Sponsored Lunch Giveaway — #003

We wanted to start a quick, small giveaway series that anyone in our WordPress community can afford to sponsor. Our goal was to keep this activity pure, caring, practical, and meaningful. We also wanted to engage both the community of WordPress freelancers and the leaders at the same time. We aimed to create a genuine human experience without relying on automatic winner selection or complex rules, especially at the beginning, when fewer people participate in a giveaway contest. So, we decided to invite leaders from the WordPress community as honorary guests.

We launched the lunch giveaway series on May 15, 2025, with our first sponsor, Hammad Shahzad. Seven WordPress freelancers participated. The winner was Dastagir Sabri, and our first honorary guest was Jeff Starr.

The experience was so positive that, within our WhatsApp group of over 190 freelancers, another member decided to sponsor a single lunch. We continued this as a series of $5 giveaways. Our second sponsor was Adnan Hyder, with honorary judge Chris Badgett. Six people participated, and Chris selected Fiza as the winner on X (formerly Twitter).

After seeing our two contests, a connection from India reached out to us. This time, the sponsor was Kuldeep Pande — not from Lahore, not from Karachi, but from India. Yes, India. A country we often view through the lens of politics, but on this day, we saw it through a different lens: collaboration. A man sitting across the border decided to sponsor lunch for a WordPress freelancer in Pakistan. Why? Because talent knows no borders, and kindness needs no visa.

For this contest, we kept it simple — just a poll.
𝗡𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. 𝗡𝗼 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀. 𝗡𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀. 𝗡𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀.

We ran the poll through our WhatsApp group of 190+ freelancers and openly on LinkedIn.

Our third guest is Katie Keith. I started following Katie when she was new to Twitter/X, and within just a few months, she gained thousands of followers and earned the title of WordPress celebrity on X. She kindly accepted our invitation to be the honorary guest for our third sponsored lunch giveaway. It was an honor for us to have her select the winner.

Using this new contest method with a LinkedIn poll, we were amazed by the high number of participants. Between our WhatsApp group and the LinkedIn poll, we had nearly 30 participants. This number was so encouraging that we decided to showcase these participants on our website and ask our guests to pick the winner from there.

We are including participants’ photos, names, titles, and links. This way, when our guest picks a winner, having a photo and a brief title, like “Digital Marketing Expert”, makes the process more personal and engaging, especially since the guest may not be familiar with everyone. It’s better than picking a random number blindly.

Also, if someone from our guest list becomes interested in working with a participant in the future, they might return to the page and reach out. You never know!

Below is the list of our 30+ participants so far. We will send this list to Katie between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM Pakistan time to match lunch time on her side and connect with the lunch vibes. 🙂

Once this post is published, we’ll send the list to Katie, and she will select the winner. Hopefully, she will also share a short remark about why she chose that winner. Good luck to all participants!