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I had an interview by email last week with Garen from Blog Setup Guide and he wanted to know my thoughts about running giveaways and what I have learned over the years. He had some good specific questions like what services work better to promote your giveaways on Social Media and such. It was a fun interview and he did a good job putting it all together.
Read Giveaways Part 1 My Interview with Justin Germino and let him know what you think about the interview.
The more giveaways I run the more experimental I am in testing out new methods of reaching a broader readership base and making sure those who may be interested notice the giveaway and enter it for their chance to win something. Unless you already have a large following on social media and your site you will need to reserve some advertising budget for your giveaway but make sure you use it properly. Meanwhile there are plenty of giveaway linky sites that you can start with for free, just search for them using Google Search for "giveaway linky" or "contest linky" and then sort the search by "in the last week".
This will often yield at least 5-10 sites right off the bat you can promote your giveaway on without having to spend a dime. I would always also create a post on Craigslist for a large city like LA or New York since there is a larger audience in those markets.
For more giveaway tips as well I did a detailed blog post on Dragon Blogger called How to Promote Contests Online Effectively.