Giveaways... 90% Regurgitated Crap?.. Are The Hidden Gems Worth Your Time?...

[JayXtreme]

I have to be honest..

My success with giveaways has been OK... not massive, but proportionate to the time I have invested.. so it's cool..

But, upon my inspection of the last 3 giveaways I was asked to pitch and get involved with.. I came to the conclusion that 90% of the submitted products are really bad. 1 of them being run by a close friend of mine..

The content was embarrassingly poor and mostly just PLR goods that have been grabbed from elsewhere, not edited at all and submitted as a "product"...

Is the giveaway becoming a scrap heap for I.M. PLR?...

I've never pitched a giveaway to any of my lists, most of my success with them has come from organic traffic, blog traffic and paid traffic.. I never feel comfortable promoting them to my I.M. lists, because I can't personally verify the quality of submitted products each time...

Your thoughts?..

Peace

Jay

[ExRat]

Hi Jay,

Is the giveaway becoming a scrap heap for I.M. PLR

What do you mean?...by using the word 'becoming'?

On the other side of the coin though, anyone who signs up and feverishly downloads it all must be quite 'green', so if someone were to be targeting newbs, I imagine giveaways would be a good way to do it.

[Intrepreneur]

I specifically took time out of my day to create a unique product for the recent giveaways but thats me and some people do just submit anything they can find on their hard drive but to say there are crap proructs that is very true but only to them who have seen them before, to those that haven't they are seeing gold.

I liked some of the stuff in the recnt QueenBJv but problem is it was shut down before i could get the products I wanted.. so there still is a reason to visit them for me and I'm sure for many others.

[Lindsay Brynn]

I've received a few good giveaways here and there, but you are correct in that they are few and far between. I don't know how many times I have paid for something or joined a free membership site only to be thrown like thousands of I.M. PLR files. It seems really neat at first but most of it is a bunch of garbage.

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by ExRat

Hi Jay,



What do you mean?...by using the word 'becoming'?

Touche!

On the other side of the coin though, anyone who signs up and feverishly downloads it all must be quite 'green', so if someone were to be targeting newbs, I imagine giveaways would be a good way to do it.

If I'm brutally honest with you.. this is where I first found success (albeit only a l'il bit) with giveaways.... targeting "n00bs". This slowly became a miniature time drain so I backed away.

The 3 that I looked at recently.. I didn't have to sign up, just grabbed a JV login and began investigating...

It left me bored, and bemused at what was on offer..

Peace

Jay

[Jagged]

Originally Posted by JayXtreme

The content was embarrassingly poor and mostly just PLR goods that have been grabbed from elsewhere, not edited at all and submitted as a "product"...

Is the giveaway becoming a scrap heap for I.M. PLR?...

Hi Jay,

For the most part, yes...
At least the last few like you stated. None were really worth exploring...just to find MAYBE one product...

Question: How do you find your list generated through giveaway events? Responsive for the most part...or non-responsive - just looking for freebies?
Do they sign up to receive just "free stuff"...once you pitch anything to them they are non-responsive or unsubscribe all together?

Ken

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Jagged

Question: How do you find your list generated through giveaway events? Responsive for the most part...or non-responsive - just looking for freebies?
Do they sign up to receive just "free stuff"...once you pitch anything to them they are non-responsive or unsubscribe all together?

Ken

Hey Ken.

How are ya?

To be honest... it was surprisingly responsive, although still not a high level of action. I don't find it a difficult list to work.. but the R.O.I. isn't quite high enough for me to want to keep duplicating it.

Most of the time, I try to provide added content with "contextual ads" around it, blogs with ads.. newsletter with ads... and then every once in a while.. straight pitch. This results in a ton of unsubscribes on the pitch, but also a barrage of sales too

Peace

Jay

[bannor32]

It depends on the focus of the person offering the giveaway. If they are just pandering to the average person's desire to get something for nothing then most of the time it is just recycled crap, and not worth looking at. However, I've found that a growing number of marketers are actually starting to give out valuable stuff for free as a sort of "loss leader" to hook potential customers into signing up for their paid products/services.

[Alan Petersen]

I'll pick a few of the gems and then I'll tell my list so they can go find them. A few times I'll even do a screencast inside the giveaway showing them the good stuff. But I do find my list isn't as responsive when I tell them about giveaways so won't be spending much more time on that.

Personally I still use giveaways to build my list. I'm picky about the giveaways I participate in. But yes a lot of the gifts are crappy.

