How Many Entries Should a Referral Be Worth?
Any value above 1 works, and 5 is what the typical paid Gleam giveaway awards per referral. Don't spend long tuning it.
The award itself barely moved referrals. At a single entry per referral, 8.0% of entrants came through a referral. At 2 or more entries, it was 8.4%. Bigger awards did a little better again, but the gap didn't hold steady across giveaway sizes, so we wouldn't chase it.
Placement mattered more. On widgets with nine or more actions, Viral Share in the first four slots came with a 10.4% referral share. Lower down, that fell to 6.4%. Promoting the giveaway in more places moved it more still.
Set the award in the Worth # entries field of the Viral Share Action. The Limit field caps how many referrals each entrant can earn entries for.
\n- Winners are drawn from entries, not people\n- One referral worth 50 entries counts as much as 50 single entries\n- Set the award to match how much weight you want referrers to carry
Source: Gleam Giveaway Benchmarks 2026, Edition 2. About 3,400 paid giveaways with Viral Share.
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How Many Entries Does a Photo Contest Get?
Usually fewer than 10. A mandatory upload, or one on a giveaway with three Actions or fewer, collects far more.