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Feel free to share this guide around, I hope it can help some people and also check out my other Guides here .

Edit [27th of march 2020]: Tweaked some things, this journal should still be up to date. Some things may vary in eclipse.

I stumbled upon many people who wanted to hold a raffle but didn't really know how to, I decided to write a general explanation of all the things you need to watch out for when holding a raffle and also explaining what a raffle even is in general

What is a raffle anyways?
A raffle, also known as giveaway is basically a tombola, meaning you can enter it and that way gain tickets. In the end, a ticket is drawn randomly, announcing the winner. There can be more than one winner but usually not everyone entering wins, however the more tickets you have, the higher your chance of winning something is.

What purpose does a raffle have?
Basically, a raffle can serve three purposes:

1. Getting you and your art known because people spread the word by advertising through journals or tagging friends. This will cause many people to see your art and potentially increase your number of watchers, comments and faves as well as llamas. However, I would not expect a huge raise in watchers or it getting you popular because especially if you only have a few watchers since that means only few can spread the word about the raffle and not many people might join.

2. It gives your loyal and supportive watchers a chance to get a reward for their support. This way, you can give something back to those that watched, commented and faved your work.

3. To celebrate for example a certain amount of watchers (e.g. "1000 Watchers Raffle"). Raffles are fun so they are a thing you can use to celebrate

Prizes
The prizes can be various things, but the most common ones are art prizes, adopts, points and rarely even material goods being raffled out.
For any of those prizes, I'd advice to not make give out too many prizes to the winners. It is a lot of work for you and there might only be few people joining. Best solution for this are locked prizes that are basically unlocked when you have a certain amount of participants. (Example ) Also, you can of course mix prizes and give more than one prize for the place(s) (Example )
Some people also raffle out things like watches, faves, comments, and llamas but those are pretty rare and also self-explaining so I will not talk about these below. Just keep in mind if a raffle has those prizes and you win them, the person holding the raffle will watch you when you win, no matter if they like your art or not. Some people might not like this idea.

Things to pay attention to
(for art, material goods and adopt prizes only) Make sure to include examples on what the prizes are and explain in detail what they get if a picture is not enough to explain it. If the raffle is purely celebrating a watcher milestone, the people joining will already know what your art is like, however if you're trying to advertise yourself, save people the trip to your gallery because people are often lazy and will only see what is right in front of them.

(for art and adopt prizes only) Make sure they know how and where they are allowed to use the prize (tell them for example if they are only allowed to use it on deviantart or if they may also upload it to toyhouse and alike). Also, clarify if they have to credit you and if they have to credit your deviantart profile or if they credit your profiles on the respective sides they use it on.

(for material goods prizes only) It should be self-explanatory but some people don't get that when you sell material goods online, they will need to give you there address. Many people on this platform are not 18 years old and will probably need to get the permission of their parents to give out there address. I'd generally advice adding that somewhere visible so you won't get a problem when a person wins and their parents don't allow them to give out their address. Another important things for these prizes are to keep in mind that sending something within the same country generally costs less then sending it to another continent, I advise either restricting to only people from your country being allowed to enter, or being aware of potential fees. Asking them to cover the fees may be an option but most people as well as online services do not like their customers paying extra fees so please beware to not violate any Terms of Service of the website you operate on.

The kinds of prizes and what they are

1. Art prizes
Those can be basically anything drawn, ranging from digital art over tradition art to other creations you made. BUT art prizes are send through the internet only, even the traditional pieces are scanned/photographed and delivered digitally. If you want to send a material copy of one of your artworks to someone, that's a material good so scroll down further for Infos on that. Also, art prizes are not adoptables, those are also further down because even if you drew them, it's more about the design than about the art.
As an art prize you can basically offer a picture of a character of the winner's choice. You should declare what you draw and what you don't draw (Example: I do and don't draw usually, this does only include the "do" and the "don't" but like me, you can also write down something like "I'm more comfortable with" or "I never tried this", that's up to you). Also, you should decide the format of the picture (fullbody, halfbody, wait-up, chibi etc. What are those? Look here: Example ).
You can also offer a YCH (=Your character here. What is that? Look here: Example ) where you decide the pose and draw the character on the given pose with possibly also a given background.
Also try to include how many characters are drawn on one pic, I've seen lots of people getting misunderstandings there and the winners asking for couples and alike (For example "Picture can contain up to seven people" or "One character per picture only").
If you offer a couple pic as a prize keep in mind some people might not have a couple among their OCs (=Original Character, a character a person made up and now owns that is not from any sort of fandom) so I'd suggest to give the alternative of two pictures with one person each in case you're offering a couple pic for one prize. Reference sheets are also something you can offer. Animations are also art prizes, as well as animation YCHs. Those are, in my experience, extremely popular because they are extremely rare. If you offer a nice animation-prize, you will most likely get more participants than with a normal drawing, but you will also have more work doing an animation than a regular art piece.

2. Adopts
You can basically offer any adopt you got from someone else (if you have the permission to raffle it out! If you are not sure, please ask the creator before doing so) as well as ones you created yourself. They can be any species you have the right to create (closed species and semi-closed species are usually reserved for a few people to create, any other species like vampires, dogs, horses, mermaids can be used freely as nobody owns them) and any format (fullbody, halfbody, headshot, chibi, ref sheet).
Instead of pre-created adopts you can also offer customs, meaning you will create an adopt according to the winner's wishes How does that work? For example they might give you some inspirational words to work with like "angel, flowers, healer, female" or stuff like that and you then create for example a female angel who is a healer with a strong connection to flowers or an angel with a flowery dress who thinks she is actually helping people but isn't. It's totally up to you what you make of the inspirational words and ideas the winner gives you. Or at least it generally should be, some people might be very, very picky with customs so be sure if you want to potentially work with an individual that is not happy with your design and wants you to start again until you're not happy but they are. I have experienced both sides, being the one making and receiving the custom and it can be exhausting and unpleasant depending on the other person so be aware that that could happen. The best way to prevent that is to set rules such as "You may only give me words and I will work with those until it's done" or "I will show you the sketch and we can still tweak it but once it's coloured no more changing around." Things like that can make your life a lot easier.
Another common thing to raffle out are MYO-slots (What is that? Example ) for closed species. Less common to raffle out are weapon adopts or outfit adopts but those can of course also be raffled out.
If you don't raffle out a premade adopt, it is also important to state what you draw and what you don't draw (Example: I do and don't draw usually, this does only include the "do" and the "don't" but like me, you can also write down something like "I'm more comfortable with" or "I never tried this", that's up to you). Also, you should decide the format of the picture (fullbody, halfbody, wait-up, chibi etc. What are those? Look here: Example ).

