Winning Stuff: Picking Winners

Jane here...

Next up on the Q&A session:

Q:  How do you pick your giveaway winners?

A:  Randomly, of course! 

I try to keep things pretty simple.  Each comment is an entry, so if you're qualified for multiple entries, you need to leave multiple comments.  And most of my giveaways just have two possible entries per person.

You'll notice my comments are numbered.  If you've got a blogger.com blog, you can set up numbering on your comments pretty easily in the html code (see Numbering Comments in Blogger).

When the giveaway has closed, I enter the total number of comments over at random.org and hit the button to pick a random number.

I then check that comment to see if it is a valid entry.  If so, I send off an email to the winner.  If not, I'll go back to random.org and get another random number.

In the emails to winners, I notify them that they have 72 hours to respond.  If for some reason I don't get a response, I repeat the random drawing at random.org until I've gotten a valid entry and a reply...

So - I don't monitor entries at all, or validate them until I pick a winning comment.  That's what's easiest for me...  What works for you?

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BULLETIN BOARD

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