When you set up a giveaway you decide more than the prize. You decide which countries can win, whether existing subscribers count, and — the interesting one — whether entrants must also join a handful of other channels.
That last setting turns a contest into a trade between channels, and it is where most of the money is either made or wasted.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Set the eligibility rules deliberately.
- check_circle Run a joint giveaway with other channels.
- check_circle Pick partners whose audience is worth borrowing.
- check_circle Avoid the arrangement that costs everybody.
The setup screen collects the prizes, the closing time and the eligibility rules before anything is published.
handshake Borrowing somebody else's audience
Requiring entrants to join several channels means each partner's readers are exposed to all the others. Everybody's subscriber count rises at once, which is why the arrangement is popular and why it is so often a poor deal.
The arithmetic is simple and unforgiving. A reader who joins four channels to enter one contest wanted the prize, not the channels. Three of those four subscriptions were never going to last, and the fourth only lasts if that channel happens to be about something the person actually cares about.
So the question is not how large a partner is. It is whether their readers would plausibly have found you on their own. Two channels about neighbouring subjects trade real audiences; five unrelated channels trade the same rootless crowd back and forth and all report growth.
Four settings on the form
Each one narrows who can win, and narrowing is usually right.
group_add Choosing who to pair with
how_to_reg Who the prize is for
public Where winners can be
schedule How long to run it
Judge a partner by whether their readers would have found you anyway. Two close channels beat five distant ones.
settings Setting one up
- Open the giveaway setup from the channel Prizes are bought before anything is published.
- Decide new subscribers or everybody It says who you are rewarding.
- Restrict the countries To the ones your channel actually serves.
- Add partners sparingly One or two, close to your subject.
- Set a short closing time A few days, at an hour you are awake.
- Have the next post ready The day after the draw is the only conversion you get.
This page trades audiences with another channel. The curriculum step is how to know what came from where: start parameters, tracking which promotion produced which subscriber, and measuring a partnership rather than guessing at it.
At a glance
- 1Eligibility
Set rules for who can enter.
- 2Joint giveaways
Partner channels must be joined to enter.
- 3Close partners
Pick channels whose readers would like yours.
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