But sometimes bloggers go above and beyond to host giveaways out of their own pockets so what happens when those bloggers are the very ones who renege on their words. Now, I don’t want to call anyone out but today I hopped on Facebook to see that a blogger had canceled a giveaway and I was curious. I was thinking some company had backed out and was preparing to feel some righteous anger. I was surprised, however, to see the post that was basically summed up by “I didn’t get enough entries so I’m cancelling it. Woe is me.”

I clicked to see the responses, all of which basically equated so “I know how you feel.” And I understand. I’ve spent money shipping prizes. I’ve spent time promoting giveaways. I spend time contacting people to sponsor giveaways and I’ve been stumped when people didn’t enter my giveaways. I recently ended a giveaway that had very little interest and I was perplexed because it was the type of giveaway that I would have entered myself.

But it seems more than a little dishonest to me to start a giveaway and cancel it halfway through just because you’re not getting enough attention, especially during the busiest time of year for most people and the busy shopping time that has prompted thousands of giveaways. The site owner didn’t receive the feedback she wanted but everyone who had already participated was SOL and would see absolutely no return for their efforts.

That’s not okay to me.. but maybe I’m wrong so I pose these questions:

• As a giveaway host/blogger, do we retain the right to cancel giveaways?
• If we do retain that right, is not enough activity an acceptable reason or should there be a reason such as host backed out, emergency, etc?
• How would you feel, as someone who had entered a giveaway that was canceled?
• Do you find actions like that to represent the community/blogosphere in a bad light?

]]> http://reviewsbycole.com/2011/12/our-responsibilities-as-giveaway-hosts/feed/ 2 http://reviewsbycole.com/2011/11/love-hate/ http://reviewsbycole.com/2011/11/love-hate/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:58:40 +0000 Cole http://reviewsbycole.com/?p=2594 I’m not sure how I feel about Rafflecopter. I’m not ready to use it myself but I don’t have super popular giveaways. No, I’m conflicted as a reader.

You see, Rafflecopter sounds good and it looks pretty good, too. The problem is, it relies on your browser cookies. If you enter a giveaway and return to the site, you will see the entries you’ve already completed but if you clear your private data, it will appear as though you’ve never entered. The script does not offer a way to check your entry status. It’s not so efficient to navigate through pages of comments but at least you can, to see if you’ve entered before.

Secondly, the script takes a while to load. For whatever reason, it takes longer now than when bloggers first started using it. This slows down my giveaway process significantly, when I’m browsing multiple sites.

Next, bloggers keep requiring us to comment as a form of mandatory entry but this is completely unnecessary. I just don’t understand this. Rafflecopter exists so you can clean up your comments from giveaway spam. I’ll admit, I’m also a bit lazy and I hate scrolling down to comment, reloading the page, scrolling back up and waiting for Rafflecopter to load again.

But it’s not all bad. A lot of bloggers are allowing us to enter by just typing name and email addresses. Plus, you don’t need to add your email address to the comment itself, which is a generally unsafe and totally freaking annoying thing to do.  Being able to post to Twitter or like a page on Facebook is super easy with Rafflecopter.

Multiple websites participating in the same giveaway can post the same Rafflecopter code — which is great as long as you don’t clear your cache. However, multiple mandatory entries can span several lines on the form and it can be difficult to tell when you’ve completed all the entries. It would be nice if Rafflecopter allowed you to put multiple Facebook “Likes,” for example, in one box. At least, I assume they don’t because no one does.

Rafflecopter is an interesting idea but is still imperfect enough to be frustrating to all sorts of users.

It doesn’t help my anxiety, that’s for sure.

So I need a system. Perhaps a simply mail/filing system for paperwork and maybe something as simple as some sort storage containers, preferably with dividers, for the various items I need to review. Reviewers, how do you keep it all straight?

1. A gift card can go toward my necessities, like food, clothing or household goods.
2. A $10 gift card is always more useful than a $10 item than I don’t need but a $10 gift card is infinitely more useful than a $100 item for which I have no use.
3. Gift cards give me a choice in what I win so I can be really excited.
4. Some gift cards can be used online so I don’t even have to leave my house or I can still shop from stores that aren’t in the area.

But gift cards have perks if you’re holding the giveaway, too!

1. Gift cards appeal to more people (see my #2 above).
2. Gift cards blur the geographical lines. Sure, I may be in Wisconsin but if I giveaway a gift card to a company that has a website and ships worldwide, I’ve just expanded my giveaway (and potential readership).
3. Gift cards are cheap to send. Throw ‘em in an envelope, or even better, click “Send.” Anyone who has had to mail off their own prizes understands the frustration about this one.

Do you also love gift card giveaways?

This whole thing is a shame cause I’d like to like the USPS. They offer some great services and even products on their website and I know that Canadian residents can find similar steals and deals if they visit http://www.canadapost.ca/shopper/. Aside from shipping supplies and materials, the Canada Post website includes a comparison shopper page that allows Canadian residents to compare etailers that cater specifically for them. Of course, as an American, I don’t usually find it difficult to have stuff mailed to me.

