Metaprinter Giveaway Winners Announced / What I Learned

A number of people have asked me to write some reflections on running The Metaprinter Giveaway this past week.

Winners:

4Gig iPod – Jeff Emsweller. Jeff spent 22 year in the journalism field, starting as a photographer for the Rushville (IN) Republican newspaper. At Rushville he served as sports editor, assistant editor and then was named editor of the Batesville (IN) Herald Tribune. Jeff also served as editor of the Greensburg (IN) Daily News and then as Publisher of Greensburg, Rushville and Batesville.

Jeff has won numerous state and national awards from writing, photography and layout and in 1989, he was honored to have a fire photo submitted and considered for a Pulitzer Prize. Although he did not win, he still treasures the documentation received regarding that nomination.

Jeff is presently the marketing manager for an auto body repair shop with two locations in Southeastern Indiana. “My passion remains for the newspaper industry”.

1Gig iPod - H. J. Mann. H. J. is the Vice President of Financial services sales Firethorn LLC, a Qualcomm company. H. J. has 15 years of experience in technology and business development. He has held leadership roles in leading organizations such as Acxiom, Epsilon, and DoubleClick. H. J. lives in Dallas with his wife and daughter. Thank you Robert! www.firethornmobile.com

$20 Amazon.com Gift Certificate – Maikel Neris. Maikel is a 27 years old Brazilian web designer and WordPress developer. Thanks for the prize! www.maikelneris.com.br

Results:

Over the course of the 4 days we ran our giveaway there were 39 on site entries (and a total of 108 entries via twitter, linkedin, and email. But those don’t count. Sorry). RSS subscriber numbers remained unchanged over the week (in a normal week it goes up by a handful) however site visits were up ~5%. Pageviews up ~10%. Pages per visit up ~5%. and Bounce rate fell ~11%.

The week wasn’t a massive success in terms of driving traffic – however that wasn’t my overall goal. The main thing that I wanted to do over the week was to add to the sense of community on the site – to have some fun – to get a few lurkers participating and to thank readers for being a part of Metaprinter. In this regard the week was a big success with many first time comments and a lot of thank you emails from readers who seemed to enjoy it.

Thanks again! Any Ideas for the Next Giveaway?