Hello Everyone,
Today we wanted to talk to all of our blog readers and our giveaway sponsors about an issue that has come up with our blog from time to time and today we thought we would address it and explain our reasoning behind it.
As some of you know…we have used Rafflecopter in the past as a way to make it easier for all of you to enter the giveaways that are sponsored here on the TCC Blog. Matter of fact, we used Rafflecopter for several months before discontinuing it. We are not certain if we will bring back Rafflecopter again or not…that is still up for debate. Today we are going to tell you why we made the decision that we did.
1. By using Rafflecopter on our giveaways our page turns (page count) dramatically dropped and many sponsors refer to page count as part of a blog’s stat count. A lower page count hurts your page ranking which means less opportunities for us to review products that you love and have sponsored giveaways.
2. At times the Rafflecopter form was freezing up on some users before they would get all of their entries in and/or a user would forget which email address they used to previously enter the giveaway. We also had other forms of issues that would frustrate our entrants.
3. Rafflecopter makes it easier for professional giveaway cheaters to conduct their cheating activity. We can quickly and easily verify entries by looking at a person’s entries via our back office of our blog. To do this via Rafflecopter we have to go to their site, download the entries, sort and look at all of them, which is too time consuming. In addition…once we catch a cheater it is easier to remove their entries when they have them in a blog comment form than what it is via Rafflecopter. We can easily & quickly delete the cheaters by using our blog instead of Rafflecopter. Removing cheater entries and/or blocking cheaters is to YOUR benefit! NO ONE Wants a Cheater to win especially when legitimate people work hard to enter properly.
We firmly believe in removing cheater entries and blocking cheaters here on our blog and that has been our policy since day one. We want to protect those who legitimately enter our giveaways and it would not be fair to award prizes to those who cheat. Trust us…there are tons of cheaters roaming around the mommy blogsphere entering all of the giveaways sponsored on various mom blogs. It is indeed a big problem and one that we deal with on a daily basis because we want to keep our giveaways on the level.
4. Some bloggers are using Rafflecopter in an improper way by using it to over-inflate the actual entries they are getting in a giveaway. For example: They might award a person 10-20 entries per task they complete and this takes only a matter of seconds when they use Rafflecopter. We don’t believe in over-inflating giveaway entry stats. Those who do over-inflate their giveaway entry stats are really doing a disservice to their company sponsors and to those who enter their giveaways.
Frankly, we believe that it is really unfair to give someone 100 entries on day one for completing 10 tasks compared to someone else who can only complete 3 tasks. It knocks the balance way out of proportion for those who are legitimately entering the giveaways. In addition…giving folks 65 entries per day for completing tasks every day for that same giveaway is doing NOTHING but over-inflating that particular giveaway’s entry stats. This is not fair to everyone involved.
Plus this type of entry system hijacks the sponsor’s promotion and allows it to “appear” that the blog has a lot more traffic and entries than they really do. The sponsors and their product is not number one in the bloggers mind with this type of entry process; it is gaining as many entries so it looks good to bigger sponsors with bigger prizes, which is wrong. The sponsors are gifting the product for promotion and advertising of THEIR BUSINESS not for the Bloggers promotion of their special needs or personal “pet” projects.
5. We have talked with many company sponsors and PR firms and many prefer that we use blog comments and not Rafflecopter because they like to see the comments/entries that people are leaving. In addition, the Rafflecopter form is “closed up” unless you are entering the giveaway so companies can not see the entries and follow along. Furthermore, if the form is closed up & they can’t see the entries…they cannot see how many are legit entries as compared to over-inflated blog entries as explained above. By using blog comments we feel we are being transparent and “open” so that everyone involved (us, our sponsors and those entering the giveaways) can clearly see what is going on at any time of the day/night.
Don’t get us wrong…we love Rafflecopter and it does have it’s place in the blogsphere, but it needs to be used correctly. There are a lot of people using Rafflecopter unethically and unprofessionally and that is unfair to the other bloggers and those sweepers that enter the contest who are using it professionally, ethically and correctly.
Please feel free to leave us your thoughts and ideas but please be professional with your responses.
Shelly and Chris ~ Owners of Two Classy Chics
I’m discontinuing the use of the Rafflecopter form as well. It is far too easy for entrants to inflate entries by using multiple email addr. & Facebook accounts, making it unfair to sponsoring brands and honest entrants.
In all honesty I’m really not thrilled with the traffic that it’s created either. Above everything else I’m interested in maintaining a reader base that is honestly interested in the content offered, with the giveaway’s being an added bonus. This has created a flow of of just the opposite – that are simply there to win (and by any means – thus all of the cheating and inflation).
