Does giving away items bring regular traffic?

XBLElec · Nov 30, 2012

So I made my wife a website and she's been working on it a lot lately, and I wanted to know your opinions on giving away items to get traffic/people talking about the site. I have already ordered about $500 worth of items (1,000 items) to give away...however I did some research and a lot of people are saying people will go there for their freebie and never come back again.

Would you think it's better to invest the money into services like targeted traffic, or?

All input would be greatly appreciated.

Endire · Nov 30, 2012

Great question XBLElec,

I suppose it would depend. I would say it's not worth the investment if all you are doing is getting people to visit the site. If that is the case your money would be better spent on highly targeted PPC traffic.

If you are getting people to leave information (i.e. name, email, phone number, etc) for remarketing purposes, then I would say it's worth a shot. That assumes that what you are giving out appeals mainly to the market you want to target.

Take this example. If a company wants to generate an email list and that company is in the business of selling retirement financial services, it may not be the wisest idea to offer a freebie with such broad appeal that people who don't want their services are getting it (ie. An iPod touch or something like that). On the other hand if they offered a free hour of financial planning advice, then the people that responded would be very valuable to them.

Basically you have to think about whom these people are and what you will do with them. Don't just give stuff away for visiting the site. Ask them for something in return whether it be to like a Facebook page or follow some other social account or give you contact info. You also want to make sure that the freebie you are giving out attracts people that you can market to later and not just anyone who may or may not want your services.

This blog post has some good tips,

http://ameenafalchetto.com/giving-free-stuff-blog/

Hope that points you in the right direction,

Shawn

ecko911 · Nov 30, 2012

Invest in advertising !

XBLElec · Nov 30, 2012

TheContentAuthority said:
Great question XBLElec,

I suppose it would depend. I would say it's not worth the investment if all you are doing is getting people to visit the site. If that is the case your money would be better spent on highly targeted PPC traffic.

If you are getting people to leave information (i.e. name, email, phone number, etc) for remarketing purposes, then I would say it's worth a shot. That assumes that what you are giving out appeals mainly to the market you want to target.

Take this example. If a company wants to generate an email list and that company is in the business of selling retirement financial services, it may not be the wisest idea to offer a freebie with such broad appeal that people who don't want their services are getting it (ie. An iPod touch or something like that). On the other hand if they offered a free hour of financial planning advice, then the people that responded would be very valuable to them.

Basically you have to think about whom these people are and what you will do with them. Don't just give stuff away for visiting the site. Ask them for something in return whether it be to like a Facebook page or follow some other social account or give you contact info. You also want to make sure that the freebie you are giving out attracts people that you can market to later and not just anyone who may or may not want your services.

This blog post has some good tips,

http://ameenafalchetto.com/giving-free-stuff-blog/

Hope that points you in the right direction,

Shawn

Thanks so much for your reply. The plan was for example we would make a youtube video about a product (like a review) and one or more people that comment would win the product we reviewed. We're trying to figure out what would be the best thing because we don't want to give like randoms free stuff, but if they actually comment on the video then they did something, and got us a view.

We're also thinking about the "Register on our site and you could win...." and pay someone to make a youtube video of what they have won from our site as like a testimonial. Facebook likes really don't do anything for us, unless we make people make our site as their status and then we get traffic like that.

A lot of stuff to think about, and I really appreciate your post.

GainRank · Dec 1, 2012

XBLElec said:
Thanks so much for your reply. The plan was for example we would make a youtube video about a product (like a review) and one or more people that comment would win the product we reviewed. We're trying to figure out what would be the best thing because we don't want to give like randoms free stuff, but if they actually comment on the video then they did something, and got us a view.

We're also thinking about the "Register on our site and you could win...." and pay someone to make a youtube video of what they have won from our site as like a testimonial. Facebook likes really don't do anything for us, unless we make people make our site as their status and then we get traffic like that.

A lot of stuff to think about, and I really appreciate your post.

Here's what I do on one of my websites. I sell a service and in-order for someone to test our service before purchasing, we have certain requirements. They want to test the service once, we make them like our Facebook page or tweet a premade tweet about our service. This way they are testing our service before hopefully purchasing, but if they are there just for the free service, we at least get a Facebook like, or tweet.

I've definitely noticed tons of people coming for the free stuff, then leaving, but I also collect an email address for targeted mailing later to come.

SkyrocketSEO · Dec 1, 2012

I've definitely noticed tons of people coming for the free stuff, then leaving, but I also collect an email address for targeted mailing later to come.

Where are you on Alexa and how old is your site?

XBLElec · Dec 1, 2012

Dagreyon said:
Here's what I do on one of my websites. I sell a service and in-order for someone to test our service before purchasing, we have certain requirements. They want to test the service once, we make them like our Facebook page or tweet a premade tweet about our service. This way they are testing our service before hopefully purchasing, but if they are there just for the free service, we at least get a Facebook like, or tweet.

I've definitely noticed tons of people coming for the free stuff, then leaving, but I also collect an email address for targeted mailing later to come.

Thanks for the reply. That's smart to harvest emails and facebook likes if you are selling stuff. The thing is that I don't plan on selling anything with this site...Instead I plan on making it very popular for my niche, and then getting a company to pay me to sponsor their item. For example, if I was doing reviews on lotions, I'd make a bunch of videos of different brands of lotions, and their cons and pros, and how you should I apply the lotion yada yada yada yada...and the hopes is that the company that I am reviewing will want to send me some more of their products and want me to put their next product on my site for a review by paying me.

The only way I can achieve this is if I have a rather large following, and with that I need people to want to come back and watch reviews, and some of them win some free products. I'm just deathly afraid that the people will come and watch one video and get their item and never return (which I know will happen) but I don't want it to happen for the majority.

Does giving away items bring regular traffic?

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