Thinking of a contest for a messageboard...

What do you guys think about a contest to generate posts and the prize would be an ipod shuffle? What I am asking is, would it be a contest that some of you would enter if you would be a member of a board or does it seem too much like I am trying to hard? Any opinions are appreciated. Thanks.

 

I think people would love it, but I wonder how much new members it would really bring. You'd probably get alot of quick posts just to run up the count. Depends on how established your forum is already.

 

See that is the thing. I started the forum about 2 months ago and can not seem to get many people. I run two other very succesful forums but this one I can not seem to get going. Do you have any other ideas that I may not have tried? LoL

 

I think it'll work great providede that you mention before-hand that referral can not SPAM or create duplicate accounts or they'll be disqualified permanently.

That's what I did with my forum and it increased the rate from 30 to 50 new members daily.

 

Also does revenue sharing actually help keep members or bring them to the site?

 

Hello nep, it keeps the members active and good words do spread fast.

 

hmm. This is all interesting. I have never tried revenue sharing before. I may try it. I need some reviews of the forum. But I can not post in that section as of yet. Can I ask someone here to do so for me? I am not trying to spam, hence no posting of the link....LOL

If you want to just help out a fellow member please pm me for the url. Thanks

 

Hi, I can help you with the site in exchange for some approval of my posts.

I need reputation badly.

 

But, if you're forum is already popular, such contest will bring SPAM with it, or so I think.

 

I've already looked at the forum. Maybe you should tweak the interface a little.

Otherwise, everything look good. Try putting the link in your signature and getting more useful articles that you can refer to from other big forums.

That should really increase your traffic. SEO is a little bit harder for a forum, I myself only submit my forum to directories and install vbSEO to help rewrite dynamic urls.

 

Thanks for your input. Reps given. Thanks.

 

It would definitely work for your forum. People are always looking for free stuff, and for something like an ipod they will do almost anything. To encourage people even more you could also offer a price for the runner-ups (something like a t-shirt with the logo of your site), this way they will do some publicity for you and will remember your forum.

 

One more thing, get bloggers to announce your contest all over the place and you yourself announce it on all the other forums.

Well, I think maybe you can promise them money instead of ipod, less hassle.

 

Amazon gift cards are also easy since you can send them via email.

 

I almost forgot, submit your site to www.thefreesite.com, it should get you a lot of traffic.

 

Interesting suggestions and i appreciate them all.