If you are going to make money online you need people and to get them your going to have to do a range of things from SEO through to varies forms of marketing. For the past few years their has been a trend with marketers and bloggers using free giveaways or competitions to increase their user base.

A freebie or competition event is very simple to setup and all you need is the prizes. The best way to go about this is to find people and websites with tools and services that would actually benefit your users. Approach them and ask them for a contribution to your prize fund. They should be interested in this as they give a little something away and return they are essentially getting advertising for their product or service from you.

Now their is no point in doing a great big competition and getting nothing back in return so you are now going to want to capitalise on this opportunity by channeling the participants where you want them. For example, if you are looking to build an opt in email contact list then you are going to want to give the participants the entry details or even one entry to the competition for providing their email address. Likewise, if you are a blog looking to increase your readership you easily tell the users that competition entry information is in your feed at which point you can direct them to signing up to your feed.

You are also going to want to spread the word, after all a competition for your current readers is all very good and well but you should be looking to increase your readership or newsletter subscription. The first step would be to encourage the competition sponsors to promote their prize to their reader base. Secondly all of those networking contacts you have with your friends and online associates in your field are great for spreading the word of your great new competition. It might also be worth mentioning on the forums you are active on if those websites allow it.

I will be launching a competition soon and I hope to be able to source some great prizes for everyone so keep your eyes peeled.