Should the Upload Action Be Mandatory in a Giveaway?
Make the upload mandatory when the content is the reason you are running the giveaway, and leave it optional when the content is a bonus. On Gleam giveaways, an upload set as a mandatory action was completed by 79 percent of Entrants at the median. The same action left optional was completed by 1.6 percent. Those figures cover 8,534 upload, media and submit-URL actions on competitions with 100 or more Entrants, May 2020 to August 2026.
Why the gap is so large
A mandatory action is a gate. Entrants who will not complete it do not enter at all, so everyone who stays has uploaded. An optional upload competes with every one-click action on the widget, and it loses to all of them. That is a product behavior, which is why it is the one setting in the Edition 3 research that reliably changes how much content arrives.
What it costs
A giveaway built around a mandatory or near-mandatory upload reaches fewer people. On the Business plan, a two-or-three-action giveaway with an upload reached 380 Entrants at the median against about 1,100 for a comparable giveaway without one. Every one of those 380 produced content. Only one UGC giveaway in six on Gleam makes the upload mandatory, so most organizers choose reach over content without deciding to.
How to set it
In the Actions tab of your campaign, open the Upload Action and switch on Mandatory. Keep the rest of the widget short, since every extra optional action beside a mandatory upload lowers the share who complete the others. The setup steps are in Competition Setup.
The full comparison, with the reach trade by plan and widget length, is in the Gleam Giveaway Benchmarks 2026, Edition 3. Read the complete guide.
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How Many Other Actions Should I Run Beside an Upload?
Two at most, if you want the uploads. On Gleam, an optional upload with two other actions beside it was completed by a third of Entrants; with eight or more beside it, by one in a hundred. Where the upload sits on the widget made no difference.