Need ideas for fair giveaways.

Concerning the timezones I asked myselves this question and asked Steam and whitelist friends what would be acceptable for the most people in different timezones and they came to making giveaways of 3 days.

Strawberries :D

I'm having the same issue. I don't want to Flash because timezones, which is why I've just been slowly building the whitelist.
But to use it I also need a paycheck. I'd love to check back and see what advice you get. :)

I think it depends on who your target audience is. I'm still pretty new around here (when do I get to stop saying that?), but I've done public GAs with and without various level restrictions, and invite-only forum thread GAs with and without puzzles, week-long GAs and one-hour GAs. I haven't done any group/whitelist GAs yet. I think each of those attracts a different audience. Not everyone likes or can solve puzzles. Not everyone is a forum lurker. Any kind of level restriction rules certain people out. Flash GAs will miss a lot of people, but give the ones that enter better chances. Groups and whitelists can be very elitist, depending perhaps on how you build you group/whitelist, but will almost certainly exclude anyone who isn't active on the forums. The problem really is that by choosing any of these, we're excluding a lot of people, and though we may think certain categories of people deserve to be excluded, such as level 0 perhaps, we're stereotyping. Personally, I'm a big fan of diversity, so I'm planning to continue with all of these approaches. I may reserve the better games for non-public or level-restricted GAs, but I don't want to leave anyone out of an opportunity to win something nice from me from time to time.

I'm very guilty about doing flash giveaways... I feel bad but its just easier to do for me :'(

In my group I considered making a giveaway for 24 hours as a minimum, and 48 hours preferably. It works pretty good. Unless you're doing a puzzle, in this case, depending on how hard the puzzle is, you may want anything between 3 and 7 days.

Not sure if I meet your whitelist requirement, but I'll give it a shot.

I pick most of the people of my whitelist because i like them, i don't care if they will play the game or no, i just like giving people that i think are awesome or that i like some love :3 I think that most of the people that i have on my whitelist will join game giveaways for what they really like, not because OH OMGZ FREE GAIMZ PLOXZ GIB ...

And if you want to do "fair" giveaways, u can make contest or things like that and that will be a nice filter :)

I try to make them at least one day long, and choose a time I'm sure I will be able to send asap

I do flash giveaways. They're generally more convenient for me and if I'm spending money on people I'll never meet, I'll do it how I feel like it.

Also, good food recipe:

PESTO CHICKEN

In a crock pot, put

chicken breasts
a jar of pesto
a packet of ranch seasoning

Let simmer all day. Pull apart the chicken and stir everything together after several hours (half hour or more prior to serving). It's good on pasta or bread. Add parmesan to really make the flavor pop.

Enjoy!

I usually prefer 2 day long giveaways - if it would end on the weekends, I set it for Saturday or Sunday evening. Basically on workdays I think the 2 days are sufficient, but on holidays, weekends people usually has some programs, that's why I give them more time to enter :)

i like hiding them and then you can go for longer times, like now :)

I make my whitelist GA's last about a week. I fully expect people to have lives and not check in every day. Granted, I haven't done many solely for my whitelist My last one was shadows of mordor however

As far as your whitelist, i'm much too terrible a person.

I used to do flash giveaways only because I love giving people "higher odds". Who doesn't love higher odds?
But yeah, it's a tough call for time zones, and I personally hate it when people "miss out". So I started making it 24 hours minimum.
If it's good stuff, one day may not be enough, people go out of town or what not, so I put those at a week.
Maybe if it's in a bundle you could pitch in a bit extra to get two of them, then you could have one for flash giveaways and one which accommodates all time zones. No perfect way to go about it, of course.

I'd say that if you want to take all timezones into account 12-24 hours are needed, this way most users will have a chance to look at it, and if you make whitelist only GAs then you can always go for a couple days as its only a limited amount of people that can join, plus... if you add extra people they can also have an option to enter for some instead of flash/short duration ones :)

Define "fair giveaways", I would suggest a puzzle about the game or its genre and thus people who complete it are more likely to play it.

If I'm doing a puzzle, my giveaways tend to run from 2 days to a week. If not, I always go with flash giveaways.

For public I usually do flash giveaways, and for group/invite 1-2 days long.

it will be hard to balance a flash ga unless everyone is from the same region, even with that people have different work times.

just extend the duration to 1-2 days, or make 24 1-hour-long GAs per day :3

I make giveaways of games that do not cause racial tension.

I prefer flash giveaways too, and good food...

View attached image.

I usually make the giveaways 1 to 3 days, as that's just a bit more conventient to me.
Some nice ideas have already been posted, got nothing to add to it.

View attached image.