There are lots of ways to earn additional money with Shopify. But not a lot of people realise that giving away things can be a great way to do it. Giveaways can even be a great way for your current customers to get some extra free stuff with no purchase necessary. For example, if you're selling a product like eBooks or courses and offering it in exchange for reviews on Amazon, relationships with your customers are already built so why not give them something if they buy from you?

When you are selling your products on Shopify, you can use giveaways, and discounts to promote the products. This article provides a step-by-step guide with all the necessary steps so you can set up your first giveaway in no time.

Step 1 - Choose A Giveaway App

The first thing you need to do is choose which app you want to use to run your campaign. There are many options to choose from including:

Giveaways Manager – This is the most popular giveaway app and it makes it easy for you to create your own giveaways.

Giveaway Creator – This app allows you to create your own giveaways without having any technical knowledge of programming.

BuySellAds – BuySellAds offers a variety of tools that make it easy for you to run your own campaigns or manage others’ campaigns.

Giveaway List Generator – The Giveaway List Generator allows you to generate a list of potential winners who have entered the giveaway so that all marketing campaigns can be targeted at them.

Step 2 - Set Up The Giveaway Model

The second step is to set up the giveaway model. There are many different types of giveaways, but we'll focus on two: a simple single-entry giveaway and a multi-entry giveaway.

A simple single-entry giveaway is just that — only one entry per person. You can use an email address or Facebook login to collect entries. This is a great option if you have a limited budget and want to test out your app before spending more money on promotion.

A multi-entry giveaway lets entrants register multiple times and enter their email address multiple times as well as their Facebook login information. This offers more chances to win, but it's more expensive to run since each entry costs money.

Step 3 - Set Up Prizes And Add Product Information

To create a giveaway, you need to set up prizes and add product information.

Prizes. Giveaways can have multiple prizes and you can add images for each prize. In the Giveaway Settings, click on the "Prize" tab. Here you can enter the details of each prize, including text descriptions and links where customers can learn more about each prize or purchase it directly from your online store. You can also choose if you want your customers to earn points or get free shipping when they win one of your giveaways.

Product information. You'll be able to add different product categories for your giveaway and enter their prices, quantities available and other information about the products in these categories.

Step 4 - Setup Your Giveaway Options

Step 4 - Setup Your Giveaway Options

Now that you've created your giveaway and added it to your store, you need to setup the options. These are the different things that can be changed when setting up a giveaway.

Giveaway Options:

1) Giveaway duration - This is the time it takes for someone to enter the giveaway. The default is 7 days, but this can be changed if you want. It's best to keep this fairly short so people don't get bored with entering each day and not winning anything.

2) Winner announcement date - This is when you'll announce who has won the prize (either through email or social media). Make sure this falls within the time frame of when people have entered your giveaway!

3) Winner notification method - You can choose between email or Facebook Messenger as your winner notification method. Email is preferable as it allows people to opt-out of receiving notifications if they don't want them (this is especially useful for large giveaways where lots of emails could clutter up their inboxes). Facebook Messenger is useful for larger giveaways where there might be thousands of entrants, but is also more likely to get lost in their inboxes. I recommend using both methods if possible so you're covered whichever happens first!

Step 5 - Add Additional Pages

You can add as many pages as you want to your giveaway. Each page will have its own unique code, so you can use any of your existing pages from Shopify. If you don't have any, then it's time to create some.

To add a new page, go to Settings > Pages > Add New Page. Enter the name and description for the page, then click Save.

The next step is to create a giveaway code for each item on this page. Go back to Settings > Giveaways and click Create Code button next to each item that you want to give away (you'll need to do this for each entry). You'll then be asked what type of code you'd like—we recommend using a combination of text and numbers (like this one), but feel free to use whatever works best for your brand.

Step 6 - Publish And Promote Your Giveaway

Now that you've set up your giveaway, it's time to promote it! There are a few ways to do this, but I recommend using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You can also use sites like Facebook Ads, Google Adwords and Instagram Ads.

Facebook Ads: With Facebook ads you can target specific audience groups with your giveaways. For example, you can target people who have visited your website in the last 30 days and people who live in certain states or countries. You can also select custom audiences based on age range, gender and interests so that you only show ads to people who are interested in what you're promoting.

Google Adwords: Google Adwords is another way to target specific personas with your giveaways. It's similar to Facebook except that instead of targeting people who have visited your website in the last 30 days, Google will target people based on demographics such as age range, gender and interests. You can also choose keywords that are related to your product or service so that when someone searches for these keywords they see your ad on top of the search results page (SERP).

Instagram Ads: If you want to get creative with your giveaways, I recommend going with Instagram ads for two reasons: 1) Instagram ads are pretty inexpensive and 2) they allow you to target people in specific age groups based on their location (e.g., people in New York City).

Step 7 - Analyse Your Giveaway Data And Improve Future Giveaways

If you have set up your first giveaway, you will have a lot of data on how it performed. After all, that is why you set up the campaign in the first place! But what can you do with this data?

As we mentioned earlier, some people use their data to improve future campaigns. For example, if you want to run a giveaway for your store's birthday, then you can see which products are most popular and which ones aren't doing so well.

This information can be used to make future giveaways better than before. You could even create another giveaway with just these products and offer them at a discount or free shipping with an additional purchase.

Conclusion

While Shopify is among the easiest e-commerce platforms to use, there is a certain level of complexity to setting up your first giveaway. Once complete, however, you can create another giveaway whenever you please. Soon enough, you will be on your way to improving sales while gaining brand exposure. As is often the case, the hard part comes with putting together your initial giveaway. With that in mind, make sure to follow the instructions closely and ask for assistance along the way if needed.