How to get Sponsors

This weeks question comes from Monique. She wants to know how to get sponsors to host giveaways through your site, her question is:

How do you get sponsors to send you giveaways for your site?

This is the meat and potatoes of review and giveaway blogging.  Here are some of the things that have helped me along the way.

First, I have to tell you this takes a lot of time.  Before starting My Wee View, I contacted many, many, many companies to tell them about my site and what I hoped to accomplish.  Many never responded, but to my surprise, many thought it was a great idea, and sure enough agreed to sponsor a review and giveaway.  So, if you are contacting many companies, with no response don’t be discouraged, it takes a lot of work upfront, but it will all pay off in the long run when companies start contacting you.

Most companies have contact information right on their website.  Some require you to email them from your email account, while others have a contact us form.  Either way, this is how I contact many companies.  Simply send an email and ask.  Remember that old saying “If you don’t ask, you wont receive” – this is the case with review and giveaway blogging.  When you are starting out, you will never receive anything if you don’t ask.

So what is is that we are suppose to ask for?  Glad you asked,,, this is what works for me…

In my email to the companies, I simply tell them what my site is about, and what services I can offer to them – an honest review of a product or redirect traffic to their site through a giveaway.  I have tried many different approaches, and I have found that short and sweet usually gets the best response.  Company owners are very busy, and will not have the time to read a 1000 word request for a review and giveaway.  So, to respect their time, I keep my request very short and to the point.

If you are brand new to review and giveaway blogging, and don’t have a following yet, there is no need to include stats in your pitch at this point, unless they ask.  If they do ask, make sure to give accurate data, because they may ask for a screen shot. When companies ask, I tend to give unique visitors.  This is probably the best stat out there in terms of how your website compares to other websites.   Google Page Rank can be “created” with tricks, Alexa only tracks websites that are searched with the Alexa tool bar, and Website Grader only ranks sites that have been ranked by Website Grader – although this is probably my favourite, because it does take many different ratings into it’s calculation.

To get started with review and giveaway blogging, ask some of the companies that seem to be on many review and giveaway sites.  They are probably having a marketing blitz, and you will probably have a better chance of getting on board with them.   There are other sites such as Blog Friendly PR, that lists both review and giveaway blogs and companies that are looking for review and giveaway bloggers.  The companies will list their contact information, simply send an email, tell them what you are about, and ask if they want to be on your site.

So, the biggest advise I can give to Monique, and others who would like sponsors to provide giveaways through their site is, just ask – don’t be shy, what’s the worst they can say?!?  ”No”, and many times, they won’t say no at all, they just wont reply to your email.

Do you have any tips for Monique?

Tagged as: Blogging, Review and Giveaway blogs