Tips for Winning Giveaways

After my constant bragging posts on facebook, a couple of friends asked me how I win so many giveaways. I can assure you, it isn't luck.    Keep reading for my tips and tricks to winning blog giveaways.

Yeah, I won that.

I started entering giveaways as a hobby this year, and so far I have won around $2000 in prizes.  My biggest win that I am sooo proud of was a Babi Italia Crib from the Asheville collection and a Serta Master Sleeper Crib Mattress, valued at around $570 altogether.  Two weeks later, I won a Lolli Living crib bedding set and nursery decor worth about $350.

Giveaways and Sweepstakes are a great way to get things that you might not be able to afford at the time.  Honestly, if I hadn't won this crib set, Kaya would be using all of Sammy's hand-me-downs (car sheets included.)



So how do you win free stuff?  I've compiled a list of the things I do that has been working pretty well so far.

Only enter giveaways for items you want

At first, I was entering every single giveaway I saw.  It seemed like if I did win something, which was rare, it was an item I really didn't want or couldn't use.  An easy way to increase your chances of winning is to search specifically for what you are looking for.  

Conduct a specific search for the type of item you want to win

This will narrow down your search for giveaways to whatever category you are interested in. Now you need to look for recent giveaways, which brings us to the next tip:

Look for new giveaways

Once you've hit that search button, you can narrow the results even more by when they were posted.  By clicking "Search Tools" and changing "Any time" to "Past week", your results will only show those giveaways that have been listed within the last 7 days (or 24 hours if you want to start entering right after they post.) This is especially helpful for giveaways with daily entries.

Enter every day

Most giveaways, especially those on blogs, have daily entries such as daily tweets or comments.  The way I remember to come back to these is by adding a folder into my bookmark bar (on Chrome) and adding all the contests I enter into there.  This keeps them all in one spot so you can easily click through and get your daily entries in.  

Have social media accounts

This one is pretty crucial, as nearly every blog giveaway will have optional entries for liking a page on facebook, following hosts and sponsors on twitter, following the blog with Google Friend Connect or Bloglovin', etc.  The more you enter, the more likely you are to win!  An alternate email address is also helpful in case there are newsletter subscription entries.  Just make sure to check your email often! Speaking of entries...

Find low entry giveaways

The fewer the entries, the greater your chance of winning - especially if you are entering daily.  

Here is a list of a few of my favorite blogs that list (or link up) low entry giveaways:

A Lucky Ladybug

Airplanes and Dragonflies 

Tightwad in Utah

Your Golden Ticket Blog

Sweepstakes Mama

And most importantly:

Don't give up!

You wont win every giveaway you enter.  You probably wont win anything your first couple of weeks.  But I promise you, that rush you get when you check your email and see "You won a giveaway on my blog" is totally worth the work!

Oh, I almost forgot - for help figuring out the Rafflecopter that most bloggers use, Simple Saving Savvy created a tutorial.  Good luck!