to contact you.
If you are unhappy with the emails being sent to you then instead of shouting spam just click on the unsubscribe link in the email. All unsubscribes from reputable companies are dealt with immediately although if there are emails already in the queue to be sent you will receive them. Realistically you should not be receiving emails from that person after a 24 hour period.
All bone fide marketers will be using an autoresponder system that will automatically insert an unsubscribe link in the emails that are sent to you.
Why would you want to join a giveaway?
Many marketers will be giving away free valuable information for the duration of the giveaway and they will also be sending you free valuable information by email until you ask them to stop.
Giveaways often have in excess of 200 free gifts in their offering. It is up to you which gift or gifts you sign up to receive, There may be gifts on a particular subject that you are interested in.
If you intend to market on the internet you are bound to find something of interest in the giveaway.
Some giveaways are niche specific so all free gifts will be in that particular niche. I have seen giveaways specific to graphics, audio products, PLR products self awareness products and general health products.
Sometimes the name of the giveaway will tell you that it is niche specific and other times you will only find out once you have signed up.
Why Contribute to a Giveaway?
One of the main reasons I contribute to giveaways is to build my list of potential customers. As an internet marketer I need a base to sell my products to.
If you intend to market on the internet you will soon find that those who have responsive lists will be the ones who make the most money on the internet.
It is generally accepted that your list is worth $1 per person per month. So if you have a list of 200 you should be able to make $200 per month. If you have a list of 1000 you should be looking at making $1000 a month.
So as you can see the size of your list can control the amount of income you can generate. It is also generally accepted that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your contacts. So again the larger your list the larger your potential income.
Of course all this depends on you having the right product to sell, and the right product to contribute as a free gift in the giveaway.
You need to match the free gift and the product you are selling. They both need to be in the same niche or very closely related. It is no good giving away a gift on raising children and expecting the people on your list to buy a book on gambling.
Run Your Own Giveaway
You may feel that you would like to run your own giveaway. There are two main contenders in the giveaway script field currently.
One does seem to be more popular than the other. At the time of writing there were 25 giveaways open to contributors or members and of these 20 were using the Ultimate JV Giveaway Script.