Much of this may be moot for this giveaway. Unless you upgraded to a paid contributor or can drive massive traffic to their site you're only going to be seen by the highly dedicated freebie seekers who waded through 400+ gifts. I'd call this a learning experience and get your offer together for another event and/or as an offer to whatever folks you get to your squeeze page by whatever means you decide to employ.
Not quite sure if I understood this bit
I saw three distinct things happening here: you learning how to build the pages/offer/etc, participating in the giveaway, and having a completed lead capture funnel.
The first is chronicled here, the last seems to have been a success since you got two people on your list (good show, now build on the momentum!).
I see this particular giveaway as an odd/difficult one to start with for a few reasons. Hence, the comment emphasizing the learning and completed capture pages over any subscribers you may get.
As to why this giveaway may have been less than ideal:
* It was massive, as most of Reed's events are. This is good in that more people are being driven to the giveaway. It's poor in that there are hundreds of gifts available, so the chances that someone will even see it, let alone pick up your particular gift are much lower.
* Reed pushes OTOs hard with several levels for contributors, probably as a result of his events getting such a massive draw. If you decide to take the OTO you get more chances to expose your gift and additional offer/s to the visitors. I'm sure you saw the OTO everytime you logged in to the system (you can turn those off as a contributor in one of the setting screens).
* Reed has higher price points for those contributor OTOs, so even if you want the extra exposure you'll pay more than with a smaller giveaway event. Makes sense, but I'm not sure the numbers work out as far as exposures/conversions.
* If you want to get your feet wet with offering additional offers I feel you'd be better off with a smaller giveaway where the organizers have cheaper OTOs. Then even if it doesn't convert you'll be investing less in the learning!
* Reed does not cross promote other people's giveaways. If you get hooked up with certain of the giveaway promoters you'll find that they invite all previous contributors to every new giveaway they find out about (to get the commissions, but it grants the benefit of being a cheap/convenient way to find out about upcoming events).
Here's two random bits of advice at this point in the giveaway process: check the stats and leverage all the work you've done so far.
By looking at the stats in the giveaway you can find out all sorts of good stuff about who you might want to talk to on different topics.
* Those who brought in the most contributors typically have a responsive list and/or are hooked up with other giveaway contributors. They are the ones to ask about upcoming events and how to get on their list to be notified of those before they launch so you can contribute.
* Those who are top of the list as far as bringing in visitors have a responsive list (at least for freebies) and might be open to mailing for you if you have an offer that converts well.
* The other number to check is who brought in the most dollars w/o necessarily having that many people under them. Those are the folks who upgraded and have an offer that converts well for this particular freebie crowd. You might want to talk to them about becoming their affiliate since you know they got people to buy.
Leveraging what you've done means getting out there and driving massive traffic to the squeeze page you just built and finding out how well different traffic sources convert on that offer. If you find a good match then step it up and if not then drop it like a hot rock and leverage the learning (rather than the outcome) by building another lead capture funnel with a different offer.
And my last mini-rant (for now!): if you don't understand who the product is for, what they really want, and how to find them, then you're going to have a hard time with most of the steps of information marketing (driving targeted traffic, converting that traffic with well written copy, creating products/offers that appeal to your target market, etc).
Glad some of my previous ramblings helped!
Stick around and keep asking questions.