Unless your computer is broken, or a sound sleep has come over you, the term Giveaway Event will be well and truly known. All Internet Marketers are told Giveaways will build lists. Some promotional emails even talk about 5000 or 10000 new leads!
Are they really all they are purported to be?

Lets take a moment and recap just what is meant to be the outcome.
Firstly, if I want to build my list a gift is submitted to be downloaded by members. In return a form giving email address and name is filled out. So far so good, the member has got to download what they want, and the contributor of the gift has had an email address sent to the auto responder.

What happens now is that the auto responder will send a variety of offers to the member. No problems, that is what the agreement was.

With the advent of more and more Giveaways, the rules are tightening somewhat. Previously the need to recruit more members was no big deal, if you did all well and good.

The current rules make it absolutely imperative that members or contributors are recruited by every marketer who wants to submit a gift. How easy is that to do without a list?

A marketer wants to build a list, so joins a Giveaway and submits the gift, but has to recruit members before his gift is shown. Sort of like, if you don't have a list a Giveaway event will not be able to build one for you, because your gift will be deleted unless you are able to recruit more people.
Something of a catch 22.

Some Giveaways are set up to help the developing marketer, by offering an upgrade option. This will enable the contributors gift to be shown, or a dollop of ranking points allocated.
At least the gift will be on a page where it has a chance to be seen. Money has to change hands for this to happen, although as a rule the amount is not exorbitant.
Many Giveaways now delete gifts after certain time periods, unless the contributor has recruited a sufficient number of other members.

So much for list building.

What to do? Make sure the Giveaway will allow an upgrade which ensures gifts remain visible.

Beginner list builders are catered for in the latest event - it runs to the end of 2008, has an upgrade option, has an option for a fully customised gift, sign up page and download page, including hosting. The tide may be turning, and us beginners are not completely shut out.

The best advice - shop around, and the Giveaway Events can still be used to build a list.