Denying promotional giveaways/donations/product reviews kindly.

[nursingmom]

I get frequent emails requesting donations, giveaways, product reviews, etc. I have done few of those and none of the paid off. In fact, I have received 0 sales from all the giveaways that I have done so far. Because I still have not made a single penny for myself from my business, I have decided to decline these request.

I have either replied back to the email request saying "no" or just ignored the emails. When I do reply back with "no", I had few occasions where the requester kept emailing me back with all kinds of options that could be more suitable for me. And I hate to keep emailing back to say "no". I hate saying "no." And sometimes I feel like maybe it's better just to ignore these emails (since I get them a lot). But at the same time, I feel like I'm being rude when I don't reply to all the emails I receive.

So, I'm wondering, is it rude for me to just ignore these emails? Do all bloggers expect me to reply back with either "yes" or "no"?

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Could you come up with a type of form letter and then just c&p it to these people? That way you are responding, but not in a time consuming manner.

[CawMama]

I usually ignore them (if they are small, amateurish blogs), or I will email them back and ask them what their statistics and subscriber/follower numbers are. When they respond with that info, you can tell them "sorry, but I require X amount of pageviews to do a giveaway". I don't have a specific number, but it has to be big enough, and they have to have a high enough pagerank to make it worth it.

HTH

[Michigan Mama]

I've wondered this, too. I've done 2 so far and haven't gotten anything from them. Like Carrin says, I think they can work, but you have to make sure they have a strong following, etc.

[nursingmom]

You can always check the traffic ranking on blog sites or any sites by visiting

www.alexa.com. It tells you how each website ranks in the world as well as in the US. You just type in the web address and click site info.