One of the aspects of being a part of this team is to make friends, provide inspiration, but also to help make your Etsy shop a success! One of the ways that you can increase traffic to your store and potentially increase sales in the short- and long-term is to offer a giveaway. As an Etsy seller myself, I've had great success with giveaways and they're a ton of fun and it's a great way to get feedback on what people like. As a team member, you have the option of participating in a giveaway hosted here on the MFJoE blog! It's very simple and below are details on how the giveaway process will work.
Once you have signed up for a giveaway spot the team captain will send you a form to fill out some information. The first thing to do is to determine your prize. It can be a range of items (select from necklaces in your shop), give away one specific item, create something with a seasonal theme specific for the giveaway, a gift certificate, etc. It doesn't need to be anything crazy expensive to get contestants interested, just think that if you were going to enter, would the prize be worth it? Click here to see a few giveaways that I've hosted on my own blog and the prizes range from $15-30. Click here to see examples of giveaways that are going on right now.
Once you've chosen your giveaway prize, you'll need to take some really good, clear, photographs of your item and either post them online or send them to the team captain. A good photo is key to getting more contestants interested and enter the giveaway but also look at the items in your shop! Even if you're a seasoned Etsean, Etsy's Guide to Photography is a great resource. Also check out the Etsy Shop Makeover series to see how you can make your items front page worthy. Need a way to edit and adjust photo settings, use Picnik (free and easy- YAY!).
For members with other social media tools besides their Etsy shop (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc), the giveaway can include links to these. I can use these your social media sites to create entry rules (again, check out the rules I have for my giveaways) so contestants have to perform a task to get additional entries. The contestants have to come back to the giveaway on the MFJoE blog and leave comments for each task performed. For example, for one entry, they follow you on Twitter, the second entry they must tweet, the third entry they follow your blog, the fourth entry is that they visit your shop and choose their favorite item(s), fifth is that they friend you on Facebook, etc. Before the giveaway is posted, you'll be able to read the post, read the rules, and provide final approval.
The giveaways will last approximately two and a half weeks. The team captain will also post the giveaway to the EtsyGiveways.com blog which will greatly increase the amount of participants.
Once the time period is up, the team captain will choose a winner randomly, update the blog announcing the winner, and will email the winner and Cc the team member. The winner has 48 hours to respond accepting the prize and providing any necessary shipping information. The team member is responsible for packaging and shipping the item out or redeeming the gift certificate.
Click here for a great Etsy forum thread on giveaways posted by one of the founders of EtsyGiveaways.com PurrPrints. Click here for another detailed Etsy forum post on why do a giveaway?
WHEW!!! I think that's about it for info on giveaways! Feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions by leaving a comment on this post below!
Until Later! ®oscata
Great advice! And I totally agree-giveaways are a fun way to increase sales. If I hadn't done so many this holiday season, I'd be all over this, but maybe next time! Thanks for the great post. :)
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