Laughing My ASCII Off – Rafflecopter White Labels

This is a guest post by Kevin Sanders, who lives in Los Angeles, CA and is the Owner/Operator of Silverleaf Computer Services. Kevin is a white-label Rafflecopter customer and reached out to us and asked to share his Rafflecopter story and how he’s using Rafflecopter to fit his needs (thanks Kevin!).

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Remember chat rooms? They provided us with real time, mass online group communication, way before social media came along and “organized” everything. A good chat room could keep you logged in for hours, with its fast-paced dialogue, free flow of ideas, and novel abbreviations and emoticons:

LOL :)

You may laugh, but before rich media-sharing technology entered service, text abbreviations were the fastest way to share. And in the ever-scrolling environment of the chat room, sharing text had to be done quickly and concisely, and even the fastest typist was limited by his or her WPM rate when sharing text.

Unless they were using a keyboard macro.

Powered by abbreviations, emoticons, and ASCII characters, and generated with a single keystroke, a keyboard macro gave you the power to dominate a chat room, with the “ROFLCOPTER” macro above being one of the most powerful and recognizable examples.

A Macro Powered by Rocket AND Helicopter Fuel

The first time I saw picture of a helicopter in a chat room, I thought, “how did they do that?” and then, “I have to get one of those.” I imagined a program that could easily create recognizable and fun images, and that wouldn’t require me to type in lots of slashes, dashes, and the word “ROFL” repeatedly.

The Rafflecopter giveaway widget is such a program. But instead of producing amusing images, it produces followers and subscribers for your blog by doing the heavy lifting of moderating a giveaway.

Rafflecopter’s main app, the free giveaway widget, features an interface that is also likely to cause random lawls, mostly because it’s really fast and easy to navigate. The more I tried it out, the more I thought it would be perfect for my business’ next promotion, and when I saw that the folks at Rafflecopter had already run a similar giveaway (to great effect), I knew that they could help.

The White-Label Giveaway

I was looking for ways to improve upon the success of my first giveaway promotion, and I needed a system that could help me moderate a large number of entries. My sister, who works for a PR firm here in Los Angeles, first told me about Rafflecopter, so I decided to check it out.

What I really needed was a way to easily distribute the giveaway to a larger audience, and my plan called for inviting local business and blogs to join me in promoting the giveaway. And as I dug deeper into Rafflecopter’s options, it became clear that the best solution would be to create a white label widget.

I learned that with a white-label widget, I could essentially offer would-be affiliate businesses and blogs a pre-made “contest-in-a-box”: a giveaway widget that looks like their own and is branded as their own. I can say, “Here’s a free iPad giveaway, please use it to promote your brand and products/services. Oh, and I’m giving your entire fan base 20% off my services if they enter, too.”

I think that the ability to easily share, re-brand, and collect new followers makes the white-label widget such a useful marketing tool. And from a marketing standpoint, giveaways are a great way to reach out to a huge audience. I mean, who doesn’t like free stuff? As long as the giveaway is easy to enter and legitimate, people will enter.

White Labeling for Affiliate Marketing

So I purchased a new white-label widget, customized it to my exact needs, and embedded it on my business website and Facebook fan page, as well as on the pages of new affiliates looking to give their own brand a boost.

My giveaway is unique in an important way: it requires a Registration Code to enter. This way, each entry can be tracked back to a unique code provided by a unique affiliate, giving me useful information on where my entries are coming from.

But the main purpose of the Registration Code isn’t to collect tracking data, it’s to give my affiliates an extra incentive to help promote the giveaway: if the winning entry used their unique Registration Code, that one lucky affiliate wins a $500 web design/optimization package as a bonus.

The Giveaway

The “Free iPad Giveaway: Silverleaf Members” giveaway ends September 3, 2012, and is open to L.A. and Orange County residents ONLY.

As a special thanks to the developers of the wonderful white-label widget powering this promotion, you may now enter the giveaway using the Registration Code “ROFL3180”, or join me as affiliates to obtain their own unique code.

Thanks to everyone for participating, and good luck!

Related articles

• Facebook Giveaway / Contest Rules & Regulations Explained (rafflecopter.com)
• Rafflecopter Mini-Tip: Share Your Giveaway With Others (rafflecopter.com)