3. Points and real money
You can raffle out points or real money as well, it is most common to offer either both as alternatives or points only because many users here don't have a PayPal-account so they can only accept the prize in points. Therefore, I'd suggest to offer both if you'd like to give away real money so everyone can claim the prize in the end.
Money or point-raffles usually get more participants than those who offer art, adopts or material goods because who wouldn't like to win money or points to be able to buy stuff online or in real life? Right, everyone. If you made the raffle to advertise yourself, then you're basically buying your watchers, which is totally fine because you will be happy because you have more watchers and they will be happy because they have more money and your art to look at.
However, some may only be after your money and might try to trick you by unwatching you after the raffle. This issue is addressed in the "Problems"-area further down.
If you give away huge amounts of points (more than 1000 for example), you should potentially include proof that you actually do have those points, especially if you have a relatively new account (for example by taking a screenshots of your balance, here an example: ). However, screenshots can be faked and I know that- If you use a fake one and don't give out the points after the raffle, the people will call you out and never enter another raffle by you again so just don't do that because it's mean and unfair.

4. Material goods
Rather rare raffles are the ones raffling out material goods like prints of art, sculptures out of wood, stone or anything else, pyrography art or even cooking equipment, basically anything you can touch fits this category. Technically you could even raffle out your sofa. The negative thing about those things is that you need to pay postage and probably even shipping to other countries all across the world (though you can also prevent shipping by for example saying "You need to be living in America to receive your prize" or alike). Those raffles can have many participants as well as the other raffles but I have to warn you that many users on here are not allowed/willing to give out their address to strangers so they are not going to participate in the raffle. However, it can be a good way to give away things you do not use.

Rules
Nobody really wants to read them but they all have to follow them. Rules are essential for every raffle, so make sure to keep them in mind.

Following rules is a mandatory thing to participate in a raffle, so be sure to put the things you really want the participants to do in the rules (for example "you need to watch me to join".
There are also optional things you can ask them to do. I will list all the things you can ask them to do below, and give you a small advice why I you can make them mandatory or optional.
Following the rules usually gives you one ticket in total, so you need to follow the steps in the rules in order to participate. As rules are basically that thing no-one would like to read and some even deliberately skip it. I'd actually advice to use a password to prevent those who don't read the rules from participating.

Password
It's basically hidden somewhere, often in the rules, sometimes in the rest of the journal. Depending on what you want them to read (Just the rules or the whole journal). It will basically say something like "if you read this, please put "Bubbletea" in your comment" or "write your favourite colour in your comment so I know you read this". They range from emoticons over words to personal information to jokes or quotes, it's totally up to you what to choose to serve as a password.
->Problems: What if someone obviously did not read the rules?
You could reply to them telling them to read again but I'd actually advise you to just hide their comment. You put effort in creating the raffles so they have to put effort into their comment as well. If they don't, they shouldn't participate. But if you've got a soft heart for those poor people, you can just reply to them and tell them to read the rules again as well
You don't necessarily need a password but I think it can be very helpful if you want to see who actually reads what you write.

Watch
Most people want to achieve something by holding a raffle, for example gain more watchers, more attention. To achieve that, a watch will be mandatory in most raffles. You can make a restriction so old watchers (people that watched you before the raffle) are the only ones allowed to enter or allow both old and new watchers (watchers that will watch you after the start of the raffle, mostly because of the raffle). Or you can give old watchers additional tickets to reward them for their support.
->Problem 1: Those people unwatch me afterwards, what can I do to prevent that?
I think you should mention in the rules that they may not participate in future raffles if they unwatch and have a personal blacklist for future raffles. Some people go as far as to block them completely so they can't join anything or comment anymore. I think that's a bit too much but it's up to you how to handle that.
->Problem 2: Some people watched me but I don't think they actually see what I upload?
Those could be Phantom-watchers/Blind watchers. They uncheck all boxes so they technically watch you but will not see anything you do. There is not really an option to prevent this but I'd write in the rules that they shouldn't phantom-watch/blind-watch you. Some then think you can find out somehow and don't phantom-watch.

Favourite
Half of the raffles make it mandatory that you fave the raffle-journal, but actually that's pretty wasted because it's only helpful when you don't give out any extra tickets (so everyone can only get one ticket in total), then you can just choose a random winner out of the favourites. So you basically use the numbers of the favourites as ticket numbers. Otherwise, this is pretty useless and I'd not even put it as optional but it's up to you in the end. It's basically an entry you give out for free if you don't have only one entry in total (then it's an easy way to keep track of participants).
->Problems: The people just unfave the journal afterwards??
Yes, they do. I've got messy faves all over so I don't care but some people really care what's in their favourites so they might remove it. You can't really prevent it from happening and I don't think it serves any purpose to have your raffle continue to be in their favourites. How often do you find yourself looking through other people's random favourites? I personally don't do that at all so I wouldn't find raffles that way.

