How to Run a Fair Giveaway and Pick a Winner

Write the rules before you announce

Most giveaway arguments start with a rule nobody wrote down. Before you post, write a short set of rules and pin it next to the announcement. Cover:

Who can enter. Any age limit, and which countries you can ship to.
How to enter. “Comment with your favourite colour”, “fill in this form”, and whether more than one entry per person counts.
The deadline, with a time zone. “Friday 6pm UK time” beats “Friday”.
How the winner is chosen. For example, “a random draw, recorded on screen, on Saturday”.
What happens next. How you'll contact the winner, how long they have to reply, and that you'll draw again if they don't.

Check the platform's own rules too. Instagram's promotion guidelines, for example, ask you to make clear that the giveaway isn't sponsored, endorsed or run by Instagram. And be careful about asking people to pay. In many places, requiring a purchase to enter turns a giveaway into a lottery, which is regulated. That's why you so often see “no purchase necessary”. If money or a valuable prize is involved, check the rules where you live.

Collect every entry in one list

However people enter, get the entries into a single list with one entry per line. A spreadsheet column, exported form responses or comments copied from the post all work. WhirlPicker reads what you paste, whether it's a column from a spreadsheet, a comma-separated list or a numbered list, and turns it into one entry per line.

Clean the list

A fair draw starts with a fair list. Before you spin:

Remove duplicates if your rules say one entry per person. WhirlPicker counts duplicate names as you paste and removes them in one tap.
Remove entries that break the rules, like late entries or people outside the area you ship to.
Remove obvious bots and giveaway-only accounts if your rules say so.

Keep a copy of the list before and after cleaning, in case anyone asks.

Bonus entries, done honestly

Some giveaways give extra entries for sharing or tagging a friend. That's fine, as long as the rules say so and the maths is visible. In WhirlPicker, write the number of entries after a name, like Sam x3, and Sam gets three chances instead of one.

Know what that means for the odds. Say 41 people enter: 40 with one entry and Sam with three. That's 43 entries in total, so Sam's chance of winning is 3 in 43, about 7%. Everyone else has 1 in 43, about 2.3%. Bonus entries change the odds a lot, so be sure that's what you want.

Draw on camera

The single best way to show a draw was fair is to let people watch it.

Record your screen or go live. Show the full entry list first. With big lists WhirlPicker switches to a reel, so every name is readable as it scrolls past.
Say how it works. WhirlPicker draws the winner with your browser's cryptographic random number generator before the wheel starts turning. The animation only reveals the result.
Spin once. Then congratulate the winner on camera.

Want more suspense? Switch the reveal to Elimination in the ⋯ menu, and every entry drops off the board one by one until only the winner is left.

Draw backups straight away

Winners don't always reply. Draw your backups in the same recording, so nobody wonders why a different name won a week later. With Fair turns on, each winner is set aside, so the next spin picks someone new for second place, then third. Contact the backups, in order, only if the winner doesn't reply in time.

Announce, and keep the evidence

Announce the winner the way your rules said you would, with their permission if you name them. Keep the recording and both versions of the entry list until the prize has arrived. If someone questions the result, you can show exactly what happened.

A quick checklist

Rules written and pinned, including the deadline time zone
Platform guidelines checked, and no purchase required
Entries in one list, duplicates and ineligible entries removed
Bonus entries, if any, written as weights and explained
Draw recorded, with backups drawn in the same recording
Winner contacted with a reply deadline