The time has flown by! Rafflecopter has been released to a select few bloggers and publishers for a little more than 2 weeks.

We’ve been extremely fortunate to partner with a great group of people. The feedback and suggestions that you’ve provided since we started has been great. So many of you have had some great ideas on how to improve Rafflecopter and recommendations on how to make it better.

Since we started two weeks ago, some of the changes that we’ve made include:

• Having each link in the Rafflecopter widget open in a new tab
• Improved way to add links to your giveaway instructions
• Ability to customize your own entry titles on the option “Choose Your Own Task”
• Ability to export your entries into excel for easier winner verification purposes
• One click to email the winner of your giveaway
• Continued bug fixes and style changes to make the widget more user/browser friendly

We’re working around the clock to make continued improvements. Tonight, we’ll be releasing an update that will now ask the entrant for the tweet link / URL instead of the twitter handle, as well as begin asking for users’ Facebook names on Facebook entry options. We hope this will help you save time verifying entries, as well as make it less confusing for the folks entering your giveaways.

We’re always listening to the feedback that you’ve been providing us. Some of the updates we have in plan for Rafflecopter include:

• Browser updates – we’re committed to getting to the bottom of the reasons why some folks have a hard time using Rafflecopter on certain browsers / operating systems. We understand this is a big deal!
• Allowing you to have an entry option that lets you users an unlimited number of times (for example, get one point each for entering in my other giveaways)
• An update to the giveaway start and end times (right now, giveaways close at 12:01am EST. A little flexibility here would be nice, right?!)
• The ability to choose more than one winner (if you have 3 winners for a giveaway, it would be nice to choose and display them in the widget)
• Ability to let your users tweet more than once a day

The list continues, but we’d like to ask you: how can we improve your Rafflecopter experience? What frustrates you right now about Rafflecopter? What’s holding you back from loving it?

We’d also like to find out the reasons why you love it? What’s the biggest benefit you receive from Rafflecopter.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to be as open and honest as you like :) We’ll use a Rafflecopter widget to run a giveaway. Winner will get another $20 Amazon gift card. All entry methods are optional. It doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger, someone who loves entering giveaways, or a PR professional. We want to hear what you think!

Thanks for your continued support. We have some big ideas in the pipeline… stay tuned!

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you a quick update on some Rafflecopter enhancements and let you know what else is coming down the line. Thanks to everyone who’s emailed us, left us feedback, and otherwise gotten in touch. We appreciate it tremendously. We’ve been listening, and we’ve been updating. There have been a lot of small updates/fixes, but here are some bigger updates that address a few of the things we’ve been hearing most:

• Easily add links (and other stuff). It’s always been possible to add links to your giveaways, but it’s also always been a bit of a pain. One letter wrong, one extra space, the wrong planetary alignment meant it didn’t work right. If you’ve had issues, I promise you aren’t the only one ;) — To help, we’ve added a nifty little toolbar to all the text fields where links are allowed. Now you can add links (and bolds/italics) with one click.(pro tip: You can also use the full power of Markdown if you want)
• All links on the widget now open in a new page. – This was a constant request we heard, a big problem for Facebook/IFrame users, and an annoyance to visitors. Now every link from the widget opens in a new page, keeping your visitors comfortably on your own page and making life easier for everyone.
• Use previous giveaways as a template for new ones. – Use the same 5 entry options every single time? How about the same terms/conditions? There’s no need to keep entering in those by hand each time. Just duplicate a recent giveaway, change the nickname, add some prizes, and you’re off to the races (mint julep in hand).
• Email the Winner in 1 Click – After you choose a winner, you can email them with just one click. Because copying in pasting is way too much work ;P

That’s cool, but it’s just the beginning. Rafflecopter is very young and we’re making improvements all the time. Please tell us your ideas/suggestions/critiques/etc… We really do listen, and your ideas have a direct impact on what we make.

Also, there’s a lot more awesome-r stuff in the works, like new entry methods, better social integration, multiple winners, and more. Stay tuned, and have fun giving stuff away!

— J.R. (@runningskull)

 

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Hey folks, I hope you’re having fun giving stuff away!  :)

First I should say thanks for all your feedback! It’s been great to see Rafflecopter out there in the wild running giveaways. We want it to be as helpful as utterly possible, so as always if you have any additional ideas/suggestions/critiques/etc…. Please don’t hesitate to contact us. We promise to respond quickly and we’re very nice (unless we haven’t had our coffee yet ;D), so let us hear from you!

In other Rafflecopter News: there are some cool updates coming to Rafflecopter. We’re adding in small touches that people have been asking for (like 1-click to email winners, picking multiple winners, and better support for Facebook), and we’re working on some cool, bigger updates to come in the next week. Stay tuned!

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But the “real” reason for this post is to help you if you’re encountering issues using Rafflecopter with Blogger. If you’re using Blogger and your toolbar looks like this:

then our instructions might not make any sense. It turns out that Blogger has 2 different editors you can use for drafting your posts: an old one, and a new one.

You need to use the “updated editor” in order to be able to use Rafflecopter. This probably won’t affect too many people as the “updated editor” seems to be the default now.

It’s very easy to switch. Here’s how:

1. Click on your “Settings” Tab 
2. Scroll down the page to “Global Settings” and use the “Updated Editor“.
   
3. Click save, and that’s it! Now you can use Rafflecopter with Blogger.

 

Have fun giving stuff away!

— J.R. (@runningskull)

 

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