Share/Advertise
Basically, this tells the participant to copy the link of this journal into a journal/poll/status of their own so their watchers will see it as well and possibly participate. Most people only allow polls and journals as barely anyone reads those status posts.
Some give out tickets if you do both a journal and a poll, sometimes even another ticket for a status post. It's up to you what you prefer. Also, you should probably mention that it should be a new journal because otherwise some people will just edit it into a journal from 2013 and that does not really advertise to anyone anymore. There is actually a huge debate where you should make the advertising an optional thing or a mandatory one.
Some people don't join when it's mandatory because they want to keep their journal place clean/are to lazy to create a journal/simply just want the prize without doing anything. On the other hand a journal will spread the word of the raffle pretty fast, especially when you make it mandatory and then a user with 1000+ watchers joins and advertises it to all their watchers. That way, you probably reach more people but some might refrain from joining because of the reasons above. So this is also up to you to decide
->Problem 1: A person shared my journal among around 100 others but I don't want that! (Example )
Yea, I do that as well. Those people usually do that to not annoy their watchers with journal-spamming about every single raffle. I mean, those are 56 raffles if I counted correctly so I don't really make 56 journals, my watchers would go crazy^^ Also, I know for fact that some of my watchers actually look through these and join the ones they like so they do still advertise despite featuring so many. But I also understand if you do not want your raffle to drown in the masses-just put something like "please don't put my raffle with others" or "create a new journal with the title "ShadowZamai's 100 point raffle"" (that also prevents them from putting others in there) in the rules and you'll be fine.
->Problem 2: This person just ignored my rule to make a new journal! How dare they!
Well, you can just not give them the extra ticket or if creating a journal is mandatory, don't let them participate. Just hide their comment or tell them to create a new journal.
->Problem 3: The winner just deleted the journal after they won? O.o
Sometimes they do, yes. If you don't want that to happen, just say so in the rules. If they still do it, just prevent them from entering future raffles. You can also re-roll to a new winner but that sounds a bit harsh to me personally.

Tagging
Tagging basically gets people to invite their friends by tagging them. Tagging is basically just putting an @ in front of a username, like this: @/AmaNamisora and when you leave out the slash, it looks like this: AmaNamisora
The tag will then alert the person that they have been pinged in your journal in their notifications, it may lead them to check out the raffle themselves.
Mostly, tagging gives you optional tickets but you should really be careful about giving out to many! If you just write "tag friends, you get +1 for each tag", there will be people tagging 100 persons (mostly random from their watchers) and getting 100 tickets which is not really what you wanted. So you should a) limit the tickets people can be getting by tagging and b) not give 1 ticket for each tag, I'd advice giving +1 for every three tags or something alike by saying "tag your friends, you get +1 for every three tagged, maximum is 9".
->Problem: All the accounts this person tagged are inactive
People try to trick you with that, yes. Just count the active tags and scold them or something or write in your rules that they may not tag inactive accounts. If they don't listen, just don't let them enter.

Also, I'd like to open a collection of free tags, so basically people you can tag when you join a raffle because they love raffles. Comment down below to be listed here:
ShadowZamai
ch-a
AnterosMeadows
SnickerDoge

Comment under the journal
I highly recommend this being mandatory because when they list what they did, that makes it a lot easier for you to give out the tickets. You don't want to go to every person's journal section to see if they did a journal, go to their faves to see if they faved, go to their profile to see if they watched and magically mindread to see if they know the password. It's a lot of work, and you don't want that. Ask them to list what they did.

Donate Prizes
Some raffles want to become more attractive by getting more prizes and giving out tickets for the donation of art or even points. This should be optional, since not everyone has things they can donate and some people's art may not be up to your standarts so you don't want donating prizes to be mandatory because it could be hundreds of "trash" art pieces (Please note that by "trash" I do not mean art where the artists lack in skill, but rather art pieces where the artist did not put work into at all, and simply drew it to be able to join the raffle).
While it's very nice to have many prizes, it can be frustrating to see all of them piled up on the first place when you won second. One person does not need to win 100+ art pieces, a lot more people will be happy if there's ten winners that each win 10 pieces so be sure to spread the prizes at least a little.

Following on other websites
I'd make this optional as people might not be on the side you ask them to follow you on so that would make them unable to enter the raffle. Also, make sure they tell you the names they go by on the other websites because otherwise you will not be able to check if they really followed you.
->Problem: They all unfollowed me after the raffle D:
Well, this is basically the same problem as watches are on deviantart, so for solutions go see above.

Commission
You can give people who already bought adopts or comms from you extra tickets. It rewards them for buying from you and probably gets other people to buy things from you as well. On top of that, if they win since they get extra tickets for this, you get to work with them again which can be nice if it was a pleasant experience.

Buying tickets from points/real money
On other sites but devi, you can ask people to buy tickets like in a real tombola/lottery. However, on devi it's strictly forbidden. On other websites, I'd advice to check the Terms of Service or general rules to see if it's forbidden there as well before trying it.
->Problem 1: It's strictly forbidden on Deviantart so just don't do it. See here for details
->Problem 2: If they don't win, they may try to ask for a refund, so make it clear that all payments are final, even if they do not win.

Fanart
Basically, you can give people more tickets who draw your characters. Make sure to give them the characters they are supposed to draw. You can give them a few characters to choose from, it might bring better results since some styles don't work well with some characters.
Make sure to only let things count that are made for the raffle and not drawings that were made far before it. I'd generally advice to limit the amount of fanart one person can create or your friends will spam you
I'd also advise to give different amount of tickets for different pictures, and I'd judge the amount of tickets not by skill but rather by format or effort (e.g. Headshots get less tickets than fullbodies)
->Problems: Some people drew me stick figures, why???
Some people try to play the system to get more tickets. Simply state in the rules that stick figures and alike are not allowed when drawing fanart.

(art prizes only) Post the character already
Sometimes when people raffle out art prizes, they make it mandatory for you to already post the character so they can surprise the winner with the drawing. While surprise may be nice, some people may also consider that you may not be picking the winner random but rather by which character you like the most. It gets even sketchier when the winner is a friend of the holder of the raffle in the end, so be careful with asking for characters beforehand if you don't want people to think that may be the case.

