The short version
A giveaway with a generic prize attracts giveaway hunters, who join, enter, lose and leave the same day. A prize only useful to somebody who cares about your subject attracts people who were going to like the server anyway.
Run a giveaway for a gift card and you will get a spike in members and a matching drop a week later. The people who arrived were there for the gift card, and once it is won there is no reason for them to stay. The member count looks better for a few days and worse afterwards.
Pick a prize that filters
The prize does the selecting for you. A cash-equivalent selects for people who enter every giveaway they find. Something specific to your community — an item in the game you play, a role with real perks, a commission, early access to whatever you make — is worthless to a hunter and appealing to exactly the person you want.
This usually means a cheaper prize performs better, which is counter-intuitive and consistently true.
Make entry cost something small
A one-click reaction entry costs nothing, so everybody enters and nobody engages. Requiring something small — a message in a channel, a reply to a prompt, a vote in a poll — cuts total entries and raises the share who stay, because they have already used the server once.
Do not make it onerous. One low-effort action is the sweet spot; three is a barrier that earns you nothing.
entries showing on a live giveaway is the number that stops the next person entering
Get the entry count off zero
An empty entry count is its own problem. A giveaway showing three entries reads as one nobody found, so it gets ignored, which then makes it true. The first visible entries are what convince the next reader the thing is real.
If you seed it, target the visible interaction rather than the draw itself — button clicks on the entry button, or interested marks on the event it is attached to. Inflating the draw dilutes the odds for genuine entrants, which is the opposite of the point.
Announce the winner properly
Most servers post a bot message and move on. Announcing in a visible channel, tagging the winner and showing the prize being handed over does two things: it proves the giveaway was real, and it gives everybody who lost a reason to believe the next one is worth entering.
A server with a visible history of paid-out giveaways gets substantially better turnout on its fourth than its first.
Time it around something
A giveaway with no occasion is a bribe. One attached to a milestone, a launch, an update or a holiday has a reason to exist, and the reason gives people something to talk about besides the prize — which is the entire objective.
Do not run them back to back
Continuous giveaways train your server to show up only when something is being given away. The chat between them goes quiet, because turning up has been made conditional. Space them out enough that the server has to be worth joining on its own.
Giveaway entries and role pickers Real Members
Genuine accounts that join and stay Event Interested
So your event looks worth attending
Every service is delivered without admin access — a public invite or link is all we ever ask for.