JV giveaways are springing up right and left. I have added at least 6 to my JV giveaway directory in the last week. There are so many giveaways going on in the next couple weeks that I have decided to delay the giveaway that I am going to host.

I was going to do a Flag Day giveaway that would start on the 14th but have changed it to a Declaration of Independence Giveaway that will run around the 4th of July. But that's not what this post is about.

I know that a lot of you are just starting out with your list building and using giveaways. When you have limited resources and have a small list or no list at all, it can be a daunting proposition when you have to promote the giveaways you have joined.

For some of you, it may be a daunting task just to set up your gift in a giveaway. For those of you that need help, look in the side bar to the right in the "categories" drop down box and click on "How To Videos". There are a couple videos that will help you out.

When deciding which giveaways to promote, there a few things you should take into consideration:

1. Commission percentage – should be 75% or more for an upgraded contributor. This is a big one! I see some giveaways that are designed to make the host a lot of money. The contributors come second. If you are going to upgrade, you want to get the highest commissions possible on your referrals as well as you "special offers". This makes it easy to recoup the cost of upgrading.
2. Referral contest – not everyone can afford to pay out a lot of prize money, but mailings to the list can be offered. There are a lot of giveaways out there. Spend your efforts where they will best be rewarded.
3. Who is hosting the event. Well known marketers are most likely going to have more people promoting that can drive a lot of traffic to the event. More traffic means more potential sign ups and sales. Not to say that newbies can't run a good giveaway. There are ways to attract the big contributors. (See bullets #1 and #2)
4. Cost of upgrade. Be careful here. I usually upgrade, but I am almost always certain that I will make enough referral and special offer sales to offset the cost of upgrading. Some giveaways have pretty pricey upgrades. Pass these up if you can't afford it as most will have a down sell that is more affordable.

So I have decided to make some changes at my directory. Over the next couple days I'll be adding a more detailed description of each giveaway so you will know which ones are paying out decent commissions and are running referral contests.

Until then, here are some upcoming Giveaways that you will want to make sure you are signed up as a contributor:

• World Cup Giveaway 2010 – paying out $1000 in referral cash for the top 5 promoters. Paying 75% commissions for a $27 upgrade. Runs June 11th – 25th. Already some big names on board. I highly recommend this one.
• World Cup Giveaway – paying out $900 in referral cash for the top 5 promoters. Only paying 60% for top upgrade which is $97 (ouch) and 40% for lower upgrades. There will be some good traffic to this one but I wouldn't upgrade unless you feel you can make it back. (This giveaway script is set up to make the host a lot of money.)
• The Summer Giveaway – paying out $350 in referral cash plus mailings and PLR products. Paying 75% on special offers and 50% on upgrades. This should be a pretty good one.
• Independence Day Giveaway – paying out $300 in cash for the top 5 promoters. Commissions are only 25% on special offers and on upgrades. You get an extra 25% if you referred the person that upgrades. This is an example of a giveaway you might want to avoid unless you think you have a shot at the referral prize. The top prize is $150 but I have say that the host of this giveaway includes himself in the running for the prizes. In most cases he also wins. Is that a crock of BS or what?

I included the last one in hopes that someone with a big list will slip into that giveaway and take the first prize money.

I hope this helps you make some smart decisions with your giveaway marketing. Stay tuned for another post in a few days about how to promote your giveaway links when you don't have a list.

It's almost 2am but I have finally finished updating my JV giveaway directory. I had to redo 2 weeks worth of work plus add all of the new ones that have popped up in the last few days. I still can't believe how many giveaways are taking place in the next few weeks.

I haven't even set a date for mine yet. I was going to try and pick a date when there wouldn't be a lot of other competing giveaways but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. I will just have to come up with a way to make mine stand out.

The impact of Jason James Giveaway Riches is evident. He did a fantastic job explaining the ins and outs of running your own JV Giveaway. I know that I am using it as my guide and the fact that so many giveaways are springing up just after his launch is a testimonial to how good the product is.

Not only has he created a easy to follow step by step guide but he has obviously motivated a lot of people to take action. My hat goes off to him for creating an awesome product. I can't wait to get my giveaway off the ground.