Some make posting the character optional so everyone can decide for themselves, but they get an extra ticket if they already post their character.
I generally find it annoying when it's mandatory since the chance you win is small but you still need to go through all your characters and look at the person's style to see which one would suit it best. It takes up a lot of time (at least for me) and that isn't really rewarded in the end of you don't win.

Give Llama
Some people give you an extra ticket when you give them a llama or even make it mandatory. I, personally am not a huge fan of llamas but if you are, you can get more llamas this way.

Additional tickets
Additional tickets are basically the options from above you make optional. They give the person more tickets if they complete more tasks. You can also completely leave out the additional tickets, of course.

Give out tickets
Giving out tickets is simple: Just reply to the participant with numbers matching all the tickets they got. So for example if someone got 5 tickets, they have the numbers 1-5. When another person gets seven tickets, they get tickets 6-12. I'd recommend writing the numbers down in your stash to keep track of all of them (Example )
You can also reply to all of them after the raffle but I'd recommend to do it while the raffle is still going on because otherwise it's a lot of work you'll have to do all at once. I also think you should hide comments that are against the rules you posted, but it's up to you how your handle it.

Other things
Those are just other things you can think about when making a raffle, I'll tell you what I recommend and you decide if you do it^^

-I'd really put the rules at the bottom. If the participants have to scroll past ten art examples every time they want to check what they still have to do and how to get additional tickets, it will get annoying really fast. They might give up trying to join (I have to admit I am guilty of that as well for that one raffle with literally 15 max size art examples and the rules above them), or read only once, potentially missing some rules in the end.

-I also strongly recommend not to put too many examples. I lately came across a journal with 30 examples, I had to scroll down for an eternity to even find the rules. It's annoying. Please put only 2 or a maximum of 3 examples for each place if you have multiple, 5 if you only have one place. If people want to see more examples because they don't feel informed enough, they can go visit your gallery.

-To determine the winner, it'd be good not to use a cube or anything but rather a random number generator (Example ) and possibly even screenshot the results because some participants who did not win will make a fuss if for example your best friend wins (which can happen since it's random but people will call trickery and you don't want to have to deal with that). Just prove to them that you really didn't cheat with a screenshot.

-Also I'd really advice not to have a comment to reply to. It may seem neat, but if there's not really different things to join, it does not serve any purpose but looking nice. Well, that is until people forget or don't see and comment all over the place.
Making comments to reply to only makes sense if you actually have multiple raffles or a contest and a raffle to join in one journal.

-Set an end date that gives people enough time to join. I recommend it being 2 weeks-1 month. 24 hour raffles often don't get many participants because not everyone is online daily.

-Don't give people more tickets if the people they tag actually join: It's wayyy to much work to keep track of that.

Problems
There could be some problems with the raffle in general:

Not enough people join my raffle, I don't want to draw super amazing prizes for the one person that joined...
->Well, you can just say in the rules "If there are less than 10 participants, this raffle will be cancelled". Also, please don't be sad when you have 600 watchers and only 5 join: Some watchers are inactive, especially when you are already on here for a while, some others might not know how raffles work, and some others are probably not interested in the prizes you're offering. Having too few people there can happen, this does not mean that your art is bad, it just means you don't get enough exposure yet.

->You can increase the people joining by updating the journal (untick the "This edit is minor and your deviantWATCHers will not be notified" box below the journal under "More Options" and all your watchers will be notified again) every few days to ensure every one of your watchers sees it and even new watchers will be aware that you are holding a raffle

->You can increase the people joining by asking friends to advertise the raffle and invite their friends. Also, you can enter the raffles into groups that collect raffles anyways. To find those, go to the "Groups"-Section of deviantart and search for "raffle" or "giveaway" and choose those groups that have most members if you're short on time. Otherwise, submit to all of them.

->Unlock prizes when you hit a certain participant count, you typically "lock" prizes that means more work for you (so the first place for example) and the prize will only be given out to a winner if enough people join. You need to have one prize unlocked, otherwise the people joining won't join because they can't win anything.

I actually wanted to end the raffle tomorrow but I'm afraid I can't make it, my schedule is to full
->Just extend the deadline. It's your raffle, you can technically do whatever you want

People are continuingly trying to trick me with old journals, tagging inactive accounts and phantom-watches :/
->Well, if they try to trick you, you can prevent them from participating in this raffle or probably also in future raffles. Just blacklist them, or even go as far as to block them completely.

->Also they might try to trick you with a new account so I strongly recommend prohibiting accounts that are less than 2 months old from participating.

->Also people might try to enter with alternate accounts. If you recognize two accounts being the same person, you can ban them from the raffle.

People write a comment, then edit it with other stuff. It's confusing and makes a mess of my ticket-sorting-system...
->Write in the rules that they may not edit their comment.

Winner announcement
When announcing the winner, I'd recommend using a new journal, it makes things less complicated. Also you should tag the winners, some might miss the journal otherwise. You can tag all the participants to get their hopes up high when they see themselves being mentioned in a journal called "raffle winners" and then disappoint most but that's up to you.

I'd also advice you to set a time-limit for the winner to claim their prize because the winner might be inactive so if you set a time-limit, you will simply draw a new winner for the prize no-one claimed, giving the active participants another chance. I would not make that time-limit too short since people can be gone over a weekend or simply not be online a few days, I'd say 7 days is fair while 24 hours may not be feasible for most people. Also, you should mention your commission journal at the end (if you have one) so people who did not get a prize might want to buy something by you. It's effective advertising

Examples of Raffles
(Example )
(Example )
(Example )
(Example )
(Example )
(Example )
If you don't like me using an example from you, please say so and I will put a different example there instead^^

If you feel like I missed anything or if you want to add a group or person to one of the list or if you simply have a question about what I wrote, please feel free to write a comment

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Feel free to share this guide around, I hope it can help some people and also check out my other Guides here .

