At least I hope it’s short. We had a request for a Rafflecopter tutorial – so here we go! Rafflecopter is a useful tool for giveaways in that it:
- Allows your blog visitors to complete different tasks for entries
- Keeps track of entries for you
- Randomly chooses winners on the expiration date you set
You can set up a single prize or several, a single task to complete (blog comment, page like) or a number of tasks to give your visitors a choice and potentially more entries. You do have to set up an account, and as long as you’re doing basic stuff, it’s free.
- Start by going to Rafflecopter: https://www.rafflecopter.com Set up your account or log in.
- At the top of the home page, click “New Giveaway”
- Next it asks you to enter prizes – click on Add Prize and fill the prize text in however you like. ($20.00 Amazon Gift Card, Stuffed Ice Dragon, whatever you’re giving away.) Once you save that prize, you’ll be able to add a second and so on.
- OR if you have one prize, it’s time to move on to “People Can Enter By…” where you’ll see “Add an Entry Option.” Once you click here, it gives you several social media options – liking a Facebook page, subscribing to a mailing list, etc. There are also options for polls and for your own entry ideas. Fill out as many of these as you like, wherever you want to drive your traffic or encourage visitors to do.
- You can, if you like, assign point values to each entry option (the more points, the more likely people will choose that one.) There’s a checkbox as well if you want to make an entry item mandatory. Entirely up to you.
- When you’re finished adding entry items, come on back to the Setup page and set your contest start and end dates.
- Rafflecopter gives you an embed code for your website – this is how people will see the contest and be able to enter when the contest goes live.
That’s it. :) It looks like a lot when I type it out here, but once you’re on the site, it really takes you through step by step. Easy-peasy. Works better for me than the old method of writing names on scraps of paper and having my son pick.