And The Winner Is…. A Must Have Plug-in

by The Happy Housewife on September 2, 2010

If you host giveaways on your blog the And The Winner Is plug-in is a necessity! This FREE plug-in takes all the work out of counting comments, picking a winner, and closing the giveaway.

This plug-in is easy to install and set up. When you write a giveaway post there will be a box on the right side of your page that you can check if the post is a contest.

Once the giveaway is over, you have the option to close comments and then randomly choose a winner.

The winner’s email address is displayed on the screen so you don’t have to search for an address.

This plug-in has changed my opinion on giveaways. I was about to discontinue them because they were so much work , but the And the Winner Is plug-in has made it so easy, I have changed my mind.

{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }

fairydust September 2, 2010 at 12:08 pm
good to know – thank you!!!

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Angela September 2, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Gonna give this a go on a giveaway I’m running today. I’ve heard about this plug-in before, just never heard how it works. Thanks!

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Janel @Good Deal Mama September 2, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Thank you so much, this will be a huge time saver! Just installed it!

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Britt September 2, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Not that I am doing any giveaways yet but I always loathed the thought because of all the headache that I thought went into them. This makes its sound much easier than I thought. Maybe I will have them after all!

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Rachel @ Busy Mommy Media September 2, 2010 at 6:08 pm
I just started using this about a month ago and I LOVE it. It saves me so much time!

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Karrie September 2, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Oooh..I am running a giveaway right now and am gonna go and add this. Any help with giveaways would be great as they take soo much time. Thanks!!

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Melissa September 2, 2010 at 9:43 pm
where is the plug in?

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Christine (iDreamofClean) September 3, 2010 at 7:26 am
I agree 100%! This plugin has saved me sooooo much time! It eliminates a huge chunk of the work it takes to run a contest.

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Jen Knox September 3, 2010 at 10:58 am
Melissa, I found it in the WordPress Plugin directory here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/and-the-winner-is/

I haven’t installed it yet, but it looks great!

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Tracy September 3, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Does this work in Blogger?

I wish I would have known then what I know now…WordPress seems to be so much better than Blogger for these types of things. I’m currently doing my second giveaway right now, and I think that people are hesitating to enter because they have to type their email into the comments section.

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Deana (The Frugal Homeschooling Mom) September 3, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Yep, I wish I had WordPress. Thinking about switching because of convenience plug-ins such as this one! Thanks for keeping us all updated!

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Amy @ Raising Arrows September 3, 2010 at 4:30 pm
This plug in has been such a time saver! It wasn’t a big deal to manually do entries when I only had 20 entries or so, but the last few giveaways have been much larger. One I did w/o And the Winner Is and about croaked! The next time I had it installed and clicked a button…the end! Yahoo!

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Mandy September 7, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I love hearing about other people’s favorite plugins – thanks for sharing.

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Marci Loehner September 8, 2010 at 3:17 pm
WOOT WOOT! We have a least 5 giveaways a week and have been looking for something like this. Let’s just hope it continues to work flawlessly!

Also, come on over and enter to win. There’s tons of great giveaways every week! I’m celebrating my birthday, Sept. 20 with lots of great 24 hour giveaways.

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Kaley @ Cha-Ching on a Shoestring September 9, 2010 at 9:05 am
This is GREAT! I installed the plug-in, but now I am not sure how to use it to select the winner. What am I missing?

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Kaley @ Cha-Ching on a Shoestring September 9, 2010 at 9:13 am
Oh wait! I figured it out!

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Maggie @ Snag A Bargain September 19, 2010 at 11:25 am
This is great…I am installing it now for my next giveaway!

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CopyKat Recipes February 25, 2011 at 12:03 am
Is this the only plugin folks know about? Is there anything else anyone uses?

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JulieK March 12, 2011 at 10:32 pm
I am just now trying this out. It worked fine to select the winner. but does it SHOW that winning comment anywhere afterwards? Like in the blog post or sidebar? Like how can you prove that you “randomly” selected a winner with it (like how you can capture a screen shot of Random.org?). Thanks!

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