Contests on your site?

[Katrina]

Have you run any type of contest on your site that brought it more activity? I've done some little trivia games in the past and really only 3 or 4 people played.

And don't laugh...but I ran a Bingo game for a while too on the forum. I think the most that played were 7 at one time?? I didn't offer real prizes so maybe that was my failure?

What has worked for you? What has been a surprise?

 

[Deleted member 17779]

It seems like the better the prizes, the more that people will participate in the contest. They seem to be more interested in that than anything else.

 

[Rick Ace]

Well, I can't help but mention the biggest contest here is the Site Battle Madness. It's quite exciting. </shameless-plug>

It seems like the better the prizes, the more that people will participate in the contest. They seem to be more interested in that than anything else.

That's what I've hated about many posting contests that used to be very popular a few years ago. People would post with poor grammar and taste to boost their post counts and win.

My favorite type of contests are story-making contests and creative ones. The graphic contests are awesome too. They really get people to do creative work.

 

[Mozzie]

When i had a community board, i used to have a Wheres Waldo/Wally competition where i would place him somewhere on the board and whoever found him got a signature ot avatar logo or even a custom theme for their board if they had one. It started of okay but sort of died away after a while

 

[RH-Calvin]

Well we didn't run any contests on our website but we have encouraged browsers for affiliates.

 

[Page]

Depends on what the giveaway that you are doing, Allot of new sites do it when they open and or do it thought out to get traffic. End of the day contests doesn't always work. I run many that pretty much ended up dead. Running one right now for months and not many entered. Bigger site or forum be more lucky to get more then small. But depends on what and how you do it, right?

Anyone that has did it! what was the biggest item or whatever that you gave away?

I don't have encouraged members you might say. Might as the title says have you run contests? and my answer is yes..

Might think at of the box more!!

 

[Ash]

Depends on what the giveaway that you are doing, Allot of new sites do it when they open and or do it thought out to get traffic. End of the day contests doesn't always work. I run many that pretty much ended up dead. Running one right now for months and not many entered.

I think the prize/prizes matter a lot to the users. I checked your contest out and it was for a PC version of the Max Payne Bundle. Nothing wrong with it but it's clear to see why it may be hard to bring in interested users to enter. Let's say you had a contest for a new copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 when it first came out. Now that would bring in loads of users to your site.

 

[Katrina]

I haven't done this one yet but a member and I came up with an idea of WhoDunnit but using some of the most active members of the board to create the storyline. I put it aside because of personal reasons but also because I don't know if I should invest about 20+ hours coming up with the story and finding/adding clues around the site to make it work.

 

[Page]

Depends on what the giveaway that you are doing, Allot of new sites do it when they open and or do it thought out to get traffic. End of the day contests doesn't always work. I run many that pretty much ended up dead. Running one right now for months and not many entered.

I think the prize/prizes matter a lot to the users. I checked your contest out and it was for a PC version of the Max Payne Bundle. Nothing wrong with it but it's clear to see why it may be hard to bring in interested users to enter. Let's say you had a contest for a new copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 when it first came out. Now that would bring in loads of users to your site.

Yes it's an old game for PC versions only, but it's not always going to be easy to get an new out now new game title as budget is not always there. Max Payne Bundle! is something that was cheap you know.

As it's based on gaming, then members expect to see gaming related.

 

[Oblivion Knight]

I'm currently running a referral contest to win £25.. I've placed it in various signatures, have put it on facebook and twitter with various hashtags, and I've written about it on the portal.

No entries so far! I'm contemplating whether to withdraw the contest and try again in a few months when I (hopefully) have a few more members.

 

[Katrina]

I'm currently running a referral contest to win £25.. I've placed it in various signatures, have put it on facebook and twitter with various hashtags, and I've written about it on the portal.

No entries so far! I'm contemplating whether to withdraw the contest and try again in a few months when I (hopefully) have a few more members.

Our site did a referral contest at the beginning and I thought we'd get huge numbers because our members know a lot of Christians...except that didn't really happen. The criteria was not just for sign ups but to have the new members create threads and posts as well before credit would be given. Maybe we were too strict and should have just accepted sign ups?

 

[Oblivion Knight]

I'm currently running a referral contest to win £25.. I've placed it in various signatures, have put it on facebook and twitter with various hashtags, and I've written about it on the portal.

No entries so far! I'm contemplating whether to withdraw the contest and try again in a few months when I (hopefully) have a few more members.

The criteria was not just for sign ups but to have the new members create threads and posts as well before credit would be given. Maybe we were too strict and should have just accepted sign ups?

I've set a similar criteria in that new members must post either 5 or 10 times (can't remember) for the referral to be credited..

 

[TopSilver]

I'm currently running a referral contest to win £25.. I've placed it in various signatures, have put it on facebook and twitter with various hashtags, and I've written about it on the portal.

No entries so far! I'm contemplating whether to withdraw the contest and try again in a few months when I (hopefully) have a few more members.

I was also thinking about doing that. I currently have Siropu Referral Contest add-on as well. Haven't ran any yet. Personally I want to grow my site a bit more first before I run a contest but it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility in the future

 

[jenna appleseed]

I tried a launch contest, but the prize was probably too small & too niche.

It got a lot of visitors from competition/giveaway sites but hardly any new members/entrants.

 

[Katrina]

What criteria worked for you when you ran contests?

Let's say you have a Guessing type contest but you don't want people to just sign up and guess every day, you want them to post as well to get activity on the forum. Do you say 3 posts a week so that they can guess daily? How much is too much before people get put off and won't participate?

 

[Page]

Used to do giveaways but I find that bigger community based tends to have an good end results to sites hat are new and not to mention everyone wants something big like an Xbox 360 governance