Category Archives: Business

13 Reasons Why Giveaways are the Worst

I realize I’m deeming something “the worst“. And because the practice is negative, condescending, and generally beneficial to nobody, I, therefore, am the worst. Alas, I must get these thought about giveaways off my chest.

Why?

Because I have mountains of things given to me by brands. Things like $400 blenders. In theory, I should give them away. But it’s not that simple.

Briefly

I’ve done giveaways in the past.

By “done giveaways”, I mean organized an online, promotional event with large prizes for a lucky few.

And by large, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve given away six Vitamix machines on Life is NOYOKE over the past two years.

Now, maybe I’m doing ’em wrong. Maybe I’m not clear on the goal.

But here’s why I’ve done giveaways in the past.

Why Organizations are Supposed to Love Giveaways

The formula is simple.

Give people a chance to win something big in exchange for something small. The cost to enter can be:

  • Email list subscription.
  • Social media follow, like, or whatever.
  • Blog post comment.
  • Referral.
  • Etc.

So for organizations, this seems like a great deal. You get to expand your reach, social credibility, and subscriber base.

And if you didn’t pay for the giveaway prize, the return on investment is infinite.

But with those benefits come so many hidden costs.

Let’s discuss.

Why Giveaways are Actually Horrible for Most Businesses

Every run a giveaway? These will sound familiar.

If not, take heed.

Here some reasons why giveaways suck so bad.

1) Prospect, reader, follower quality decreases.

Let’s say you run a giveaway. Cost of entry is an email address.

What’s the result?

You just got tons of new subscribers on your list. Yay!

But here’s the reality.

A majority of people who subscribed to your email list only did so because that was his / her cost of entering the giveaway.

They’re not engaging, quality subscribers.

These people have inboxes FULL of giveaway-entry email list subscriptions they NEVER read. And now, you’re one of them.

And think about how they found you.

These entrants were sitting at their crappy desk jobs searching Google and Facebook and Pinterest for giveaways. For them, it’s like playing penny slot machines.

So not only are they not quality, they’re degenerates, too.

Great.

But what about their value beyond engaging with your brand?

2) Giveaway entrants NEVER buy.

This is a generalization, but mostly true.

The vast majority of giveaway entrants never buy.

So if you have a product you hope to sell one of these new subscribers, think again.

The only way they’ll buy is if it’s a deal so good they feel like they’re winning a giveaway.

3) Their traffic is usually worthless

This doesn’t apply if you make money on ad impressions. To you, traffic is traffic.

(In which case, giveaways are great. Professional sports teams are a great example. They do giveaways all the time and it satisfies their goals.)

But any traffic you generate from your giveaway is probably low quality. They’re more like patrons. Not lifelong fans.

4) Giveaways are a poor use of your time.

Giveaways require a lot of overhead.

  • Comment moderation (added security).
  • Customer service (correspondence).
  • Other annoying shit like connecting winners to their prizes.

Given the return is so low, your time is much more valuable if spent elsewhere.

5) Existing (and lifelong) fans are poorly conditioned.

Oh, you’re gonna giveaway one of the products you sell and promote? Might as well NEVER buy because I’ll eventually get one for free.

Great.

If you must give something to your current subscribers / fans, make it something extra. Something they’d have if they bought your product. Or something to complement your product.

Example: Free tickets to Hawaii for two from a “Make Money Online” business.

Meanwhile, I have a VItamix Pro 500 that I won in an affiliate contest. I should make it the prize of a big giveaway to promote the current special pricing on the model they’re retiring.

But I can’t do it.

I know this product changes the lives of my readers . But the trade off is too big. Yes, one reader gets one. But thousands, now, knowing I give them away, may never will.

6) Winners do NOTHING for you.

If you think the winner of your giveaway is going to do anything for you, think again.

Once they’ve won, they’re gone forever.

No promotion. No further love.

It’s like the standing desk I won at a charity event.

Have I done ANYTHING to benefit the prize provider (who gave me a $350 standing desk)? Nope.

Did anyone at the charity event do ANYTHING to benefit them either. Nope.

7) Creativity doesn’t pay.

I tried to get creative with a Vitamix giveaway.

Why?

I was sick of the aforementioned things that make giveaways awful.

