I have done a previous post where I mentioned Group Giveaways being something I feel like don’t work when it comes to engagement. Though I had never tried one. I decided to give it a go and well it was an experience to say the least. I was never into the idea of paying money to gain followers (and maybe some engagement as well). Though with my feed is FILLED with Giveaway post constantly I had to see if it was worth it. I had just received a payment from a collaboration I had done and decided why not “invest” see what happens.

Sliding into the DMs

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I have often gotten messages from other influencers I follow that are doing a group giveaway so the next giveaway DM I got was the one I decided to do. When I received the invite I decided to ask a few questions prior to agreeing. I said I was interested but want to know the buy in and other details. The girl told me the rates were $25 to post and $40 to ghost.

• To Post: You would have to public post on your feed an image about the giveaway. Some group giveaways require a specific image while other just want you to copy and paste the deets under any photo you would like to use.
• Ghost: Ghosting in a giveaway means you do not have to post anything about the giveaway but you name is still on the list to follow. There are pros and cons to ghosting in a giveaway. You get all the followers without having to use up a caption of a photo the con is since you aren’t posting a photo you don’t get the engagement you would for posting a photo.

I let the girl know I would like to join the giveaway at the $25 To Post buy in rate. Here is when things started to show signs but I deciding to push the experiment all the way and continued on. The girl then sent me another message asking me if I was confirming. I replied saying “Yes I confirm” She then sent me a list of all the other people involved. The accounts all seemed legit and some of the accounts were people I knew. She then sent me another message (again only a few hours later) saying “Are you in?” I replied yet again with a “Yes”. She then stated that they only had “To Post” spots left and I replied stating that was my initial wanted.

The Next Morning (10:00 AM)

She then sent me her paypal email and asked me to send the confirmation to her via DM afterward. She got very aggressive with me when the payment had not gone through after 2 minutes. Saying she didn’t receive it and needed the payment. A few minutes later the payment went through.

Later That Day (2:30 PM)

She sent me a message asking me if I knew anyone who would be interested because a few more girls had dropped out. I sent her a few people I know do a lot of giveaways. Then around 3pm she sent me a message saying “POSTING AT 5pm” with what the caption should be. So within two hours notice I was being told I would need to post.

5:00 PM

She sends me a message saying to post. Then about 10 minutes later, she sends me a message saying:

You can imagine my panic even though it was only $25 this was just ridiculous. I had even messaged a few other girls who were part of the giveaway to see if they had ever worked with her before and none of them had. We all were worried that we just got scammed. Luckily, later that even she did refund us all our money but it really put a sour taste in my mouth.

Attempt Number 2

I eventually did try another giveaway and the giveaway actually happened. The issue is that I gained 200+ followers in 3 days and then lost 170 within a week of the giveaway ending. Unless you are constantly doing giveaways (which is probably why my feed is always full of them) the concept doesn’t seem to pay off it also really messes with your engagement scores because of the rise and fall of followers. I could have continued to do giveaways but to me it was basically the same thing as buying followers. You can get a high follower count but your engagement may not get the same boost.

Final Thoughts

There are benefits but there are also risk involved. I was lucky and this wasn’t scammed but it could of happened. The fact that the first one was so short notice and so chaotic was also something that made me dislike the idea of a group giveaway. I am a planner with my account. I personally don’t like to do two post a day on my account. I also would like more than 2 hours notice about having to post something. This is only one of the many things that could go wrong in a Giveaways. There is also always a few bloggers who ruin it by announcing a fake account they made as the winner and keeping the prize money. (Yes, I have known many people who found this out about giveaways they have done).