Giveaways keep a Whatnot show moving, and they cost real money: the item and the shipping label Whatnot charges you for it. Whether they pay off is a measurable question, because the earnings report records the giveaway (a row with BUY_FORMAT = GIVEAWAY and a small negative amount) and, later, every order the winner places. Line the two up and the answer is in the CSV. Whatnot draws the winner at random from whoever enters, so the levers you control are how often you run one, whether it is open to everyone or to buyers only, and what you give.
What a giveaway can do, and what the report can show
A giveaway is worth its cost if the recipient buys afterward, or buys more than they used to. So the honest measure is not “how many giveaways did I run” but:
- Conversion: what share of recipients bought something after winning?
- Spend after versus before: for recipients who were already buyers, did their spending rise?
- First-time buyers: how many winners had never bought before and did afterward?
- The tail: how many took the item and never bought again?
In a two-year run of sample data, about four in ten recipients bought again after a giveaway, and as a group they spent close to twice as much after their giveaway as before. The other six in ten never bought again.
One thing to be clear about first: this is correlation, not proof. A regular who wins a giveaway and buys again next week would probably have bought anyway. The cleanest signal is a winner whose first-ever purchase came after the win. Read the numbers as what happened after a giveaway, not as what the giveaway caused. Even so, the split tells you what a giveaway is worth to your shop, and whether a buyers-only giveaway at the end of the show, which rewards people who already bought, produces more of the first kind than an open one.
The long way: match giveaways to later orders
- Stack the weekly earnings CSVs.
- Filter
BUY_FORMAT = GIVEAWAY. That is your giveaway list: recipient, date, shipping cost. - For each recipient, sum their paid
ORDER_EARNINGSbefore the giveaway date and after it (usePOST_COUPON_PRICE). - Count recipients with any spend after. Divide by total recipients for the conversion rate.
- Total the giveaway shipping. Compare it with total after-spend, and remember that after-spend is not all caused by the giveaway; regulars would have bought anyway. The cleanest signal is recipients whose first-ever purchase came after they won.
It is a lookup-heavy sheet, and it breaks the first time a buyer wins twice.
The short way: the Giveaway Impact card
MARGN.PLUS runs the match from your uploads. The Giveaway Impact card on the Overview tab shows total giveaways, unique recipients, how many converted, the conversion rate, total giveaway cost, and spend before versus after. It names the recipient with the best return, lists winners who became first-time buyers, and lists recipients who have never spent anything with you. Each recipient expands to show every giveaway they won with the spend around it, so a two-time winner is handled correctly.
What to do with it
- Choose the giveaway type, not the winner. Whatnot picks winners at random; you pick open versus buyers-only, how often, and what. Run each type for a month and compare what recipients did afterward.
- Set a budget. Giveaway shipping is a line on your P&L and on Schedule C. Treat it like advertising, because that is what it is.
- Reward your top buyers off the report. A bonus tossed into the bag for your top twenty never appears in the CSV, so the giveaway card cannot score it. What the report can show is whether those buyers keep coming back: watch VIP lifetime value and the repeat buyer rate over the following months, and treat that as the answer.
- Read it over months, not shows. One show is noise; a quarter is a pattern.
Upload one weekly report and the giveaway match is built for you. Then decide, with numbers, what the next giveaway is for. Generosity and marketing are both fine reasons. Knowing which one you are doing is the point.
MARGN.PLUS is independent and not affiliated with Whatnot, Inc. Whatnot is a trademark of Whatnot, Inc.