I agree completely about the page turns as well – it has literally quartered the page turns which in turn hurts page rank as you mentioned.
I’m happy to be done with it – and glad to see that others are making the choice to steer away from it as well 🙂
~Sarah
Welcome to the TCC Blog Mare! I guess I should say it straight… We like Rafflecopter when it is used properly and if they can fix the loop holes that allow folks to cheat & make it easier on us to block cheaters & to delete their entries. We care about our readers so we do take the extra time every day to make sure cheater entries are NOT getting thru.
We also think that Rafflecopter should lay down some ground rules on how “bloggers” can use their form…after all, they are providing it free to us so it seems WRONG that some folks charge advertising space to get onto their Rafflecopter. In addition, the original sponsor of the prize didn’t donate the prize so that the blogger can promote their “pet projects” with it.
I like Rafflecopter as an entrant and as an infrequent giveaway host. I always send answers to questions (Go to the sponsor’s site and tell me what you like” as well as stats (how many people followed the sponsor on Twitter, for instance) in an email when I send them the winner’s info.
Having said that, I think that your reasoning for not using Rafflecopter is well-founded. As I said, I only run a few giveaways – not a huge load of them all of the time. And, as an entrant, I refuse to enter giveaways when the host inflates the number of entries. It’s ridiculous. Especially when a group of bloggers get together and have you like each and every one of their Facebook pages – then they give those who have done that 20-100 extra entries. I actually use my social networking sites and don’t want to follow a bunch of blogs I’ve never even heard of!
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. I don’t enter each and every one of your giveaways. It’s not because I don’t want to go through with entering via comments. Rather, some of the prizes are not things I really want to win. I’d rather see someone who really wants or needs it to win!
Thanks for your reply Alicia. Ya, we feel that getting all those entries to follow people that have nothing to do with the site you are on is just wrong. It totally takes away from the sponsor and it in effect lying to the sponsor because they don’t see inside the rafflecopter form to see all the additional BS. Inflated entries is BS!
While I like the convenience of Rafflecopter, I think it puts too much emphasis on winning. I like TCC because of the posts and reviews, and the giveaways are an added bonus! I like winning as much as the next person, but I appreciate hearing about new products and learning new things (for example, I loved the post on debit cards for teens!). The TCC blog keeps me informed and you ladies do an awesome job!
When rc started, one of the first things I heard was that it brought a lot more ‘entries’ (which translates to hits?) – sometimes 5-10x as many – and a lot of people were jazzed about that.
I had to question how 100,000 people suddenly appeared out of nowhere to enter these giveaways, when there was nowhere near that many entries before. When I compared giveaways of the same prize, or similar prizes, the rc giveaways drew tens of thousands up to100,000 or more entries than the non-rc giveaways. The number of entries in a rc giveaway involving money, iPads, Kindles, etc seems to be in the tens of thousands now, minimum, where there were only a couple of thousand before.
One of the obvious answers was: Cheaters. The interface is ridiculously easy to cheat.*
If I go to a blog with a rc giveaway and there are more than 20,000 entries, I just pass. The chance of winning in a rc giveaway with 100,000+ entries is about on par with winning many commercial sweepstakes. Since the advent of rc, my blog wins have dropped off precipitously and most of my blog wins were from non-rc giveaways. My commercial sweeps wins are actually higher now than rc wins. This translates into fewer page views for sponsors. I pointed out early on to some bloggers I could do half a dozen rc forms in the same time it took me to read one blog, so I didn’t see any impetus to actually read about the product.
And, finally, how do you check all the entries when there are 100,000 plus entries?
Thanks for not using rc…
HI Mike,
Thanks for your comments. We visually and manually approve every comment and entry as it is comes in. We are getting really good at spotting fake entries. Also when a winner is selected, we verify all mandatory entries are there and verify the winning entry. We can do this easily through our website comment system. Any cheating entries are dumped and we move on. We have a lot of people come by and just enter with tweets. Ok.. not going to win because the mandatories were not completed. Most people assume if you are tweeting out a giveaway that means you entered it… not so. You would be surprised at how many people we catch weekly in different ways. Sad really.. very sad.
Thank u, thank u, thank u,–You are 2 classy chics because I totally agree with your comments. You and a few other bloggers do not us the Rafflecopter and I do like using comments instead! I can ditto the previous comments that I do win more with comments than with the Rafflecopter and I do not feel like I have to work to enter into contests…also Rafflecopter freezez my system too much. So I am protesting Rafflecopter until changes can be made esp. for people who CHEAT in the contests!