I do like working with companies that will ship giveaway prizes to more than just the USA, though. And companies that will ship them at all. I think I’ll be writing a policy page in the upcoming weeks and only working with companies that will take care of shipping because it’s just such a hassle for me to try to do it (plus, it’s not always cost effective for me).

Still, in a world of electronic mail, it’s interesting how much I still depend on the post office.

That is exactly why the majority of the reviews on this blog were simply things I had purchased. Not too long ago, another blogger asked me for contact information for a handful of brands but I’d purchased all of the items, except one, by myself. That concept seems pretty foreign to some, especially when it’s so easy to find PR folks and send pitches and get people to send you free stuff in exchange for a blog post. If you expect that every post you write is going to be about something that you didn’t have to pay for, you’re going to start focusing on your blog as a business, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you reviews can quickly start to suffer because of it.

Or maybe your reviews already suck. Not sure if this is true for you? Read on.

Your “review” is actually just a reposting of the press release.

A good review reiterates important information but claims and hype are easy to find–online, on TV, in print and even from company representatives themselves. Your blog should tell us something more because you’ve used the product unless, wait..

You didn’t use the product

You cannot post a review unless you’ve seen, touched, smelled and maybe even licked a product. Maybe you didn’t get to keep it but you can’t post a review if the closest you’ve gotten the item was the freakin’ press release. Remember how I said that the review should tell us something more? (Look up!) That something more isn’t how you think the product would work if you actually used it.

You didn’t spend enough time with the product or service.

Actually, a lot of reviewers are on me with this one, I think. Heads up if you’re a representative. A thorough review is impossible if you can only use the product once. So stop sending us single bags of tea! And reviewers? Stop accepting single bags of tea. Let your contact know that it’s not acceptable, not good business practice and just plain silly. What do they expect?! With that said, some products have a learning curve and sometimes you need to read the manual and if you don’t have time for that, you shouldn’t be writing a review in the first place.

Your post contains more pictures than text.

I know I don’t tend to use many pictures and I rarely take pictures of my review products because, in my opinion, that’s the point of review–to paint a picture with words. I like to see pictures when reading reviews, especially if the concept is difficult to understand from words alone, if a product is elaborate, if you want to show size, if the product looks nothing like it’s described and the list goes on. Nevertheless, your review probably shouldn’t contain a picture of every step of the way or every minuscule detail. We get the picture, literally. I recognize that this is based on a personal preferences but it has a good basis: we all know that Blogger-hosted blogs and review blogs meet in the place on a Venn diagram that is known as “the slowest loading part of the Internet bar none.”

Your review is overly optimistic.

I like to rip apart products. I want you to know every possible complaint a person could have, no matter how trivial. I’m that sort of person. You don’t have to be but if you love every product you ever review, I’m not going to view you as a trusted resource.

You didn’t post your review.

I have a policy. I refuse to work with companies who can’t tolerate a negative review. At the end of the day, it is publicity for them, but I cannot stress enough that the purpose of this blog is to help other consumers. Therefore, I won’t even think of working with a company that requires approval before I post or who bars me from posting a negative review at all. You know what? Not every product is awesome. I’m sorry. It’s true.

I consider companies and bloggers who avoid the negative to be unethical. Seriously. If I knew these people in real life, I’d literally slap them on the hands the way a mother does to scold a small child. Especially those who voluntarily withhold negative reviews. What are you thinking?! A negative review is just as important as a positive one and a company that can take one in strive or, better yet, create something better based on criticisms is exactly the kind of company I want to work with and promote.

Bloggers, I strongly encourage you to reconsider working with companies who would ask this of you (Even better, give those companies a schooling!) and recognize that you’re under no obligation to love every product (in fact, I don’t encourage this behavior as explained above). Not only that but you’re actually hurting the consumer and wasting any time you spent using a product or writing up a review, when you don’t post it.

1. 35% – Direct Traffic (Links, bookmarks, emails, etc)
2. 1.09% – Google Searches (All countries, all search types)
3. .19% – StumbleUpon
4. .12% – Yahoo Searches
5. .10% – Bing
6. .05% – Online Sweepstakes
7. .04% – ContestGirl
8. .03% – FeedBurner
9. .02% – The Divine Miss Mommy (thanks!); Twitter; Free Blog Giveaways

I’m not surprised that direct referrers dominate the list because you guys are great at Tweeting about my giveaways. Nor am I surprised to see that Google is leading the way after that. However, the division between direct referrers and search clicks is an astounding 33%! In addition, I combined all the Google search sites and types but Webalizer lists them separately. There were, like, 10!

I’m really excited to see StumbleUpon on this list because I’ve decided to give it a second chance and even if one person recommends my site, it has the potential to reach thousands of other users. I know quite a few bloggers who rely heavily on StumbleUpon for traffic and many who will tell you that it’s their main source for traffic so I expect to see it rise in the rankings and eclipse Google searches. I’m not as sure about direct traffic but who knows?

That Yahoo and Bing made the list amuses me to no end. Had I made this a “top ten” list, you would see AOL, too! Who still uses those search engines? I make a point to submit my site to giveaways listing, whenever I post a new one, and several of those have made the list but they really don’t provide as much traffic as I expected. I’ll still use them, of course but I’m surprised those sites don’t carry more authority in general. They may be too “nichey” compared to StumbleUpon. Not everyone is specifically looking for giveaways.

