On July 28, 2008, I decided to offer my site visitors free stickers. Every now and then I had offered them for sale at $1 each, and accordingly, had free sticker give-aways to those who commented on selected posts. Nothing ever became of it, and I pretty much gave up on the notion that I could promote my website, let alone turn a profit with stickers.
Then came the night of July 28, 2008. Earlier in the afternoon, I had posted an offer for free stickers to anyone living in the United States. I didn’t expect anything much to happen, because in the past I only recieved maybe 4 to 5 requests. This time, however, I added a form in which folks could provide their mailing address and the number of stickers they wanted (1 to 5). I also stipulated that there could only be one request per person, per mailing address, and that multiple requests could be voided.
Several hours passed and nothing happened. I went about my life as usual, and nothing happened all day as I checked my email regularly on my cell phone. Then, the moment I returned home, all hell let loose as I booted up my computer and saw this…
Almost 200
different people requested stickers! And it wasn’t just a case of 1 or 2 stickers here, 1 there, most folks wanted no less than 5 stickers! A handful of folks broke the rules and submitted multiple requests, but because I’m a nice guy, I allowed them one request. The night was young as I sat up for a good 5 hours
writing out addresses, applying postage, and dropping the envelopes into the mailbox. The
experience left me with nothing more than a really bad taste in my mouth (it was all of those cheap envelopes).
Having gotten overwhelmed with requests, I disabled the form, changed the wording on the post. Requests started coming in as emails, comments, and through the contact form. I ended up deleting the post completely.
Unfortunately, I’m still not done after several days, though all of the addresses are written out and postage has been applied to the envelopes. The problem is that I liquidated my stock of 500 stickers. So, I’m waiting on more stickers to arrive, and when they do, the remaining 40 or so people will be getting their stickers in the mail. What did it cost me? Well, I spent $40 on 500
black & white stickers from
Stickerguy!, and $80 on postage at the post office to send the stickers out.
Whats more, I had to contend with a sudden surge of traffic, emails, and comments (mostly spam), but it did promote my website considerably. I have no control over what folks do with my stickers, but I hope that they use them wisely and they don’t end up getting stuck in places where they shouldn’t be. A little sleuthing turned up that these two websites were generating traffic right to the
free stickers post (thanks, Angie).
Super Freebies and
Free Stuff Times had both linked to the post directly, instead of to the home page, which would have been the more responsible and respectful thing to do.
I have plans to do more promotion via sticker campaigns in the future. Ideas were suggested by Angie (thanks again, Angie) to either have a post office box and require a self-addressed-stamped envelope get sent to it for return of
free stickers, or charge $1 for each sticker via PayPal. I’m not sure as of yet which one of these plans I’m going to make happen, but when one of these ideas does take shape, you (my readers) will be the first to know.
(Thanks for your support!)
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