Thanks for letting me get on my soap box!!
thanks for leaving your thoughts & comments tracy. A lot of that has to do with the over-inflated comments that many bloggers are using with the Rafflecopter forms.
If person A does all tasks and gets 100 entries (only takes 3 minutes to rack those up via Rafflecopter) and person B only has time to do 3 tasks and only gets 6 entries…you can see how unfair and unbalanced that makes the entry process. Your odds of winning are much lower.
We are standing up and against those who are using Rafflecopter to profit (selling ad space on them, promoting their affiliate links on them, over inflating giveaway entries to promote their “pet projects” etc.)
I am glad that I had time to read this post today. I have been so frustrated with giveaways lately that are run through rafflecopter. Sure, I love the ease of going click click click and I am done, but I am never pleased to see thousands of entries. there is more pressure to like everything amd vote for everything. Now they want to send you to like another page, which is really their teenage daughter’s page or their sister’s page, or their husband’s page. I just shook my head when I saw that all in one weekend.
Your blog has been one of my favorites for a long time, and not just because I have won, (props to winning !) I love to leave comments as entries. I like to know that my entry is really entered because I can see it. I didn’t work hard at making a little spreadsheet for myself just to have it go to waste. I am proud of my system and rafflecopter just messed that all up.
As far as my winning… pffffft.. not happening lately.
thanks again..and I will see you in the winners circle sometime soon (I hope)
Thank you, that was very informative. I thought rafflecopter was great because it is faster for us when entering but I have noticed I’ve won less since using it. So I’m staying with your site! Thanks for everything!
Gina, I totally agree with you! I enter giveaways on other sites too and let me tell you…I win much less now since most sites are using Rafflecopter and about 25% of those are using “super inflated entries”. I don’t have time to go follow 30 bloggers on Twitter, 30 bloggers on FB, 30 bloggers on Google+, 30 bloggers on GFC, etc etc. etc. to get 200 bonus entries! So if person A does all of the entries and gets 200 entries but I only have time to do 4…you can clearly see how unbalanced that is.
When bloggers use comment forms on their blogs (like this form) they know that folks are not going to sit here for 3 hours and do 100 bonus entries as it would be time consuming as compared to it only taking 30 mins on rafflecopter it would take 3 hours this way so you see MUCH less of the super-inflated entries going on.
Thanks for your thoughts on this, I have been debating whether to continue to use Rafflecopter in 2012 and you have confirmed my gut instinct to go to my old way of counting comments.
But do want to thank you about providing feedback from sponsors perspective.
I do wonder is why so many bloggers just moved lock stock and barrel.
We waited for a few months before we tried it out and we did use Rafflecopter for several months. We saw other bloggers bragging it up but we found many flaws with using Rafflecopter. Sure…it makes it quicker for folks to enter giveaways but it also makes it more “easier” for cheaters to enter and harder for the blogger to catch them. It is also time consuming to go over to the Rafflecopter site to root out all of the cheater’s entries and delete them. We can do that from here…quicker & easier and they are super easy to spot using blog comment form.
In addition…we see a lot of bloggers using Rafflecopter to just “inflate” the entries they are getting into the giveaway and 95% of the sponsors are not seeing this because they are not entering so they can’t see that particular bloggers are giving people 20 entries per task they complete which is totally ridiculous!
A sponsor then sees that blog A got 13,000 entries but blog B who had the same exact giveaway from them only got 2,000. Blog A gave 20 entries per task but Blog B gave 2-5 entries per task. Sadly some sponsors are “NOT” paying attention that some bloggers are sadly “super inflating” their entries because they “believe” it makes them look bigger, better and more important. Which it does NOT!
We also feel it is unfair to sponsors for bloggers to hijack the giveaway by giving folks 10 entries for voting for that blogger on such and such site, or 10 entries for following each of 30 other bloggers (when those bloggers have nothing to do with that company or the giveaway) or 50 entries for joining some affiliate program that the blogger is involved with.
The giveaway and the entries associated with it should pertain ONLY to the company & their links and to the blogger who is hosting and their links. Nothing else.
I like the way you conduct business here and always have. I like the way you get rid of entries by those attempting to not only cheat you, but your sponsors and other people who are entering in good faith- those of us who visit your sponsors site and might be future customers.
I applaud you for sticking to your beliefs.
And you are correct about rafflecopter especially the new version- it has many flaws.
Thanks for doing what you do!