Greetings and Salutations -

This is about your non-BellaOnline sites :) We already have a sweepstakes system for our actual BellaOnline site.

Many editors have been interested in running sweepstakes for their non-BellaOnline sites to drum up interest and likes for their various pages. I've been doing research and testing to help that out. One key area editors are interested in is doing giveaways on Facebook in order to draw in more "likes" for their pages.

I've written a detailed page on the rules that need to be followed in order to do a sweepstakes or giveaway on Facebook -

http://www.lisashea.com/workfromhome/marketing/socialnetworking/facebook/facebooksweepstakes.html

A key is that you MUST use a third party app in order to do any giveaways. The apps all seem to charge money. The cheapest one I found, that I'm now testing, is WildFireApp. They charge $5 plus 99 cents a day to run a sweepstakes. So I'm running a test sweepstakes on my Weddings & Courtships site to see how it works. Please help me test out this app here -

http://www.facebook.com/WeddingsAndCourtships

So far one downside seems to be that a person can enter without "liking". I'm trying to figure that part out.

Another downside seems to be that when you enter you get a confirmation email from WildFireApp which implies you are now subscribed to THEIR newsletter as part of your entry. Of course you can immediately unsubscribe, but I don't like the idea that in addition to them getting our money they also get a massive influx of free names to market to. But again this is the only way to do a sweepstakes on Facebook, so I suppose if you want to do a Facebook giveaway you have to make some compromises.

Please let me know if you have any questions at all about the process I went through or what I am seeing as a result. When I finish the week's run of the contest I'll post some screenshots so you can see what the app interface was like. It was pretty easy - just say the start and end date, the value of what you're running, and so on. Note I *did* have to have a privacy policy on MY site set up, to explain to users what I will do with the email addresses they're giving me. I also had to set up a sweepstakes rules page on my website. So you would have to do that on whatever website you have that's sponsoring your giveaway.

I'm happy to answer questions!



Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

--------------------

Archive of Past Emails -
http://www.bellaonline.com/newsletter/editorassistance

Editor Assistance Site - full of helpful articles and tips!
http://editorassistance.bellaonline.com/

Editor Forum - for community help 24 hours a day
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=10

All correspondence between BellaOnline editors is confidential and should not be forwarded or distributed.