How to Pick a Winner For a Giveaway

Your giveaway's closed, the entries are in, and now someone has to win. That moment is when your audience decides whether to trust you, and the losers are watching more closely than the winner.

Whether you're running a simple sweepstakes or a creative contest, your winner selection needs to be fair, transparent, and in line with your platform's rules.

Here's how we'd pick a giveaway winner: random draws, judged entries, public voting, and what to do once you've got a name.

Before you launch your giveaway, your terms and conditions should clearly state:

• How many winners there will be
• When and how winners will be selected
• Who is eligible to win
• What criteria will be used (if any)

If you're running a chance-based giveaway, state that winners will be picked at random. If it's merit-based (an essay, photo, or video), explain the judging criteria clearly.

With your terms and eligibility defined, the next step is choosing a winner, and that depends on the kind of giveaway you're running.

If your entry method is simple, like signing up to a newsletter or submitting a form, we recommend picking the winner at random.

Your options:

• A Random Winner Generator
• A random number generator, if your entries are numbered
• Exporting your entries and using a spreadsheet randomiser

We'd use a tool with built-in fraud detection, so you can show your audience the draw was fair (a spreadsheet can't tell you that half your entries came from the same three people).

If you run your giveaway in Gleam, the draw happens right in your dashboard. Gleam picks winners at random using Random.org, and entries flagged as invalid are left out of the draw by default. Here's how it works, from checking invalid entries to announcing your winners:

Have a list of names from somewhere else? Our Random Name Picker draws a winner from any list:

Paste or upload your names, set how many winners you need and draw. The Random Name Picker guide covers every option, including weighted draws.

For skill-based contests, you'll need a judging process.

We recommend that you:

• Publish your criteria clearly (for example creativity, clarity, relevance)
• Write a simple scoring rubric your judges all use
• Shortlist the strongest entries first, then score and average them

Here's what a rubric for a photo contest could look like. Each judge scores every shortlisted entry out of 10 on each line, and you multiply by the weight:

Several judges help reduce bias, and averaging their scores stops one judge's favourite from deciding it. Publish the criteria (the weights are optional) so entrants know what they're aiming for.

In Gleam, a judged contest uses manual winners instead of a random draw. We audit manual draws to make sure they aren't used to fix a result, so keep your scoring sheet.

Letting people vote on entries gets them sharing their favourites and makes your contest feel more interactive. It also rewards whoever has the biggest following, so plan for that.

You can:

• Set a clear deadline so voting doesn't drag on
• Mix in judging to balance popularity with quality (for example, votes count for 30%)
• Highlight the top entries as voting goes on

Gleam Galleries let people vote on entries, and they show two counts: total votes and valid votes. Pick your winner on the valid count, because that's the one with suspicious votes filtered out.

Once winners are chosen:

• Email winners directly (Gleam doesn't do this for you)
• Announce them publicly, with their permission
• Keep a record of how you picked them, in case anyone disputes it

If your random winner doesn't meet your rules, you can invalidate that entry and re-pick. Our guide to announcing winners covers the options for showing the result on your widget.

Runners-up let you reward more of your entrants and give people another reason to stay till the end.

You might offer smaller prizes, discount codes, or product samples, just enough to feel worthwhile without overshadowing the main prize.

Say in your terms how many runners-up you'll pick and what they'll get. In Gleam, each prize counts its winners towards your plan's winner limit, so a long list of runners-up uses it up faster.

Laws vary by country. In some places a chance-based giveaway has to follow strict rules so it doesn't count as a lottery, and a few need a permit above a certain prize value.

Always:

• Check the rules where your entrants live
• Include a no-purchase-necessary clause where it's required
• Think about age limits and whether you need to state the prize value

Gleam generates Terms & Conditions for every Competition. Writing your own custom terms needs the Hobby Plan or above.

Whichever method you use, write it down before launch and stick to it. That record is what you'll point to when someone asks how they lost.