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One of the best ways to drive more traffic to your blog, whether you’re blogging about sewing, gardening, or your web design business, is to get sponsors to offer product giveaways.

Many blogs run random giveaways or even contests where they offer their readers great prizes: just check out Ana’s Thesis theme and CommentLuv Premium giveaways for examples.

Of course, most bloggers can’t afford to provide all these prizes on their own, so they find sponsors – other businesses that are willing to give away products through their blog.

If you’re curious as to how you can get sponsors for a giveaway on your blog, here is how you can go about it.

Direct Email

If you have specific sponsors in mind already – those who aren’t your competitors, but who are in a similar niche as you are or who target the demographic that your blog sees most – email them directly.

Be polite and up front about what you want when asking for a product giveaway, and make sure that you state some facts about your blog that make the giveaway idea more enticing.

For instance, many businesses will give products away through blogs that get tons of traffic, since this ends up being a cheap form of advertising for the business itself!

Use Your Blog

You can also ask for sponsorships through your blog.

This works best if you know some of your readers are business owners who are close to your blogging niche.

Just put out a couple of posts about what you want for your giveaway and give readers information about how to contact you for more information.

Then sit back and see what happens.

Use Your Social Networks

If you’re a pro blogger, you’re probably connected with other bloggers and businesses through other social networks, so you can leverage these to make sure you have all your bases covered.

Again, just talk about why you’re doing a giveaway, what kind of traffic your blog gets, and what types of products you’re looking for.

Give people a way to get in touch with you about giveaways and see what happens.

Five Tips for Getting Sponsors

Whether you get sponsors through email, blog posts, or your social networks, you can use these five tips to make sure you get as many sponsors as possible:

• Highlight your traffic

One of the main reasons that businesses participate in blog giveaways is for the exposure it gives them.

If you can prove that your blog sees a ton of traffic every day or every month, a business is more likely to do a giveaway through you.

They might, in fact, see more traffic by giving away a few affordable items on your blog than they would by spending the same amount of money on an online advertising campaign, so you should definitely play up your blog traffic numbers.

• Complement potential sponsors

It’s always a good idea to let potential sponsors know that you already know what they’re about, especially if you’re soliciting for product giveaways directly.

A complement thrown in an email or a Facebook conversation can go a long way towards getting you good sponsors, since your potential sponsors will probably be curious about why you chose them to work with.

• Give them something in return

Of course, you should always give businesses who are sponsoring giveaways on your blog something in return.

It could be something small-ish, like links back and credit for the giveaway.

If you are doing a giveaway with just one or two sponsors, you might even do an entire post on each sponsor, talking about their products and why you love them.

If you’ve established rapport with your readers, this type of post can go a long way towards advertising for a business, and it will make many businesses get on board with sponsoring your giveaways.

• Get your readers really excited

Be sure to play up your giveaways and get your readers really excited.

If you’ve already done a giveaway in the past, let potential future sponsors know how well it went.

For instance, how many readers entered the giveaway by leaving a comment on one of your posts?

The more readers that participate in each giveaway, the better leverage you have to host even bigger and better giveaways in the future!

• Hold regular giveaways

By holding giveaways on a regular basis, you can give potential sponsors some flexibility as to what they’ll donate and when.

For instance, a sponsor might prefer to donate something around the holiday season instead of during the summer, and if you host giveaways throughout the year, they’ll have the option to do this.

Marketing Takeaway

As a pro blogger, you’ll get better and better at finding and getting sponsors for your blog giveaways.

Chances are likely that you’ll even end up with a few larger businesses who, if they see good returns from doing giveaways through your fantastic blog, will give items away through you multiple times, which is great for business in the long run.

Note from Ana

Speaking of giveaways, I’ll have a great one coming up this Wednesday, October 26, where I’ll give away another copy of CommentLuv Premium and a 30-minute consultation with me.

So don’t forget to come back on Wednesday or better yet, make sure to join my email list to stay in the loop - just press on the Enter button in the form below.