I never use PLR. I use my own stuff. I make sure to let them know it's my own stuff not PLR and I usually pick up 100-200 new subscribers. Not bad since it only takes a few minutes to setup.

I recommend giveaways for list building to my list and in my blog especially if you're just starting out. But I make it clear to never, ever, ever, ever, ever, slap on the tired ole PLR report with the same tired ole graphic that has been round the block a few million times. You're just wasting everyones time doing that.

[Tyrus Antas]

People will always take the shortcut, specially if some gurus tell them that it's OK to do.

Tyrus

[JohnMcCabe]

True confession time...

I visit giveaways looking for free stuff. There, I said it...

I'll opt-in for a giveaway, cherry-pick what I want, then opt-out. I'm not there to pad someone's pitch letter, I'm there to audition people who may have something worth paying for. And when I'm done, I'm done.

The same thing goes for the giveaway products. If you try to dump worthless crap (to me) so you can put me on a list, I'll opt-out so fast you'll have to check the database to know I was ever there.

On the other hand, if I do choose your product for download and I see you put some effort into giving value, you've got several more chances to get your message across.

[Martin Luxton]

Jay,

The thing is, giveaways are not really free.

The time you spend signing up, checking out the stuff, downloading it, scanning it (yes, I've found malware a few times) is time you could spend doing something more productive. When I first started out I spent nearly all my time downloading free stuff and calling it work. It's not work - it's a massive millstone around your neck.

You need a computer, an internet connection, a plan and a few tools. Putting a couple of hundred ebooks a month on your hard drive is not a plan.

I checked out a giveaway recently for the first time in a year and I was depressed and unimpressed. Made me glad it was in my past.

Martin

[JasonC.biz]

My first year in IM (just a couple of years ago), I signed up for a Christmas giveaway or two, not knowing any better. I basically got a bunch of junk, and was put on a bunch of lists. Seems like it took forever to sign up for everything.

I've unsubscribed from all but 2-3 of them, and even the ones I stayed on are just OK.

These days when I get emails pitching giveaways, I just delete them. I don't even look at what's there most of the time.

Jason

[MelissaChurch]

I joined one of these recently and automatically deleted over half of the stuff I initially downloaded. Half of it was a similar product just regurgitated over and over again. I'm not sure if list building is really valuable from this....why do marketers do it? I know I unsubscribed to a lot of lists after getting hammered with hype-filled e-mails for a week.

[Chris Kent]

I agree, most giveaway stuff is total cr*p. I would never use my real email address for any of the signups. Taking the risk of getting 50 daily emails to find a single gem? To be honest, it's not even worth the time investment.

[Bright Wings]

The problem with most giveaway events is that they are completely centered around IM themes. That is fine when people really are looking for IM stuff -- but it makes for really poor lists when you're in a niche other than IM. I mean, how many people (in general) attending a giveaway are hot for YOUR niche (if it isn't IM)?

Certainly not a listbuilder for non-IM niches.

Now if we could manage to get great niche content and THEN do a giveaway in MY niches, you'd have my attention.

But that's a lot of work. Sounds like what's happening with giveaways is just throwing stuff against the wall to hope something sticks. Like wishing for customers or something.

Am I right?

[romesaranto]

I am relatively new to the IM world so I am glad this question was raised. I have only seen about 5 of these promotions and yes, most of the stuff I have seen has been bad.

[tschlotter]

Originally Posted by Martin Luxton

Jay,

The thing is, giveaways are not really free.

The time you spend signing up, checking out the stuff, downloading it, scanning it (yes, I've found malware a few times) is time you could spend doing something more productive. When I first started out I spent nearly all my time downloading free stuff and calling it work. It's not work - it's a massive millstone around your neck.

You need a computer, an internet connection, a plan and a few tools. Putting a couple of hundred ebooks a month on your hard drive is not a plan.

I checked out a giveaway recently for the first time in a year and I was depressed and unimpressed. Made me glad it was in my past.

Martin

Being a perpetual victim of information overload, free giveaways totally enthralled me about four years ago - until I finally realized what Martin stated and just started checking them out if I happened to be looking for something specific (of course I always got sidetracked anyway!).

I've been tempted to contribute to them for list-building but haven't really had something I could call "my own" to contribute, even though lots of people do contribute plr stuff, which didn't seem to be the case with the first ones I signed up for ("31 Days of Christmas", etc.) came out years ago.

I just got an email about a new one today and am actually thinking about contributing because it's from an IM'er that I like but your comments are definitely making me think twice!!

Tina