How To Get Your Entries Disqualified In Giveaways On Blogs
Here on the Two Classy Chics blog we moderate all comments which means we double check all entries into the giveaways hosted here on the TCC Blog. As blog owners & product reviewers we owe it to our sponsors to run an ethical site which means we do NOT allow cheaters to win the giveaways hosted here.
Over the past 1 1/2 years we have seen a lot on how cheaters like to cruise the mommy blogs aka product review blogs and how they “try” to sneak in and win giveaways without completing the required entries. Today we thought we would point out to all of you how these “cheaters” think they are getting away with entering giveaways here on our blog. While a lot of blog owners don’t take the time to double check entries…we do indeed double check them so “cheaters” get NO WHERE on our blog.
Let’s take a look at a few ways the “cheaters” like to enter blog giveaways.
1. Many cheaters come in the final day of the giveaway and will leave comments that they are following our blog, the sponsor on FB and send out a tweet or they will just send out a tweet and ignore the 2 mandatory entries. They do this thinking that blog owners won’t check their IP (which we can on WordPress Blogs) to see if they ever did the mandatory entry. When we see this…we toss those entries into the trash. YOU MUST COMPLETE BOTH MANDATORY ENTRIES IN OUR GIVEAWAYS!
2. We have caught cheaters saying that they are following us on Facebook and/or Twitter and when we check FB/Twitter…they are not! Again, those entries are trashed!
3. We have caught cheaters hi-jacking other peoples entry tweets over on Twitter. Just yesterday I caught someone stealing the tweet link of a regular reader’s tweet and trying to post that status link as their own tweet! WTH? Are you kidding me? ugh…again, we trashed that person’s entry. I advise you to TWEET out the link YOURSELF and get your own status link to post with your entry instead of stealing someone else’s link!
4. We have caught cheaters stating that they are email subscribers to our feed/blog via feedburner. Well, you need to sign up (box is top right of our blog) and an email is sent to you and you MUST click on the link in the email to validate your subscription. If you are getting one email from us daily in your inbox then you are subscribed. If not, you need to subscribe & validate so that you get the email daily and can claim that as your entry. Trust me folks, we do log into feedburner and check and if you say you are subscribed & it’s the winning entry and you are NOT subscribed…we trash it and select someone else!
5. We have caught cheaters making up numerous user names & ID’s and then slamming our blog with entries. Our policy is one entry per household as clearly stated in our rules and most of the blogs have the same rule as we do. When you leave your entries here on our blog your IP is posted with each comment. We can see your IP address so if Tom, Dick & Harry are all entering a giveaway on our blog with the same IP address…we all know that it’s really “JANE” doing it and will disqualify all those entries.
6. Regarding the sponsor’s mandatory question…90% of the time here on our blog that question requires you to visit the sponsors site and to take a look around and come back & tell us your favorite product on the sponsors site. Leaving us the answer of “You want to win”, “You love XYZ products” or “You love them all and can’t decide” gets you disqualified from the giveaway. Sponsors are kind enough to offer a free product, gift certificate or service to you as a prize and the LEAST you can do is visit their site, spend a few minutes looking around & then come back here and tell us the specific name of a product you like!
These 6 examples are just scratching the surface of things we have caught cheaters trying to do on our blog. While this behavior might be acceptable on other blogs it is NOT acceptable on ours. I can guarantee you that we have 4 review bloggers on this site and we do take the time to validate and check out each and every entry left on a giveaway post here. My advice to the cheaters… Please knock it off and enter the giveaways correctly so that you can actually win a prize from one of our great sponsors.
Thanks for reading and we hope you all continue to read our reviews and enter our giveaways. Let’s make this fun for everyone!