My partners and I have been working hard although I have been working on getting other things straightened out. I am glad that I joined up with Garry Parkes, Gary Simpson, and Carl Barton. It would be really tough for me to go it alone this first time around.

Meeting these fellows has been another huge benefit of joining Alex Jeffreys coaching program. Well I'm dead tired so I am calling it a nite. I am going to crawl into bed and snuggle up with the wife. I've got to get up early and get some people set up and on their way to building a list with giveaway events.

I have seen a lot of my fellow students needing help with the whole JV Giveaway thing. I have built more than a few blogs and websites, so things like setting up a thank you page or a squeeze page are pretty much routine for me.

I do remember how much I struggled with tasks like this in the beginning so I totally understand people having problems with this. Just because you have detailed instructions or even a step by step video, it can still be a daunting undertaking for a newbie. For me, in the beginning, it was mostly very frustrating and time consuming.

I have come up with a solution for those of you who are struggling and want to get started with your list building. Here is what I propose.

I will set up the following for you at no cost.

• a squeeze page for the product that you want to give away.
• a thank you page that will alert your subscribers that they must check their email and confirm.
• a download page that your subscribers will be taken to after they confirm their opt in.
• I will set up your first follow up message in Aweber (must be Aweber)
• a video that will show you how to set all of this up yourself.
• a video that will show you how to take these same pages and make them work for other giveaways, simply by changing the information in a config file.
• I will show you some ways to promote your JV giveaway links at no cost.

This will let you go ahead and get started with your list building while you learn. I will not charge you anything for this but do expect a few things in return. This will make it a win win for all of us.

Here is what I will require from you:

• You must sign up for my JV Giveaway notification list at http://marketersmantras.com/giveaways
• When ever you join a JV giveaway, you will join from that page through my referral links. (you have to join through some one's link, it might as well be mine)
• You have to promise to participate! Please don't waste my time. My time is limited so I will not be able to help everyone. This will be on a first come first serve and I will work down the list as I can.
• If you don't have a product, hosting, auto responder or any of the necessary tools to participate in a JV Giveaway, you will join through my affiliate links.

I hope this sounds fair to you. If it doesn't…tough titty. That is the deal. I get paid around $40 per hour at my regular job and my time off is worth waaaay more than that to me. I am doing this because I remember how hard it was when I first got involved with internet marketing. I also realize that the majority of the visitors to this blog are fellow students of Alex Jeffreys coaching program.

I can knock out these web pages fairly quickly but I will only be able to do a few per day. Depending on how many people sign up for this, I will try and designate an hour or 2 on the weekends where we can talk or chat via Skype if you have any questions.

If you are interested, then leave a comment and email me here:  giveawayhelp at jtmartin.net

I wrote out at because those f—-n spammers use software to harvest email addresses and the software looks for the @ symbol. I am going to play this by ear and see how it goes. I can't promise anything except that I will do my best to get you set up and show you how to do it your self so you will no longer need my help.

PS – Now is the time to start building your list. Ever since Jason James launched his Giveaway Riches product, new JV Giveaway events are popping up all over the place. There have been over 6 new ones announced just in the last week. Lots of list building opportunities. Don't miss out. I will help you.

I finally got my new ebook up on the blog with an opt in form and it is now available at several JV giveaway events. Between the ebook and my computer having a total melt down, I haven't made a blog post in almost a month.

Shame on me, but some times your life just gets in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. All you can do is go with the flow and do what you can. I am not one to make excuses so I won't.

Things are almost back to normal. I have most of my software re-installed and have my email accounts set up in Outlook again. My computer has finally auto-downloaded all the updates that it had accumulated over the last 2 years and is up to snuff once again.

Now that my ebook is done, I have 2 major projects that I am working on.

The first is to finalize the details of the JV Giveaway that I am hosting, along with fellow Fortune 500'ers Gary Simpson, Garry Parkes, and Carl Barton. We will be announcing a launch date shortly and it looks like we may have some special deals for our fellow students.

Make sure you are subscribed to my RSS feed so you don't miss out on that. I have some really cool stuff planned besides these 2 projects.

