Do UGC Giveaways Get Fewer Entrants?

Yes when the upload is the point, and no when it is one of many ways to enter. On Gleam's Business plan, giveaways with two or three actions including an upload reached 380 Entrants at the median, against 1,104 for giveaways of the same length without one. At nine to twelve actions the two groups matched, 566 against 558, and at thirteen or more the UGC giveaways were slightly larger. The figures compare competitions with 100 or more Entrants inside the same plan and widget length, May 2020 to August 2026, and they describe what different organizers achieved rather than what adding an upload causes.

What you give up and what you get

The trade is reach for content. At the short-widget setup, about a third of Entrants uploaded, so roughly 125 pieces of content for about 700 fewer Entrants. At the long-widget setup, nothing was given up and the upload collected a median of 4 to 7 submissions. Entries per Entrant were lower with an upload at every widget length, because Entrants skip the upload and move on.

Two other differences

On short giveaways of 14 days or fewer, 20 percent of widget views became Entrants with an upload against 27 percent without. And UGC giveaways finished less often: winners were drawn in 74 percent of them against 81 percent of the rest, which fits a contest that needs judging taking longer to close.

How to decide

If 100 pieces of content are worth 700 Entrants to you, build the giveaway around the Upload Action. If they are not, add it as a bonus and plan for a handful of submissions.

The full table by plan and widget length, with the caveats, is in the Gleam Giveaway Benchmarks 2026, Edition 3. Read the complete guide.