I have been blogging for five months. This is my 101st post! Woot Woot. During this time I have met a ton of awesome people and learned a few things. I have conducted one giveaway and one giveaway/review. Aside from the obvious - people L-O-V-E free stuff - here are some interesting things I noticed:

Giveaway posts generate a lot of comments

Duh I know. People want to win and leave a comment to confirm each entry. It makes perfect sense. Now I understand why some bloggers have a giveaway listed at the end of each and every single post on their blog. It is a wonderful way to up one's comment count, pageviews, and unique visitors. That method, while effective in terms of increasing popularity, is not right for me.

It is definitely nice to have people leave comments on my post but if people are only commenting for a chance to win something there will never be any dissent. There will never be intelligent discussion, thoughtful advice, or even hilarious insults. Every single comment will be the same bland and generic: Great post! I agree completely!! You're so great!!! I too love the Detroit Lions!!!!

It is not my thing. I appreciate the diversity I have been fortunate enough to see in the comments section of my posts.

People Cheat!

Yes sir they do. I know. This one is another Duh but I was really surprised to see the lengths that people would go to in order to win. It's a recession ya'll!

The Kalorik Deep Fryer giveaway allowed for an extra entry for entering another Kalorik giveaway hosted by one of ten bloggers. Some people claimed to have enter giveaways that were not yet posted. Trifling!

Other people set up Twitter accounts for the sole purpose of tweeting the giveaways in order to gain an extra entry. While this practice is not against the rules it does not work out in the best interest of the blogger or the sponsor. These accounts are not real (in the sense that there is no social interaction) and do not have any real followers. There is no exposure for the brand, blogger, or giveaway. Very few people see the tweets since these accounts tend to have very few followers. Nobody wins...well except for the person that wins but you know what I mean.

There are also people that use multiple email accounts to enter giveaways multiple times pretending to be different users.

Cheating has become such an annoying issue that even Emily of Joyful Abode (pretty much the sweetest person ever) has taken action by stating at the bottom of her giveaways that have an extra "write a blog post" entry option by stating:

*It has to be a real blog, not one of those “I made a blog so I can enter giveaways” blogs. And it can’t be scrolling with 100 other buttons. You know who you are.

This is not any groundbreaking news by any means but it is information I wish I had been aware of prior to posting my giveaways. I would have altered the rules to make the process more fair. Both of the winners of my giveaways are legitimate as far as I can tell and I feel fortunate for that. I avoided the awkwardness of having to confront someone for cheating.

Bloggers: Please be aware of cheaters.

Potential Cheaters: Please don't cheat. Baby Jesus is watching. If you don't believe in Jesus then Pweezy is watching and he bites.