The truth is that a giveaway is not truly free. In order for you (or your referral) to receive your free gifts, you have to give your email address away to every marketer whose product you download. Not only can that clog your mailbox with emails promoting one thing or another several times a day, everyday, it can be most inconvenient.  It is, however, the price you pay for your new load of ebooks and software.

Since Giveaways seem to be a permanent and very popular online event, let’s check out how they work.

Let’s look at how Giveaways work for contributors …. A contributor is someone who provides a gift that is included in the Giveaway event.  As a contributor to the event, you will get a new subscriber to your list for every person who downloads your products. Seasoned contributors often offer multiple products to the Giveaway, which multiplies their opportunities for list building. For contributors, a targetted giveaway event is a great way to build your list.

Giveaways are also great for the giveaway owner.  In fact, the site owner benefits most from a giveaway event, as they get the benefit of your initial signup when you first visit the Giveaway plus all the referrals (people) you send to the site because you normally have to opt-in with your email address before you can even see the products being offered for free download.

Can I Really Make Money?

There are several ways for you to make money as a contributor to a Giveaway.  The main way you can make money is indirectly – by building your list, it is possible to bring in a steady income if your list likes the products you are offering them in your follow-up emails.

Another way to make money is by promoting the Giveaway to your lists, on forums and in your signature anywhere you use it. This is because when you become a contributor, you are given a link to send your referrals to – this is also known as an affiliate ID or affiliate link.  When someone uses your affiliate link to visit a Giveaway and buys the One Time Offer (OTO), you as the referrer gets the commission for the sale.

Other Benefits…

Another benefit of using your affiliate link, is that when you refer people to the Giveaway event, your offer is ‘ranked higher’ and is displayed on ‘higher’ or ‘earlier’ pages on the Giveaway event. By having your gift displayed on pages as close to the first page as possible, you increase the number of optins you will receive.

Promoting a Giveaway Event that you contribute too is an absolute must!  Not only is it ‘correct etiquette’, the more referrals you make the more you will benefit. Some events won’t allow you to add a product, or display your product, to the Giveaway until you have sent a certain amount of traffic through your affiliate link.

Dee and Khai have put together offerings that include:

Google Traffic Pump System, by Heri Rosyadi

Odinn Sorensen’s 2 Day Profit Plan

VIP Membership to Twitter Effects from Kathe Lucas and

Shelby Carrs’ How To Write Blog Posts That Suck Visitors In

Plus a bundle more products to help you grow your online business.

Visit the Home Business Breakthrough Giveaway to get your free products before February 15th.

There are benefits to having a list…

* You don’t have to start over and find new people to sell to. You already have a ready-made group of people who have decided that they want to hear what you have to say and have probably already bought from you.

* Typically, if you’ve built a targetted list and treated your subscribers well by sharing valuable information (as opposed to continually promoting to them), the bigger your list, the more money you can make.

* If you are an affiliate marketer, having a responsive list can help you to become a Super Affiliate, which not only equates to more income – it also means that you may have a chance to win cool prizes in affiliate contests. Being a Super Affiliate also means that you can becoming sought after for large launches.

List building however, requires bringing traffice to your website. Here are some ways to get traffic and build your list.

1. Give them something for free. This is the obvious way however, make your free item something other than the usual pdf ebook.

Consider creating a podcast (mp3) with an expert, or even yourself sharing some great tips about your niche. You can also have someone interview you and record the interview to give away. Another idea is to create a video demonstrating a ‘secret technique’ or discussing some of your strategies in a visual way? If your software developer, why not give away some software in exchange for their email address?

2. Post on your blog regularly – using your chosen keywords. Try this – write a blog post (with good content and keywords) every day for 2 weeks and check your traffic stats – you should have more traffic! Do You?

3. Giveaway events are another way to build your list – make sure you create an opt-in page so that you can get the email address.

It’s important to make sure your offer is something that stands out in the sea of all the other Giveaway offers.

4. Build a Squidoo lens or Hub Page and point people to your site. Squidoo lens and Hub Pages are fun to put together, and relatively quickly to make. Take advantage of it and generate some traffic to your site.

5. Write articles and submit them to directories like Ezine Articles. Be sure to use your chosen keywords to the article and create an author resource box that will encourage people to click through to your site. Create articles that have great content and are informative – the content doesn’t have to be your best writing, but it should still be good.

6. What forums exist in your niche? Join a forum (or 2 or 3) and set up your signature to graciously promote what you do. The way (and when) you set up your signature block completely depends on the forum – make sure you read the Terms of Service first. When creating your signature, remember to ‘sell a benefit’ and get readers curious enough to click through.

7. Ad Swaps are certainly an excellent way to grow your list fast and effectively. Find another business in your niche that has a similar size list (or similar response) and send each others offers of a free item to your own list. The key is, to plan your swaps with offers that will appeal to your niche and not to do it too often, as you will ‘desensitize’ your list.

8. Twitter is another great resource to help you generate traffic to your site. A well written, 140 character tweet can entice people to want to know more and click through. For more information on how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your site, pick up your free Twitter Blog Magic report.

9. Pay Per Click advertising can be an effective way of traffic generation. A well designed AdWords campaign will be seen on a number of others people sites – and increase your reach incredibly. Spend some time developing your AdWords campaign to make sure you pay the ‘right’ price for the advertising.

10. If you like to write and you have something valuable to say, guest blogging is a good way to go. Blogging on your own blog means you have your readers, blogging on other people’s blogs (preferably higher traffic blogs) means you have their readers too, and these people will see your name AND your link.

Building traffic to your site, and list building, requires work from you – it doesn’t happen overnight and whilst you can outsource a lot of the work, understanding the basics will definitely help you. Building your list will most certainly help you create a sustainable, and profitable business.