Starting Up: Freebies Can Spur Sales

From smSmallBiz

WHEN SHANNON LOWE , founder of parenting blog Rocks In My Dryer , started reviewing products on her site two years ago, she quickly became inundated with free stuff. Lowe's inventory grew so large that she created another blog, Bloggy Giveaways , this past August just to get rid of it all. And that's when this stay-at-home mom in Tulsa, Okla., realized that giveaways are a hit.

Shortly after offering the first free product — a custom T-shirt from Planet Mom T Shirts — Lowe saw traffic grow to about 4,500 visitors a day. "Readers love free stuff," she says. And business owners clearly love the exposure: Bloggy Giveaways now gets enough giveaways to offer a new free item every Monday through Friday. Instead of a company buying an ad on her blog, which might stay up for about two weeks, "they get [something like] $1,000 worth of clicks for one product," she says.

Jenny Jones, a former magazine editor in upstate New York who pens the parenting blog Buby's Place, says giveaways work even when you don't offer your own products. Jones, who regularly enters items such as a designer baby-wipes case or a baby bag into giveaways such as those held at Bloggy Giveaways and Design Mom , says: "I'm using the giveaways to drive traffic." She hopes readers will turn into shoppers at her new online store, which should be live by the end of the year. So far, Buby's Place, which launched in March, has received nearly 18,000 visitors. According to Jones, her site averages about 1,000 readers per week. However, during giveaway weeks, the site's traffic doubles. "The giveaways are definitely working for us," she says.