We all know that giving away free stuff pretty much brings everybody who actually sees it in, right?  But how do you turn your free stuff giveaway into a big draw for your blog?  SImple–just follow three steps to make your blog giveaway a whole lot more interesting.

1. Target your giveaway.

Maybe you want to reward people for commenting on your blog.  Maybe you want to reward people who fill out a survey or do some other specific thing on your site.  The key thing to remember here is reward the behavior you want to encourage.

2. Make your prizes worth the effort.

Giving away a shiny new penny isn’t likely to get anyone’s interest.  Giving away a car?  That’s definitely going to catch some eyes.  The whole point of this exercise is to make sure the effort expended is more than exceeded by the likelihood of getting the prize.  It’s all about value, folks–if the value isn’t worth the time to enter, no one will enter.

3. Make sure your contest is easy to enter.

Click a link?  Leave a comment?  Send an email to?  Leave your name under the third tree in the park on West Castlebury street in Newhampton, Wales on the thirty-fifth day of Smarch?  The harder it is to enter your contest, the less reaction it will get.

Contests are ways to encourage people to engage in a certain behavior by the intermittent conditioning of a possible reward for said behavior.  If you want to make this work for you, just consider the three lessons of contest design.

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