5 Steps To Running A YouTube Giveaway With Gleam

Running a YouTube giveaway is one of the most effective ways to grow your audience, reward loyal fans, and attract new subscribers.

With Gleam, you can set up and manage giveaways that boost engagement, track real entries, and pick winners fairly, all from one platform.

In this guide, we’ll walk through how to launch your own YouTube giveaway step by step, highlight use cases for different creators and brands, and share best practices to maximise results.

YouTube giveaways are a proven way to:

• Grow your subscriber base and channel visibility
• Reward loyal fans with meaningful prizes
• Drive traffic to your other platforms or store
• Collect emails and user-generated content (UGC)
• Boost engagement on your videos with likes, shares, and comments

They work especially well for:

• Content Creators growing a new audience
• Streamers who want to reward fans with exclusive merch or prizes
• Brands that collaborate with influencers to reach wider communities
• Ecommerce businesses launching products and driving traffic via video

Your prize is the biggest factor in attracting the right participants.

• Choose a prize that aligns with your content or brand
• Make sure it appeals to your ideal audience, not just freebie hunters
• Higher-value prizes can justify requiring more effort from entrants (e.g. video submissions)

Examples:

• Fitness creators → running gear or workout programs
• Tech brands → gadgets or accessories
• Streamers → exclusive merch or gift cards

Once you’ve chosen your prize, set up your campaign in Gleam.

You can keep things simple by asking viewers to comment under your YouTube video, but Gleam gives you more powerful options, including:

• Visit your YouTube channel
• Submit a YouTube video
• Subscribe to your mailing list
• Follow you on X or other platforms
• Share the giveaway with friends
• Visit your website

Gleam also handles fraud protection, winner selection, and terms & conditions automatically, so you can focus on growing your audience.

Try it for yourself:

Promotion is the key to a successful YouTube giveaway.

Make sure people know how to enter and why they should.

Best ways to promote include:

• Add the giveaway link to your YouTube video description and pinned comments
• Share across your social media accounts
• Include it in your email newsletter
• Collaborate with other creators to extend your reach
• Embed the Gleam widget on your site

Once your giveaway ends, Gleam makes it easy to pick winners fairly.

Options include:

• Random selection → Fair and unbiased, great for prize draws
• Manual selection → For contests judged on creativity (e.g. best UGC submission)

Gleam also verifies entries automatically, flagging incomplete or suspicious actions.

You can review manually if needed.

The end of your giveaway isn’t the end of engagement, it’s a chance to deepen relationships.

• Send discount codes or exclusive content to non-winners
• Keep new subscribers engaged with fresh content and updates
• Showcase UGC on social media or in a gallery
• Plan your next giveaway early to keep momentum

• Choose a prize relevant to your content to attract the right audience
• Run campaigns for 2–3 weeks for best participation
• Make rules and entry methods clear to avoid drop-off
• Promote across all your channels, not just YouTube
• Stay compliant with YouTube’s contest policies and local regulations

You’ve now got everything you need to run a YouTube giveaway that grows your audience and rewards fans.

Start today with our ready-to-use template: