Why The Two Classy Chics Choose to Run Giveaways The Way That We Do

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