Ideas

This is going to be a huge amount of work to organize, especially as the laws concerning giveaways are so different in place to place. I'd suggest researching that.

I'd an interesting concept. People love to get stuff for 'free'. Are you planning to handle the complete process? Ie, Signing up product providers, signing up content providers, supplying the appropriate banner code, hosting official rules and any other legal requirements, validating that winners are actually eligible, shipping out prizes, excetera..

Or simply provide a subset, like connecting product providers with content providers and leaving them to work out the details?

Also, is there going to be a minimum amount of traffic required to use the system, or will that be something negotiated by each product supplier? (Ie,i'll give a free camera if your site sees 1000 people a day)

Some blogs are already doing this, though more often with intangible goods. For example, one of the tech blogs I read frequently has a type of sponsored giveaway where the first 1000 readers who respond get a free subscription to some new web service or access to a closed beta. I think that proves the model, and if you can link them to real hardware to give away, that would be valuable for both bloggers and sponsors.

You'd just have to demonstrate that putting yourself in the middle of that transaction provided value to both ends.

Laura,micco:
Thanks for the comment. I dint think give aways have some legal ramifications..yes ideally i wud like to do the entire management of inventory, mailing the stuff..
the product supplier could negotiate based on available inventory..i was also thinking of not just products, maybe giveaway coupons etc.

There are loads of websites who do this like
http://www.totallyfreestuff.com/ or http://www.freeukstuff.com
The websites
http://www.freestuffsites.net or http://www.refdesk.com/free.html
even give list of sited who do this.

having said that: what's you new angle, in what do you differ from the rest?

Cheers
Tommy

I dunno when I see "Free iPod!" I usually steer clear becuase theres always strings attached. Nothing is free, so it'd be best not to market it as such.

Well, it's not bad to get free things. But they are really free?

Good points are that it seems like it might be a win from the blogger and the advertisers standpoint. Blogger gets access to giveaways, advertisers can try to maximize their giveaway attention to their target demographic. (if you have all those advertiser-interest stats). The bad points are that there are a already a lot of shady giveaway operators, and I'm not sure where your profit comes from. How does this particular business make the process easier or better?