Why a dedicated YouTube giveaway picker
YouTube giveaways have specifics: comments aren't all equal — pinned comments and "hearted by creator" comments often signal entries the channel owner already validated. Replies live in collapsed threads. Bot accounts dominate comment sections of any video over ~10k views. This picker is tuned for those patterns.
What the picker can do on YouTube
- Public videos and Shorts — paste any URL, the picker handles both.
- "Only hearted by creator" mode — restrict the entry pool to comments the channel owner explicitly validated by hearting them. Eliminates 99% of bot entries.
- Exclude pinned comments — usually the channel owner's own pinned reply that you don't want in the draw.
- Replies as entries — toggle on if entries were in replies under a "Comment with X to enter" parent comment.
- Duplicate dedup — same channel commenting many times only counts once. Toggle off if you want to reward engagement.
- Account-age signal — YouTube doesn't expose account-creation date publicly, but the picker flags channels with no posted videos and no profile photo (typical bot signature) so you can review.
- Hashtag / keyword match — comment must include a specific token.
- Exclude past winners — paste a CSV of channel names or handles drawn before; they're filtered out.
- Multiple winners — set N for runners-up.
Verifiable draws
The picker uses a Fisher–Yates shuffle seeded with a cryptographically secure PRNG. Each draw gets a public verification link exposing the seed, the entry list at draw time, and the winning index. Pin the link as a comment on your video — viewers can replay the shuffle in any spreadsheet.
YouTube + FTC compliance
YouTube doesn't have a "giveaway promotions policy" as strict as Facebook's, but the FTC still applies:
- State who the giveaway is open to (country, age).
- State the closing date and timezone.
- State the prize value (USD). If > $5,000, US 1099-MISC reporting applies.
- State the selection method: "winner picked at random using exportcomments.com on [date]".
- If the giveaway is sponsored by a brand, disclose the partnership in the video description (FTC Endorsement Guides).
Plan limits
Per-draw entry-pool size scales with your plan. Free (no signup): up to 100 results per video. Personal: 5,000. Premium: 50,000. Business: 250,000 — see pricing.