I'm considering making a contest for the "Premium" members of my forum.. I'll give away an iphone, or an ipod, or something really good ($100 - $500 value) each month. The idea of the contest is to bring in more premium members, and keep the ones i've already got. To become a premium member (and thus, be eligible for the contest), members must either subscribe (pay), post "x" number of posts, or submit (pre-defined) content. my question is; would there be any issues with the contest only being available to premium members? i seem to recall some law about "no purchase necessary" for contests.
ipods and such could get pricey. People would be just as happy winning a $10 book or whatever. Unless your forum is making a killing, i would tone down the price of your prizes.
Yeah, it's making a killing.. An iPod or two a month and an iPhone or a Wii here and there would be no problem.
I bet you are right on the "no purchase necessary" law. But since you offer few different ways to become one of your premium members, other than paying, I think you would be covered.
What i've decided to do is offer different prizes to premium/non premium members.. For example, For "Contest A" there will be one premium membership winner and one standard-membership winner. The Premium Membership winner wins an iPod touch.. The standard membership winner gets two free iTunes downloads.. ..or something like that..
Yea that's a good idea. I think I might be kinda mad if I didn't get to participate Nice compromise to include everyone. You'll probably even more more $$$ that way.
Hahaha! That's a huge difference in prizes. Almost a slap in the face to the standard members. Careful you don't tick them off. Remember that they are your "future Premium Members"....
Okay, here's the deal. You can give any kind of prize you want to to your "Private" members. If you offer it to the general public, you may NOT require anything further of them so that they become eligible to win an iPhone, etc. So, in your PRIVATE, Premium Members area you can offer what ever you like to them. (Send me 5,000 new Premium Members in the next 30-days and win a Happy Meal in a diamond studded sack!) After 30+ years in the broadcasting industry working both on-air, and managing/owning stations, I can tell you for a fact that the Feds keep a real close eye on operators of contests. Proceed with care. Pete
HHmm.. so then my example above would not be allowed because the only way they could be eligible for the ipod is if they are premium members? Now i'll have to rethink the whole deal..
Don't get me wrong here.. You CAN run your contest in your private area, for your premium members. You just can't run the SAME contest for the general public, but require that they join as premium members in order to get the "big" prizes. Hope I didn't confuse you on that. As an example, a well-known marketer ran a sales contest for his latest product. The winner would "win" his Hummer. As a member of his list, I was just as able (in theory) to win as anyone else. Of course, the winner had a list of several thousand. So for example, if you had a "Silver" membership, you could run a contest for them. If you had a "Gold" membership you could run a different contest for them. Clear as mud? It may have been before your time, but years ago folks like Publishers Clearing House got in deep doo-doo for requiring a purchase in order to win the big prize. They ended up having to pay Uncle Sam a healthy "fine", and had to remove the restrictions.. ie: you don't have to subscribe to win. Pete
thanks pete - ya, i get it, but since i want to drive more members into premium membership, i wanted to make the contest public.. if i keep the 'big' prizes private, then non-premium members would not know about it, thus no incentive to become premium members.. SO.. if i held a contest, and allowed for three winners - 1 standard member, and two premimum members, would that fly? anyone can win, but if you are a premium member you have a greater chance of winning . .. ?
I don't think the "no purchase necessary" applies to paid memberships. If I'm not mistaken, magazines and such hold raffles to monthly subscribers with no problems... Maybe you should look into that and than wouldn't need to get into complex schemes.
this is not legal advice, but in the US, you have to be careful a contest doesn't become a lottery. A lottery consists of three things: prize, chance, and consideration.