The second major project is to finish something that I was working on before I got involved in the Alex Jeffreys coaching program. I was putting together a membership site based around my viral list building system that I call Traffic Hits Multiplier.

I was using it to build my list before Alex Jeffreys made me a believer in JV giveaways. The web site is still under construction but you can join for free (there is no paid membership, yet).  Check out the "Quick Start" and you will discover some killer free programs that you can use to promote your JV Giveaways.

The system is designed for newbie marketers and for people on a very low budget. It shows you how to use traffic exchanges, safe lists, and other free viral programs to drive traffic and build your list at the same time at little or no cost.

I will keep you updated on both. The Giveaway is my number one priority right now. Plus I have already started getting a lot of responses about my ebook. It seems like it is going to be a hit.

Here is the second installment of the tutorial I created for Alex Jeffreys coaching class. There is one more yet to come that will finish it.

Part 2

OK, students of Alex Jeffreys coaching program. I finally got the video finished on how to set up your PLR products to use for a JV Giveaway. The tutorial is a little long because I show you how to set up an opt in page, a thank you page, and a download page.

I always upload my videos to YouTube and the other video sites, which means they can't be any longer then10 minutes. There is way more than 10 minutes of video so I had to split it up into parts. I don't use Traffic Geyser because I already belong to Traffic Kahuna. Traffic kahuna members get to use "Video Post Robot" which submits to 30 video sites. They are running a special right now where you can try it for a month for only $1 if you want to try it out.

So here is part one which runs through everything you need to have ready to contribute to a JV Giveaway and shows you how to get set up your squeeze page. I gave away some PLR products a couple posts ago because all of my fellow Alex Jeffreys coaching students were all submiting "List Building With Alex" to all the giveaways. If you missed out you can get them at http://jtmartin.net/freegift.html

Part 1

When I started Alex Jeffreys coaching program, the second module we had was all about setting up our "Profit Pulling Platform". The platform consisted of:

• A squeeze page where we give away Alex's ebook "List Building With Alex" and capture leads.
• A download page with a built in up sell to make a little cash with the $47 dollar videos

If you followed the instructions on Alex's website, it said that the first thing you should do is download the ebook and read it cover to cover. If you read it cover to cover you found out that Alex began his list building career using JV Giveaways.

I have added 163 new subscribers to my list this year by contributing to JV Giveaways. Since we set up our profit pulling platform in December, I have added 245 subscribers using "List Building With Alex". I added another 83 using a PLR product that I have that accounts for half of the subscribers added in 2009 (the 163).

The problem I am seeing is that other Alex Jeffreys students are also joining the giveaways. A lot of the events will permit duplicate products. I saw at least 6 different people giving away Alex's ebook in the same event. This was seriously diluting my results. So, I pulled out one of the many PLR products that I have shelved on my hard drive.

I have had several other students bring this same issue to my attention and someone mentioned it last night on the coaching call. Alex Jefferys response was to create your own free report and use it in the JV Giveaways. I am in fact working on an ebook myself but I thought that I would come up with something that everyone could start using immediately.

I have put together a package of 6 2008 PLR products that are all targeted to the Web 2.0 niche. Web 2.0 is hot and you will get results. One of these is the very same product that earned me half of those 163 sign ups this month. All 6 come with sales pages and graphics. I am also going to let you have total private label rights so you can do what ever you want with them.

You can re-write them , change the graphics, sell them , or give them away (hint, hint, nudge, nudge)

The good news is that I am not going to charge you a dime but I am going to ask you for a favor. It will take about 5 minutes of your time and that is only if you don't already have an account at Digg.com. To get PLR products that you can use to participate in JV Giveaways, go to http://jtmartin.net/freegift.html and follow the simple directions. When you are done you will be taken to the download page.

For those of you who are still struggling with this, I will post a series of videos that will take you step by step and show yo how to take one of these PLR products and turn it into a list building machine. I'll post the first video tomorrow so go ahead and click on the link and down load your free gifts. Then we'll get started on setting everything up.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The other day I got my hands on some good information about JV giveaways and some software that will help you keep all of your submissions organized. I am working on getting that ready for everyone. Hopefully by the middle of the week.