If you have a scratch ticket channel on YouTube, I’m sharing my experience with using giveaways as a “growth tactic” or as a way to show “tangible appreciation” to your viewers.
In short, I recommend that you don’t do giveaways.
I scratch tickets because I love the entire process — scratching, filming, editing, geeking out on the math and the “logic.”
But, I’m also “gambling” just as much on the fact that a YouTube channel can become profitable over time.
(Ours is not yet, and I’ve sadly watched as a few channels I loved have shared the news that it was over for them.)
Early on—and I don’t think I’m some big cheese—I’d look to other channels for tips and inspiration: How they filmed, what they scratched, how often they did videos, Lives, Shorts, etc.
We Spent Over $500 on Giveaways
Three months into our channel, we had a Short go viral and suddenly had 1,000s more subscribers overnight.
Wild. Awesome. Unexpected.
So I thought I’d better do something to show my appreciation to viewers in tangible ways.
And over 2 months we then spent more than $500 on giveaways.
I don’t regret it. But it wasn’t worth it.
Giveaways Didn’t Grow Our Channel, Shorts Did
Rather than show appreciation to our viewers, what actually ended up happening was:
- Nine out of 10 legitimate winners never claimed their giveaway winnings. They didn’t care for them.
- We believe we were scammed by a network of fake accounts that guessed every possible winning number. (We told them this and never paid them.)
- We made viewers feel awkward as once we’d gifted them a giveaway they felt they had to watch and comment on every video we made.
- Almost half of our past winners later sent CashApp requests to us for even more money.
That’s not the type of viewer you want — no offense to our legitimate winners, we love you.
When I thought this all over, I realized that never in my life have I expected to be paid, gifted, thanked or compensated for watching free YouTube videos.
And by doing giveaways, I inadvertently spurred on these unintended consequences.
So do a rare giveaway if you want to, but I’d 100% suggest never making giveaways part of your routine.
You’re already footing the bill for the tickets you scratch, no need to add costs on top of that.
Good luck with your tickets, good luck with your channel.
Here’s a free analysis of our channel and what we think worked so far.
