offering free stuff

[esllou]

I have some free stuff to give away. Oh, nothing too earth-shattering, just an amazon gift certificate, a free calendar, a couple of books here and there.

I run a niche education site which has quite a nice community feel about it: have a forum and a newsletter and in a month's time will launch a pay section.

my question: do any of you give away free stuff on your site and for what type of thing. I was thinking of doing something on the forum maybe on a monthly basis - best post, most posts type of thing.

any ideas? Hey....everyone wants free stuff, right? :-)

[mack]

I like the idea of a "free pen" with your url on it of course. How many owners does the everage pen have in it's life?

You get it, you loose it someone finds it.. then someone steels it.

Mack.

[DXL]

I do cooperative giveaways. I basically find someone who is willing to donate products or special event registrations valued at $75-$300. To enter the giveaway, you just have to opt-in to my mailing list. I win because I beef up my mailing list and improve site traffic (by mentioning the contest in a few places), the person donating stuff wins because they get great promotion for donating something that won't set them back much (or at all, in theory).

But now that I'm making a little money from adsense, I'm going to start giving away cooler stuff like X-Boxes. I believe in giving back to people who keep my site going.

[Tomness]

I like the idea of a "free pen" with your url on it of course. How many owners does the everage pen have in it's life?

Superb idea, Mack.

Are there any good places to get things like that created. Helping with a google search url would be appretiated/nice.

[myowndistrict]

Thats a cool idea.
My new project will have freebies every month like mp3 players... sure thing to get new members or just traffic to you site.