Edit [27th of march 2020]: Tweaked some things, this journal should still be up to date. Some things may vary in eclipse.

I stumbled upon many people who wanted to hold a raffle but didn't really know how to, I decided to write a general explanation of all the things you need to watch out for when holding a raffle and also explaining what a raffle even is in general

What is a raffle anyways?
A raffle, also known as giveaway is basically a tombola, meaning you can enter it and that way gain tickets. In the end, a ticket is drawn randomly, announcing the winner. There can be more than one winner but usually not everyone entering wins, however the more tickets you have, the higher your chance of winning something is.

What purpose does a raffle have?
Basically, a raffle can serve three purposes:

1. Getting you and your art known because people spread the word by advertising through journals or tagging friends. This will cause many people to see your art and potentially increase your number of watchers, comments and faves as well as llamas. However, I would not expect a huge raise in watchers or it getting you popular because especially if you only have a few watchers since that means only few can spread the word about the raffle and not many people might join.

2. It gives your loyal and supportive watchers a chance to get a reward for their support. This way, you can give something back to those that watched, commented and faved your work.

3. To celebrate for example a certain amount of watchers (e.g. "1000 Watchers Raffle"). Raffles are fun so they are a thing you can use to celebrate

Prizes
The prizes can be various things, but the most common ones are art prizes, adopts, points and rarely even material goods being raffled out.
For any of those prizes, I'd advice to not make give out too many prizes to the winners. It is a lot of work for you and there might only be few people joining. Best solution for this are locked prizes that are basically unlocked when you have a certain amount of participants. (Example ) Also, you can of course mix prizes and give more than one prize for the place(s) (Example )
Some people also raffle out things like watches, faves, comments, and llamas but those are pretty rare and also self-explaining so I will not talk about these below. Just keep in mind if a raffle has those prizes and you win them, the person holding the raffle will watch you when you win, no matter if they like your art or not. Some people might not like this idea.

Things to pay attention to
(for art, material goods and adopt prizes only) Make sure to include examples on what the prizes are and explain in detail what they get if a picture is not enough to explain it. If the raffle is purely celebrating a watcher milestone, the people joining will already know what your art is like, however if you're trying to advertise yourself, save people the trip to your gallery because people are often lazy and will only see what is right in front of them.

(for art and adopt prizes only) Make sure they know how and where they are allowed to use the prize (tell them for example if they are only allowed to use it on deviantart or if they may also upload it to toyhouse and alike). Also, clarify if they have to credit you and if they have to credit your deviantart profile or if they credit your profiles on the respective sides they use it on.

(for material goods prizes only) It should be self-explanatory but some people don't get that when you sell material goods online, they will need to give you there address. Many people on this platform are not 18 years old and will probably need to get the permission of their parents to give out there address. I'd generally advice adding that somewhere visible so you won't get a problem when a person wins and their parents don't allow them to give out their address. Another important things for these prizes are to keep in mind that sending something within the same country generally costs less then sending it to another continent, I advise either restricting to only people from your country being allowed to enter, or being aware of potential fees. Asking them to cover the fees may be an option but most people as well as online services do not like their customers paying extra fees so please beware to not violate any Terms of Service of the website you operate on.

The kinds of prizes and what they are

1. Art prizes
Those can be basically anything drawn, ranging from digital art over tradition art to other creations you made. BUT art prizes are send through the internet only, even the traditional pieces are scanned/photographed and delivered digitally. If you want to send a material copy of one of your artworks to someone, that's a material good so scroll down further for Infos on that. Also, art prizes are not adoptables, those are also further down because even if you drew them, it's more about the design than about the art.
As an art prize you can basically offer a picture of a character of the winner's choice. You should declare what you draw and what you don't draw (Example: I do and don't draw usually, this does only include the "do" and the "don't" but like me, you can also write down something like "I'm more comfortable with" or "I never tried this", that's up to you). Also, you should decide the format of the picture (fullbody, halfbody, wait-up, chibi etc. What are those? Look here: Example ).
You can also offer a YCH (=Your character here. What is that? Look here: Example ) where you decide the pose and draw the character on the given pose with possibly also a given background.
Also try to include how many characters are drawn on one pic, I've seen lots of people getting misunderstandings there and the winners asking for couples and alike (For example "Picture can contain up to seven people" or "One character per picture only").
If you offer a couple pic as a prize keep in mind some people might not have a couple among their OCs (=Original Character, a character a person made up and now owns that is not from any sort of fandom) so I'd suggest to give the alternative of two pictures with one person each in case you're offering a couple pic for one prize. Reference sheets are also something you can offer. Animations are also art prizes, as well as animation YCHs. Those are, in my experience, extremely popular because they are extremely rare. If you offer a nice animation-prize, you will most likely get more participants than with a normal drawing, but you will also have more work doing an animation than a regular art piece.

2. Adopts
You can basically offer any adopt you got from someone else (if you have the permission to raffle it out! If you are not sure, please ask the creator before doing so) as well as ones you created yourself. They can be any species you have the right to create (closed species and semi-closed species are usually reserved for a few people to create, any other species like vampires, dogs, horses, mermaids can be used freely as nobody owns them) and any format (fullbody, halfbody, headshot, chibi, ref sheet).
Instead of pre-created adopts you can also offer customs, meaning you will create an adopt according to the winner's wishes How does that work? For example they might give you some inspirational words to work with like "angel, flowers, healer, female" or stuff like that and you then create for example a female angel who is a healer with a strong connection to flowers or an angel with a flowery dress who thinks she is actually helping people but isn't. It's totally up to you what you make of the inspirational words and ideas the winner gives you. Or at least it generally should be, some people might be very, very picky with customs so be sure if you want to potentially work with an individual that is not happy with your design and wants you to start again until you're not happy but they are. I have experienced both sides, being the one making and receiving the custom and it can be exhausting and unpleasant depending on the other person so be aware that that could happen. The best way to prevent that is to set rules such as "You may only give me words and I will work with those until it's done" or "I will show you the sketch and we can still tweak it but once it's coloured no more changing around." Things like that can make your life a lot easier.
Another common thing to raffle out are MYO-slots (What is that? Example ) for closed species. Less common to raffle out are weapon adopts or outfit adopts but those can of course also be raffled out.
If you don't raffle out a premade adopt, it is also important to state what you draw and what you don't draw (Example: I do and don't draw usually, this does only include the "do" and the "don't" but like me, you can also write down something like "I'm more comfortable with" or "I never tried this", that's up to you). Also, you should decide the format of the picture (fullbody, halfbody, wait-up, chibi etc. What are those? Look here: Example ).

