Back to Basics Part 5: Where to List Your Giveaways

I have spoken to a number of you who have all said you had no idea that there are places to advertise giveaways on the web. While it is true once a blog is big enough you will have your regular followers enter your giveaway or a friend of theirs who see their tweet go by or a Facebook status update. However when you start doing giveaways you will get very few entries from your regular readers unless the item is so amazing they just can't pass it up. So you need to go outside of your usual circle to find people who are interested in what you are offering after all the point of doing giveaways for most blogs is to increase traffic, gain new followers, and be successful enough with your giveaway that other companies want to work with you in the future. Quite honestly the only way to make all those thing happen is to ADVERTISE your Giveaway. To be quite honest I now give my readers, followers, and friends first crack at each new giveaway so I don't care when during the day I list a new Giveaway. Though in terms of traffic it is usually before 11am or after 5pm but that is just what I have found for my blog your readers might visit at completely different times. Hopefully you have some analytic tool on your blog to help you figure out peak traffic times.
The first place I list all Giveaways is http://www.online-sweepstakes.com/ I find that Giveaways listed before 9am will start to get traffic that day I find Giveaways listed here after 9am receive much less traffic on the day they are listed. It is super easy to create your own account with them and it is free to list as many giveaways as you want per day. Traffic tapers off after the first day of the listing but is really huge during the last day of the listing. I get my most traffic from this site for our Giveaways I also notice that some of the people that enter all of our Giveaways don't stop by until they are listed here. Once submitted your giveaway gets listed automatically (within about 15 minutes anyway).
The other place I like to list Giveaways is Prizey.net again super easy to sign up for an account which is free to list as many giveaways per day as you would like. Their Giveaway uploading process is more in depth but the listings there really draw you in because you can see a picture and not just text links. You also have to include the price of the item so lower value Giveaways will get less traffic from this site but I do get consistent traffic from them. They manually put up your Giveaways so it takes about 24 hours to see your listing go live. They will also rate your Giveaway, Editor's Pick always get more traffic and exposure.
I was visiting DogTipper the other day and came across a new place to list giveaways. I don't know much about them but they are also Free to create an account or just submit your giveaway without an account. I do currently have one Giveaway listed there so we will see how it goes.
The following are Blogs that offer places to leave your giveaway link. They work just like the Blog Hop and the best days to link up on them are the day they go live. You do get some traffic from listing your Giveaway on these Blogs but it is more about meeting new people and inviting them to come and visit your awesome giveaways. Always leave a comment and not just "thanks for the linky" even if all you have to say is you like their blog layout make your comment count. I have linked to most of these Giveaway Linkys over the course of the year some are better then others and some get filled so quickly that I am not sure it really makes sense to link up other then to hopefully gain a new follower and possibly a few visitors. To be honest I generally search for (Edit Find on Page) keywords to see if anyone has a awesome Pet Product listed or a gift for someone whose Birthday is coming up as many of the Giveaways are for human babies and children or stuff I just don't want or need.

Thanks to Jilly's mommy at Chubby Cheeks Thinks for this awesome list!

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