So instead of doing a standard giveaway, here’s what I did:

I said the winner does NOT win the prize.

Instead, the winner gets to giveaway the prize to a loved one. All entrants had to leave a comment about whom they’d give the prize.

The results?

The winner kept the prize for herself.

Worse yet, when I reached out to her, she said she was disappointed because it wasn’t a full-size model.

8) Email open rate goes down.

Let’s say you do a giveaway where the cost of entry is a subscription to your email list. Standard.

Since the number of people on your list who genuinely want your updates goes down, your open percentage goes down, too.

This is bad because your open rate impacts the likelihood your emails end up in recipients’ spam folder.

And of course, as your email list grows…

9) Email provider costs increase.

Sending email to a large list requires a provider. MailChimp, for example.

Why?

Well, if you’re sending emails to a large list, the FCC requires you to offer an easy, safe way to unsubscribe. Using regular ol’ Gmail with blind carbon copies, you can’t do that.

So with the new giveaway subscribers, you just added fees to your monthly email provider bill.

And for what?

10) Giveaways can dilute your brand.

Here’s an example.

Blendtec sends me blenders to review and giveaway. They’re fine machines from a fine company and are basically just as good as Vitamix.

But I’m a Vitamix guy.

And my brand, Life is NOYOKE, benefits from this loyalty. The expertise.

So I can’t run a big giveaway on my site. (I don’t even want to do an in-depth review.)

But I also can’t give them to friends, family, or even other blogger friends. No matter who it is, the item will be associated to me and my brand.

It’s like how LeBron James can’t give Addidas shoes to ANYONE. He’s a Nike guy.

So you have all these things you could potentially give away but you don’t. Now what?

11) Stuff begins to accumulate.

TLDR: The following is a rant about the potential giveaway items I’ve accumulated.

As I said before, I have all sorts of things I could giveaway. They’re brand new and have value to most.

But I don’t want to:

  • Run a giveaway (see above).
  • Give them to charity (items are tied to me and may upset brands).
  • Throw them away (because that’s wasteful).

Furthermore, I can’t sell them either. I was given the things to put on my site. Selling the stuff feels wrong.

Sure, you could give things away in secret. (I gave the Nutribullet from this video to my Polish cleaning lady knowing it won’t come back to me.) But even that can get dicey.

So I’m stuck with all these things. And the clutter is killing me.

12) It sucks for those that don’t win.

There are people who REALLY wanted to win. You have fans YOU wanted to see win.

But in the end, not everyone wins.

You’re guaranteed to let people down.

Sure, you could say you’re giving people the opportunity to win. And that’s exciting and generous in and of itself.

But it’s tough NOT to see it as setting people up for disappointment.

13) Receiving free stuff makes you feel like a whore.

This one is for any influencer out there who’s received something for free in exchange for something they should giveaway to their fans.

Here’s an example:

You’re invited to a private media event at a new restaurant to sample the food and take a tour. In addition to the free food, you’re given two cards that entitles you to twelve free meals over the next year. One card is for you and another is for you to giveaway to your fans.

Pretty good deal, right? You and one of your fans gets free food for a year.

But what if you don’t want to do a write up about the restaurant? What if you don’t want to run a giveaway?

Can you just give the card to a friend? Do you HAVE to do a write up?

Suddenly you’re guilted into doing a lot of work and compromising your brand integrity in exchange for a little bit of free food. Ugh.

In the end

Giveaways make sense for some organizations. Professional sports leagues, daily deal site, etc. Some bloggers like this one make it work (and despite the loads of effort, it’s worth it).

But for most of us, they don’t make sense.

The problem is that running a giveaway is incredibly tempting. You get:

  • More of this.
  • More of that.
  • More of the other thing.

So you run one. Then another.

Each time, you realize how crappy giveaways are.

Until finally, it’s time.

It’s time to make a decision on giveaways.

Either get some help and have them done right (and on your behalf) or avoid the situation completely.

Prologue: I’m still stuck with a boat load of blenders, free meals, and other things in my apartment. And still, I don’t know what to do with them. I should probably take my own advice: Get help.

What do you do when

You screw up with lots of people watching?

Do you stand there frozen, feeling like an idiot? Vomit? Apologize quickly?

