Can I give away a key for a game that's not in my Steam Inventory?

I have sent many keys to winners, I just email them to them. If they are a decent enough sort, as all have been with me sofar they will redeem it and all is well.

:)

I had to delete a giveaway, ( i accidently started the same one twice - double tap) and it took one of my spots for about a day

1. You can just email the key to person (the email of the winner is shown after GA has ended). Quite standard in here.
2. It regains over time I guess.

I don't know about your second question but giving away keys is totally fine.
You can email it to them or just give it to them in chat.

CRYOSTASIS can still be activated in steam. It's still on my wishlist. sending Keys to email is fine as long as it works.

1. You can gift keys, that is no problem. And indeed there is no way to add a key to your inventory to trade it after, any key activated on your account will activate teh game in your library.

2. That should be one of the features taht came with the new possibility to delete ongoing GAs. If it happens that you would also mess up and delete the other 2 GAs, I'd say you should contact support.

"Why didn't I get it back? Suppose I mess up my next 2 giveaways? Will I lose the ability to create giveaways altogether?"

If you mess up 3 giveaways in a row, you really shouldn't be allowed to do another one, don't you think the same?

I recommend to hand the key over personally, so you can be sure the winner actually gets it, especially if it's a "first time winner" - they sometimes tend to forget to mark the game as received, so you can kindly ask them to check the "received" box after you handed over the key.

1) as stated before, you can not convert a key into a tradeable copy, giving away a game key is fine

2) the number of giveaways you can have open simultaneously is calculated by this formula: 3 + (number of successfully ended giveaways / 3) - (number of currently running giveaways)

in your case: 3 + (0 / 3) - (1) = 2

a deleted giveaway will always count towards the "number of currently running giveaways", that's why you will now only be able to have 2 simultaneous giveaways open, until you either gave away 3 games or contact support (you should not do this unless you think it's really necessary).

Note: If you delete 3 giveaways and haven't given away 3 games, then you can no longer create a giveaway, until support manually increases your giveaway number.

It's always better to add the winner on steam and give him/her the serial (less issues and you know that they go the key for sure + they go all ERMAHGERD THANK YOUU <3 <3 :P)
Also no issues with gifting keys :) All the games I've given thus far have been keys

You can. 95% of my giveaways were keys.

sure, you can

OK, thanks for the replies everyone!

If it's OK to just hand over the key to the winner by any means, someone should really mention this in the "new gifter's guide to gifting". It would help clear up a lot of confusion in the future.

If you want an advice, don't send the key by email, it's safer to just add the winner on steam and give him the key on chat because if you send the key by email and the winner doesn't answer you can't reroll the giveaway as it could have been used.

You have to send the key by email to winner. E-mail will be revealed on the created giveaways area once it ends.
KEY MUST BE STEAM REDEMABLE.

Yeah,but people can call it fake :/

Of course you can use keys from other sites! Just make sure that the winner will mark as received, which is why I always add them on Steam in order to give them the keys.

You have to contact support if you mess up your other two giveaways, but do not worry... They will not punish you.