It’s no surprise that FeedBurner sends me visitors but I’d never guess that another blog would show up in the list. The owner, Stacie, is part of a few giveaway groups, if I recall correctly. I don’t know if folks are following me from a comment or a link somewhere on here site but all my sites seem to see traffic from at least one semi-random blog. Interesting, eh?

If you’ve read this far, feel free to let me know where you’ve come from in the comments.

It seems like just yesterday I was hovering right above 2-million and now? I’m going to be dipping below 1-million. That’s right, I’ve chopped my rank right in half–fruit ninja style. The interesting thing is that this is most definitely not a gradual change. No, it was a stand-still that erupted into a volcano of growth. You know how I know? Alexa says my visitors are up nearly 300% in the last 3-months and my rank has nearly doubled in the past month so it’s pretty easy to point a finger at the main factors (giveaways, social media plugin) and, in the back of my head, I’m thinking “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

Nevertheless, I’m still super happy with my little experiment.

As I browse giveaways, I find myself clicking away from the page, even if the prize is super awesome because of requirements that are either too difficult or just things that I prefer not to do. Without further ado, here’s an entire list of “Don’ts” that are hurting your cause.

1. Your mandatory entry is also multiple steps. I have to do this and that and another thing? I think not. This is the problem I’m seeing with sites that use Rafflecopter. Either let me comment or rely on the script but don’t require both. It’s redundant and silly, to put it nicely.
2. You require a Google Friend Connect follow. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t use Google Friend Connect on my site or to follow blogs. The numbers are fairly meaningless and no one should be relying on them. Others, like me, have no incentive to follow you on GFC. But you know what? Even people who do use GFC for any reason will click away from your giveaway if you require this because they don’t want to clog their reader with blogs they don’t actually follow.
3. You require me to sign in to something. This, sadly, is the case for both Google Friend Connect and some Blogger blogs. Please allow commentors to use just their name/email/URL, if that’s possible.
4. You want me to register. Seriously. Anything that requires me to register? I skip.
5. You want me to do something but don’t provide a simple way to do it. I’ve just added a plug-in that creates super easy-to-use icons on the side of my blog so all my visitors can easily Tweet, “Like” or Stumble my posts. If you don’t use a similar plug-in or insert code for these actions directly in your giveaway posts, people are probably clicking away.
6. You unintentionally exclude readers. Just because your blog focuses on your family doesn’t mean everyone who reads your blog has a family or is in school or has a yard. Even bloggers who keep things simple but just allowing us to answer a question via comment will ask a question that doesn’t allow certain groups of people to answer without lying. Don’t make me lie, okay?
7. Your blog takes far too long to load. Maybe your giveaway has attracted thousands of users and the comments page is long, maybe you want to link to a lot of awesome sites or make money advertising. I don’t know but I can tell you that every comment, every image, every script that you use causes your site to load more slowly. Because comment forms are toward the bottom of your site, they will be one of the last portions of your site to load and if some widget is holding it up, I may simply leave. I’ve said it before but you should consider moving images to a link wall on a separate page and really think twice about all those widgets.
8. I can’t read your blog. There is a blog that I stumble upon periodically. This blog hosts giveaways. This blog also has a design so horrendous that I have taken the time to wonder if it was a joke. I kid you not. This website uses font sizes, faces and colors galore. I can barely read the blog posts and the layout hurts my eyes so much that I leave the website as soon as I realize where I’ve landed. You do not want to be this person.
9. I can’t tell what your prize is or that it’s a giveaway or even where to find it. I browse giveaway and sweepstakes listing sites once a week or so. Or maybe I’m following you on Twitter and I see a link. Whatever the case, if your link URL or title don’t indicate it’s a giveaway, maybe I won’t click over.  Or perhaps it doesn’t explain what you’re giving away and I’m too busy to take the time to click over (especially if your site loads slowly). Keep in mind that your images may display as thumbnails and it can become quite difficult to actually see what the image is. Include the name of your product in your URL and title, make sure to include the title in your Tweets and check your images at different sizes.
10. Your prize doesn’t interest me. Sometimes it’s just a case of incongruous needs and wants. I have no car or garage or yard and I don’t own my own home. There’s a whole slew of items I don’t need. I don’t have kids so I probably won’t enter if your giveaway is focused on them ( there’s always exceptions of course; I do have an 8 year-old sister and a love for stuffies!). And I don’t own a BlackBerry or use Verizon so giveaways that focus on those items don’t do me any good. Sometimes, however, your item just isn’t very good. Even if something’s free, maybe it’s just not a useful or very good product to begin with. Some prizes just call to people. Electronics, brand-new items and expensive goods are those type of items. Home-made items, items that are so cheap that people don’t mind buying them or any prize that has over-saturated the market. It may help if you first ask your friends and family whether they would consider your giveaway prize.

So, there’s my list and it’s pretty good if I do say so myself (and I do!). What reasons stop you from entering giveaways?