Or, do you:

  • Laugh at yourself.
  • Appreciate that it could have been worse.
  • Realize that people enjoy top performers’ moments of imperfection.
  • Take steps to avoid doing it again.
  • Deal with it by writing about the experience.
  • Use the experience to study how people reacted.
  • Laugh at yourself some more.

Yeah. The latter. All of it.

What else are you gonna do?

[Inspired by this email I just sent to 50% of my Life is NOYOKE list. ]

10 things I’ve learned from watching Last Week Tonight

HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is my new Daily Show. I watch it religiously, and it’s my main source of the news.

Pathetic? To some, probably.

But here are some non-topical things I’ve learned from watching the show.

  1. The daily format is dead. (Sorry, uncleleosblog.)
  2. The weekly format is better for a million reasons. Applies to TV, blogs, podcasts, etc.
  3. Make a promise and keep it. (Theirs is 30 minutes every Sunday.)
  4. If you’re going on vacation, say it.
  5. Breaks make people miss you and improves the quality of your work. (Double benefit!)
  6. Make stuff worth sharing.
  7. Build a team with one goal.
  8. Embrace where you came from.
  9. Demand change.
  10. Love your work.

Aside from key lessons in business and life, there is so much to learn from Last Week Tonight (food waste, the IRS, prisons, to name a few).

Are you watching?

That thing you do

Can you describe it in just a few words?

If not, figure it out.

That, or stop trying to do so much.

Specialty is a good thing.

(With the addition of minimooning, maybe you’d just describe me as a blogger?)

Important customers

It’s a funny thing.

Your customers who ask for the most give you the least.

The opposite is true, too.

Your customers who ask for the least give you the most.

Moral of the story?

Make the effort to give more to your most valuable (least needy) customers.

It’s:

  • A more satisfying way to do business.
  • A better investment of your time.
  • A better way to do marketing (by letting your customers who love you spread the word about how wonderful it is that you go way above and beyond their expectations).

The only tricky part is the valuable customers won’t ask (and the other ones will).

Remember who’s actually important.

The Office Chair Problem

For a while, I’ve struggled with office chairs.

Ultimately, I know I should sit on them less and will have my problem solved.

Alas, I have some computer-heavy days and am stuck with the following options.

  1. Use a kitchen-table-style chair. (No arm rests, no wheels, no height adjustment.)
  2. Use an exercise ball. (Same as above, although slightly more lateral mobility.)
  3. Setup a standing desk. (Probably best for my body. And would work great some days. But a writer’s gotta sit.)
  4. Buy an office chair from a big box store. (Over-priced, poorly built and surprisingly uncomfortable.)
  5. Buy an $800 Herman Miller office chair. (Satisfies all the above problems, but is outrageously priced.)

(TLDR: As I’m writing this, I could see the same argument being made for Vitamix. And, as I look at the Herman Miller website, I see their company history is very similar my partner from Olmsted Township, Ohio. Early 1900s, USA-based, basically one product. So, my forthcoming conclusion to this post will either be hypocritical or, perhaps prophetical on a couple levels.)

My solution?

Ask the world to create a market-disrupting office chair company similar to what Tuft and Needle is doing for mattresses.

Someone please do this.

I will advise, invest, and promote as needed.

The world needs this office chair problem solved.

Thanks,
Lenny

Startup

If you want to start a business, there are three steps.

  1. Pick a problem. (Notice I didn’t say “find a problem.” There should be plenty of things that bring you pain that shouldn’t.)
  2. Fix the problem.
  3. Remind yourself and your customers of the problem you set out to fix.

This startup I stumbled upon does just that.

I cannot wait to hire them to fix my mattress buying problem.

Loud music

Loud music makes it tough to hear. Hear others and hear the voice inside your head.

It’s fun to be around loud music. It wakes you up, too.

It lowers your inhibitions. One more beer. I gotta get that t-shirt.

The opposite of a place with loud music? The library.

People spend zero dollars at the library. And they fall asleep there. And they certainly don’t leave saying they had a good time.

Yes, libraries are wonderful places.

But unless you are one, you might want to consider putting on some loud music.

You might wanna wait

When you buy a stock, be sure you’re good with the management.

When you buy a condo, be sure you’re good with the management.

When you pick a baseball team, be sure you’re good with the management.

You can have the best product or location or player.

But if the management isn’t great…