Successful Forum Contest Stories

[Shawn Gossman]

I'm interested in seeing success stories of people who have ran forum contests.

If you had a specific goal for a forum contest and met or exceeded that goal post-contest, I'd be interested in reading your success story.

I feel this could be a learning experience for all of us who wish to use contests as a way to get more members, content, etc.

Tell us your success stories here!

 

[Nomad]

I once ran a contest on my forum. I was giving $10 for the person who makes a maximum number of posts. Sadly, there were only two people who were posting, and the winner made just 10 posts.

 

[Tucker933]

We've run a number of very successful game modding competitions, though when it comes to a more forum-centric event, I'd like to refer to our Monthly Raffle.

Via this Raffle, we award specifically described contributions with a set quantity of raffle tickets, which can also be transferred between members as a sort of currency. Our staff also each have a discretionary fund to award members for whatever they see fit. At the end of the month, two winning tickets are drawn, each worth $25 via PayPal or Donor Credit (user's choice). Members with 2 or more tickets have a chance of having both tickets drawn as well, which doubles their prize. Ticket earnings and discretionary funds of course reset for everything to start fresh on the next month.

We've been running this raffle since 2014, with absolutely fantastic results. It's been a major factor in our relevancy despite the emergent competition from Discord, and ever since 2016, this system has been almost entirely automated.

To date, we've awarded more than $2,500 to our members.

 

[Deleted member 17779]

We've run a number of very successful game modding competitions, though when it comes to a more forum-centric event, I'd like to refer to our Monthly Raffle.

Via this Raffle, we award specifically described contributions with a set quantity of raffle tickets, which can also be transferred between members as a sort of currency. Our staff also each have a discretionary fund to award members for whatever they see fit. At the end of the month, two winning tickets are drawn, each worth $25 via PayPal or Donor Credit (user's choice). Members with 2 or more tickets have a chance of having both tickets drawn as well, which doubles their prize. Ticket earnings and discretionary funds of course reset for everything to start fresh on the next month.

We've been running this raffle since 2014, with absolutely fantastic results. It's been a major factor in our relevancy despite the emergent competition from Discord, and ever since 2016, this system has been almost entirely automated.

To date, we've awarded more than $2,500 to our members.

That's great that you are having good success with this.

How did you come up with this? (If you don't mind me asking)

 

[Tucker933]

How did you come up with this? (If you don't mind me asking)

I was just trying to incentivize a usergroup's job on the forum, and realized the solution could be applied to a lot.

 

[KnownSyntax]

I actively run a few contests for free products (>$50 USD value). As far as goals, the biggest would be more interest into the community (getting higher DR/page ranking), and secondary KPIs would be things like active users (getting more active users), additional posts, and more unique content than generic replies.

Plus it helps me sometimes test out what leads me better sources via referrers in terms of ad media, social ads, etc.