how many optins can you gain from one giveaway?

The golden days, when you could grow your list with several hundreds or more than a thousand new subscribers during one event, are over... unfortunately

In current events, the number of subscribers really depends many factors: the quality of the giveaway, the number of people that promote the event, the quality and originality of your gift, your actual list size and gift ranking (determined by the number of people you refer), etc.

Yo can see it is hard to write down a number here. Still, don't let this stop you to give giveaways a try - every new subscriber is a potential new customer ...

LOL, love the tag line there Online Bliss!

O.B. is correct that a lot of people will be deadbeats and that the real goal is to build a quality list.

I'm just getting started in trying to build a list using Facebook Fan pages so we'll see how that goes. In this case I am in fact going to use an incentive which is an iPod Touch Third Generation for joining. However I've also instructed the people to do other things to qualify such as join my fan page, join my list AND be an active member.

So the joining of my fan page and my list require very little of the user, but if they want to have a chance to win the prize they need to contribute to my Fan Page. This alone could discourage dead beats from joining my Fan page and list right away and while that might reduce my members that's ok because my goal is to build a great community of like minded people who want to read what I post and from time to time contribute so a smaller targeted list is always better.

If you'd like to see an example of how I've constructed my offer you can checkout my Stephen Dayton - Social Media 3.0 Branding Yourself fan page.

Also be sure to make your giveaway something that is related to your product or service. In my case my niche is Social Media Marketing and Branding Ones self so my giveaway's are iPads and an iPod Touch because they make use of teh social media tools I'll be covering and recommending to my followers so they go hand in hand.

-Stephen Dayton

Giveaways are not near as responsive as they used to be but are probably one of the easiest ways to build a list for beginners. Your results will depend on the quality of your gift, the position of your gift, and the amount of traffic driven to the Giveaway by all of the contributors.

The best strategy is to find a giveaway that pays good commissions on the upgrade referrals and the special offers. (75% or better) Then pay for the upgrade. This moves your gift up towards the front pages of the giveaway where you will get better exposure.(more optins)

The key to optimizing this strategy is to have a good converting special offer. You make one or two sales and you have paid for your upgrade. This way you can actually make money while you build your list.

I have written an ebook about building your list with giveaways. You can download it from my blog for free.