3. Points and real money
You can raffle out points or real money as well, it is most common to offer either both as alternatives or points only because many users here don't have a PayPal-account so they can only accept the prize in points. Therefore, I'd suggest to offer both if you'd like to give away real money so everyone can claim the prize in the end.
Money or point-raffles usually get more participants than those who offer art, adopts or material goods because who wouldn't like to win money or points to be able to buy stuff online or in real life? Right, everyone. If you made the raffle to advertise yourself, then you're basically buying your watchers, which is totally fine because you will be happy because you have more watchers and they will be happy because they have more money and your art to look at.
However, some may only be after your money and might try to trick you by unwatching you after the raffle. This issue is addressed in the "Problems"-area further down.
If you give away huge amounts of points (more than 1000 for example), you should potentially include proof that you actually do have those points, especially if you have a relatively new account (for example by taking a screenshots of your balance, here an example: ). However, screenshots can be faked and I know that- If you use a fake one and don't give out the points after the raffle, the people will call you out and never enter another raffle by you again so just don't do that because it's mean and unfair.

4. Material goods
Rather rare raffles are the ones raffling out material goods like prints of art, sculptures out of wood, stone or anything else, pyrography art or even cooking equipment, basically anything you can touch fits this category. Technically you could even raffle out your sofa. The negative thing about those things is that you need to pay postage and probably even shipping to other countries all across the world (though you can also prevent shipping by for example saying "You need to be living in America to receive your prize" or alike). Those raffles can have many participants as well as the other raffles but I have to warn you that many users on here are not allowed/willing to give out their address to strangers so they are not going to participate in the raffle. However, it can be a good way to give away things you do not use.

Rules
Nobody really wants to read them but they all have to follow them. Rules are essential for every raffle, so make sure to keep them in mind.

Following rules is a mandatory thing to participate in a raffle, so be sure to put the things you really want the participants to do in the rules (for example "you need to watch me to join".
There are also optional things you can ask them to do. I will list all the things you can ask them to do below, and give you a small advice why I you can make them mandatory or optional.
Following the rules usually gives you one ticket in total, so you need to follow the steps in the rules in order to participate. As rules are basically that thing no-one would like to read and some even deliberately skip it. I'd actually advice to use a password to prevent those who don't read the rules from participating.

Password
It's basically hidden somewhere, often in the rules, sometimes in the rest of the journal. Depending on what you want them to read (Just the rules or the whole journal). It will basically say something like "if you read this, please put "Bubbletea" in your comment" or "write your favourite colour in your comment so I know you read this". They range from emoticons over words to personal information to jokes or quotes, it's totally up to you what to choose to serve as a password.
->Problems: What if someone obviously did not read the rules?
You could reply to them telling them to read again but I'd actually advise you to just hide their comment. You put effort in creating the raffles so they have to put effort into their comment as well. If they don't, they shouldn't participate. But if you've got a soft heart for those poor people, you can just reply to them and tell them to read the rules again as well
You don't necessarily need a password but I think it can be very helpful if you want to see who actually reads what you write.

Watch
Most people want to achieve something by holding a raffle, for example gain more watchers, more attention. To achieve that, a watch will be mandatory in most raffles. You can make a restriction so old watchers (people that watched you before the raffle) are the only ones allowed to enter or allow both old and new watchers (watchers that will watch you after the start of the raffle, mostly because of the raffle). Or you can give old watchers additional tickets to reward them for their support.
->Problem 1: Those people unwatch me afterwards, what can I do to prevent that?
I think you should mention in the rules that they may not participate in future raffles if they unwatch and have a personal blacklist for future raffles. Some people go as far as to block them completely so they can't join anything or comment anymore. I think that's a bit too much but it's up to you how to handle that.
->Problem 2: Some people watched me but I don't think they actually see what I upload?
Those could be Phantom-watchers/Blind watchers. They uncheck all boxes so they technically watch you but will not see anything you do. There is not really an option to prevent this but I'd write in the rules that they shouldn't phantom-watch/blind-watch you. Some then think you can find out somehow and don't phantom-watch.

Favourite
Half of the raffles make it mandatory that you fave the raffle-journal, but actually that's pretty wasted because it's only helpful when you don't give out any extra tickets (so everyone can only get one ticket in total), then you can just choose a random winner out of the favourites. So you basically use the numbers of the favourites as ticket numbers. Otherwise, this is pretty useless and I'd not even put it as optional but it's up to you in the end. It's basically an entry you give out for free if you don't have only one entry in total (then it's an easy way to keep track of participants).
->Problems: The people just unfave the journal afterwards??
Yes, they do. I've got messy faves all over so I don't care but some people really care what's in their favourites so they might remove it. You can't really prevent it from happening and I don't think it serves any purpose to have your raffle continue to be in their favourites. How often do you find yourself looking through other people's random favourites? I personally don't do that at all so I wouldn't find raffles that way.

