One blogger I follow had a “secret” giveaway where everyone who commented on her blog that week was entered and at the end of the week she was like, “Surprise, so-and-so wins!” I do really like that idea, because it shows appreciation to the readers you do have… but at the same time, it feels unfair if some readers usually comment all the time but just didn’t that week for whatever reason… not to mention, I feel like the publicity from a giveaway would be nice to potentially gain real followers, but then there’s no guarantee the prize wouldn’t be “wasted” on someone who was only in it for that.

My six-month blogiversary is coming up and I’d been thinking about doing a giveaway for that, but I’m just still too up in the air about how I want to approach it. Maybe for my 1-year.

I’ve had quite a few followers who are only there for giveaways. I think it’s nearly impossible to avoid them… but also I suppose I just hope that if they start to follow you, they might read some other posts of yours and realize that you have good content. There are so many book blogs out there that sometimes it’s hard to spread publicity – which I think giveaways do really well. I agree that comments are the best, that they give more joy than getting A LOT A LOT of stats, but sometimes it feels like you need one evil to get to the other, if that makes sense. Maybe someone will come across your blog via those giveaway marks and then end up being a huge commenter.

“The other point of view is that some people create twitter accounts strictly to enter giveaways and may not read their twitter feed, so their follow shouldn’t count.” <– When I choose entries, I don't choose people who have created specific accounts for giveaways. I've stated that in my policy now. It's easy to tell when they are – some people actually have that in their bios (Find me at X and X instead; this is only for contests). And I think that goes quite against the spirit of the giveaway. I definitely agree with you.

I think the don't advertise part isn't quite practical though because I follow a bunch of blogs but I find it very hard to keep up with them all. So there's a very good chance that I wouldn't see you having a giveaway if you did and didn't do some advertising of it.

I'm with Aylee! I include a free entry option. I give extra entries if they want to follow the blog, but the free entry says they don't have to.