Seriously, who doesn't like free stuff? Well, it seems to depend on how the free stuff is given that might determine that. Recently my web show did a couple of giveaways to our fans and the response was pretty impressive for one, and a little disappointing for the other.
The first giveaway was for some exclusive codes that allowed the owner to get access to a private demo of a game that isn't out yet. A game that happens to have millions of devoted fans made by a very successful company. So, needless to say, the fans were all over it when I announced that we had several codes that we were going to give out at a certain time each day. The catch was that we gave clues to the last digit or letter in the code so the fans had to do a little work for their reward.
Not so much work as it turned out, since each code was nabbed within seconds of them being posted. I was fascinated to see how quickly they were taken, to be honest. I worked really hard on trying to make the clues difficult so that they took some time to figure out. Maybe this just says something about our fan-base and their intelligence. I like to think so at least.
On the flipside, there was the second giveaway which we did on our YouTube channel. We offered an exclusive jacket and a free game, the pair worth around $100 or more together. All our fans had to do was pitch us a game for Marvel, the comic book company, to make. For what we offered, we only received a handful of submissions.
Maybe there was something wrong with out prize? Or the conditions of our contest? I looked at other YouTube channels that did giveaways, and many of them had similar conditions or methods of getting fan interaction. Some of them gave away larger gifts, a real electric guitar or a host of movies and autographed pictures, but others had similar prizes to ours. Their fan response was massive and honestly a little impressive.
Now looking at the differences between my site and the others there were some obvious ones. First, some of these other channels had extremely large numbers of fans and views per video. That meant their contests were seen quickly and by a large number of people. Our contest was seen by a relatively small group of people. Obviously, the amount of people who would be willing to do the work for the reward would go down if only a small group saw the video.
The more I analyzed fan participation for free prizes, the more I saw something very interesting. Fans were willing to hunt down trivia or detailed information, but what they weren't willing to do was a heavy amount of writing for a very expensive free gift. Is it something in our nature to be predisposed to avoiding work, despite what the reward is? I'm not sure, but I think that if people are unfamiliar with what they might have to do for a reward, they'll just end up not wanting to try, but regret not having tried. Maybe we should all just jump at challenges and appreciate the rewards we get. Who knows, we might just learn something about ourselves in the process.
What was the expensive prize you were giving away for the writing part?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it is hard to get people to participate in contests. We held a re-mix contest at Fearless Records and in order for it to be successful we had to get in touch with a ton of different websites to let them know about it and promote it via e-mail blasts, on a couple different websites, and even get a street team involved.
It was an eye-opener for me as well to see how much work it takes to have a successful contests or giveaway and what people are willing to do for the prizes.
I am definitely one of those folks who search for free prizes that don't take much work to get. For instance, there are all kinds of fast food places that give free food just for signing up for their newsletter. It only takes like a minute! I don't think I would have bothered if it took too long.
ReplyDeleteI love getting free stuff as well. I mean who doesn't right? And yes, most of us will avoid doing work, despite the reward. We live in a lazy society. That won't change anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteI love free stuff. As my dad says, "If it's free, I'll take three". But I don't think people want to work for it, or if they do than they want it to be easy. You look at these free give aways on radio stations all most people just have to be a caller number 1,000 or tell them the name of the person who won the previous day. So a challenging contest doesn't drawn in people it pushes them away. In their head it's, "Well why write a whole page when I could just call the radio and answer a question." You basically have to market your contests to people's laziness.
ReplyDeleteI have never won anything if it had to do with luck. I tried a couple times but never won anything. But it is always fun reading about someone who has had so much luck in the past.
ReplyDeleteI think our generation is accustomed to getting instant gratification. Why work for something when we can get almost the same results for so much less work? Everything is easy for us today--we have the internet, gps systems, social networking, and more...and we get it all on our phones so we don't even have to move to get it.
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