Share/Advertise
Basically, this tells the participant to copy the link of this journal into a journal/poll/status of their own so their watchers will see it as well and possibly participate. Most people only allow polls and journals as barely anyone reads those status posts.
Some give out tickets if you do both a journal and a poll, sometimes even another ticket for a status post. It's up to you what you prefer. Also, you should probably mention that it should be a new journal because otherwise some people will just edit it into a journal from 2013 and that does not really advertise to anyone anymore. There is actually a huge debate where you should make the advertising an optional thing or a mandatory one.
Some people don't join when it's mandatory because they want to keep their journal place clean/are to lazy to create a journal/simply just want the prize without doing anything. On the other hand a journal will spread the word of the raffle pretty fast, especially when you make it mandatory and then a user with 1000+ watchers joins and advertises it to all their watchers. That way, you probably reach more people but some might refrain from joining because of the reasons above. So this is also up to you to decide
->Problem 1: A person shared my journal among around 100 others but I don't want that! (Example )
Yea, I do that as well. Those people usually do that to not annoy their watchers with journal-spamming about every single raffle. I mean, those are 56 raffles if I counted correctly so I don't really make 56 journals, my watchers would go crazy^^ Also, I know for fact that some of my watchers actually look through these and join the ones they like so they do still advertise despite featuring so many. But I also understand if you do not want your raffle to drown in the masses-just put something like "please don't put my raffle with others" or "create a new journal with the title "ShadowZamai's 100 point raffle"" (that also prevents them from putting others in there) in the rules and you'll be fine.
->Problem 2: This person just ignored my rule to make a new journal! How dare they!
Well, you can just not give them the extra ticket or if creating a journal is mandatory, don't let them participate. Just hide their comment or tell them to create a new journal.
->Problem 3: The winner just deleted the journal after they won? O.o
Sometimes they do, yes. If you don't want that to happen, just say so in the rules. If they still do it, just prevent them from entering future raffles. You can also re-roll to a new winner but that sounds a bit harsh to me personally.

Tagging
Tagging basically gets people to invite their friends by tagging them. Tagging is basically just putting an @ in front of a username, like this: @/AmaNamisora and when you leave out the slash, it looks like this: AmaNamisora
The tag will then alert the person that they have been pinged in your journal in their notifications, it may lead them to check out the raffle themselves.
Mostly, tagging gives you optional tickets but you should really be careful about giving out to many! If you just write "tag friends, you get +1 for each tag", there will be people tagging 100 persons (mostly random from their watchers) and getting 100 tickets which is not really what you wanted. So you should a) limit the tickets people can be getting by tagging and b) not give 1 ticket for each tag, I'd advice giving +1 for every three tags or something alike by saying "tag your friends, you get +1 for every three tagged, maximum is 9".
->Problem: All the accounts this person tagged are inactive
People try to trick you with that, yes. Just count the active tags and scold them or something or write in your rules that they may not tag inactive accounts. If they don't listen, just don't let them enter.

Also, I'd like to open a collection of free tags, so basically people you can tag when you join a raffle because they love raffles. Comment down below to be listed here:
ShadowZamai
ch-a
AnterosMeadows
SnickerDoge

Comment under the journal
I highly recommend this being mandatory because when they list what they did, that makes it a lot easier for you to give out the tickets. You don't want to go to every person's journal section to see if they did a journal, go to their faves to see if they faved, go to their profile to see if they watched and magically mindread to see if they know the password. It's a lot of work, and you don't want that. Ask them to list what they did.

Donate Prizes
Some raffles want to become more attractive by getting more prizes and giving out tickets for the donation of art or even points. This should be optional, since not everyone has things they can donate and some people's art may not be up to your standarts so you don't want donating prizes to be mandatory because it could be hundreds of "trash" art pieces (Please note that by "trash" I do not mean art where the artists lack in skill, but rather art pieces where the artist did not put work into at all, and simply drew it to be able to join the raffle).
While it's very nice to have many prizes, it can be frustrating to see all of them piled up on the first place when you won second. One person does not need to win 100+ art pieces, a lot more people will be happy if there's ten winners that each win 10 pieces so be sure to spread the prizes at least a little.

Following on other websites
I'd make this optional as people might not be on the side you ask them to follow you on so that would make them unable to enter the raffle. Also, make sure they tell you the names they go by on the other websites because otherwise you will not be able to check if they really followed you.
->Problem: They all unfollowed me after the raffle D:
Well, this is basically the same problem as watches are on deviantart, so for solutions go see above.

Commission
You can give people who already bought adopts or comms from you extra tickets. It rewards them for buying from you and probably gets other people to buy things from you as well. On top of that, if they win since they get extra tickets for this, you get to work with them again which can be nice if it was a pleasant experience.

Buying tickets from points/real money
On other sites but devi, you can ask people to buy tickets like in a real tombola/lottery. However, on devi it's strictly forbidden. On other websites, I'd advice to check the Terms of Service or general rules to see if it's forbidden there as well before trying it.
->Problem 1: It's strictly forbidden on Deviantart so just don't do it. See here for details
->Problem 2: If they don't win, they may try to ask for a refund, so make it clear that all payments are final, even if they do not win.

Fanart
Basically, you can give people more tickets who draw your characters. Make sure to give them the characters they are supposed to draw. You can give them a few characters to choose from, it might bring better results since some styles don't work well with some characters.
Make sure to only let things count that are made for the raffle and not drawings that were made far before it. I'd generally advice to limit the amount of fanart one person can create or your friends will spam you
I'd also advise to give different amount of tickets for different pictures, and I'd judge the amount of tickets not by skill but rather by format or effort (e.g. Headshots get less tickets than fullbodies)
->Problems: Some people drew me stick figures, why???
Some people try to play the system to get more tickets. Simply state in the rules that stick figures and alike are not allowed when drawing fanart.

(art prizes only) Post the character already
Sometimes when people raffle out art prizes, they make it mandatory for you to already post the character so they can surprise the winner with the drawing. While surprise may be nice, some people may also consider that you may not be picking the winner random but rather by which character you like the most. It gets even sketchier when the winner is a friend of the holder of the raffle in the end, so be careful with asking for characters beforehand if you don't want people to think that may be the case.

Some make posting the character optional so everyone can decide for themselves, but they get an extra ticket if they already post their character.
I generally find it annoying when it's mandatory since the chance you win is small but you still need to go through all your characters and look at the person's style to see which one would suit it best. It takes up a lot of time (at least for me) and that isn't really rewarded in the end of you don't win.

Give Llama
Some people give you an extra ticket when you give them a llama or even make it mandatory. I, personally am not a huge fan of llamas but if you are, you can get more llamas this way.

Additional tickets
Additional tickets are basically the options from above you make optional. They give the person more tickets if they complete more tasks. You can also completely leave out the additional tickets, of course.

Give out tickets
Giving out tickets is simple: Just reply to the participant with numbers matching all the tickets they got. So for example if someone got 5 tickets, they have the numbers 1-5. When another person gets seven tickets, they get tickets 6-12. I'd recommend writing the numbers down in your stash to keep track of all of them (Example )
You can also reply to all of them after the raffle but I'd recommend to do it while the raffle is still going on because otherwise it's a lot of work you'll have to do all at once. I also think you should hide comments that are against the rules you posted, but it's up to you how your handle it.

Other things
Those are just other things you can think about when making a raffle, I'll tell you what I recommend and you decide if you do it^^

-I'd really put the rules at the bottom. If the participants have to scroll past ten art examples every time they want to check what they still have to do and how to get additional tickets, it will get annoying really fast. They might give up trying to join (I have to admit I am guilty of that as well for that one raffle with literally 15 max size art examples and the rules above them), or read only once, potentially missing some rules in the end.

-I also strongly recommend not to put too many examples. I lately came across a journal with 30 examples, I had to scroll down for an eternity to even find the rules. It's annoying. Please put only 2 or a maximum of 3 examples for each place if you have multiple, 5 if you only have one place. If people want to see more examples because they don't feel informed enough, they can go visit your gallery.

-To determine the winner, it'd be good not to use a cube or anything but rather a random number generator (Example ) and possibly even screenshot the results because some participants who did not win will make a fuss if for example your best friend wins (which can happen since it's random but people will call trickery and you don't want to have to deal with that). Just prove to them that you really didn't cheat with a screenshot.

-Also I'd really advice not to have a comment to reply to. It may seem neat, but if there's not really different things to join, it does not serve any purpose but looking nice. Well, that is until people forget or don't see and comment all over the place.
Making comments to reply to only makes sense if you actually have multiple raffles or a contest and a raffle to join in one journal.

-Set an end date that gives people enough time to join. I recommend it being 2 weeks-1 month. 24 hour raffles often don't get many participants because not everyone is online daily.

-Don't give people more tickets if the people they tag actually join: It's wayyy to much work to keep track of that.

Problems
There could be some problems with the raffle in general:

Not enough people join my raffle, I don't want to draw super amazing prizes for the one person that joined...
->Well, you can just say in the rules "If there are less than 10 participants, this raffle will be cancelled". Also, please don't be sad when you have 600 watchers and only 5 join: Some watchers are inactive, especially when you are already on here for a while, some others might not know how raffles work, and some others are probably not interested in the prizes you're offering. Having too few people there can happen, this does not mean that your art is bad, it just means you don't get enough exposure yet.

->You can increase the people joining by updating the journal (untick the "This edit is minor and your deviantWATCHers will not be notified" box below the journal under "More Options" and all your watchers will be notified again) every few days to ensure every one of your watchers sees it and even new watchers will be aware that you are holding a raffle

->You can increase the people joining by asking friends to advertise the raffle and invite their friends. Also, you can enter the raffles into groups that collect raffles anyways. To find those, go to the "Groups"-Section of deviantart and search for "raffle" or "giveaway" and choose those groups that have most members if you're short on time. Otherwise, submit to all of them.

->Unlock prizes when you hit a certain participant count, you typically "lock" prizes that means more work for you (so the first place for example) and the prize will only be given out to a winner if enough people join. You need to have one prize unlocked, otherwise the people joining won't join because they can't win anything.

I actually wanted to end the raffle tomorrow but I'm afraid I can't make it, my schedule is to full
->Just extend the deadline. It's your raffle, you can technically do whatever you want

People are continuingly trying to trick me with old journals, tagging inactive accounts and phantom-watches :/
->Well, if they try to trick you, you can prevent them from participating in this raffle or probably also in future raffles. Just blacklist them, or even go as far as to block them completely.

->Also they might try to trick you with a new account so I strongly recommend prohibiting accounts that are less than 2 months old from participating.

->Also people might try to enter with alternate accounts. If you recognize two accounts being the same person, you can ban them from the raffle.

People write a comment, then edit it with other stuff. It's confusing and makes a mess of my ticket-sorting-system...
->Write in the rules that they may not edit their comment.

Winner announcement
When announcing the winner, I'd recommend using a new journal, it makes things less complicated. Also you should tag the winners, some might miss the journal otherwise. You can tag all the participants to get their hopes up high when they see themselves being mentioned in a journal called "raffle winners" and then disappoint most but that's up to you.

I'd also advice you to set a time-limit for the winner to claim their prize because the winner might be inactive so if you set a time-limit, you will simply draw a new winner for the prize no-one claimed, giving the active participants another chance. I would not make that time-limit too short since people can be gone over a weekend or simply not be online a few days, I'd say 7 days is fair while 24 hours may not be feasible for most people. Also, you should mention your commission journal at the end (if you have one) so people who did not get a prize might want to buy something by you. It's effective advertising

Examples of Raffles
(Example )
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(Example )
(Example )
(Example )
If you don't like me using an example from you, please say so and I will put a different example there instead^^

If you feel like I missed anything or if you want to add a group or person to one of the list or if you simply have a question about what I wrote, please feel free to write a comment