How to start a contest on a forum?

What i want to do is generate more quality traffic to my website (see url in sig). My targeted audience with my services are music uploaders. Think about new dj's, home dj's and other musicians. Other music files are also welcome.

To target my audience I have to look forums where they spread (self made) mixtapes, or mp3 files. I know there are lots of these forums in any kind of music style.

I was thinking how i could approach my audience, because i don't want to spam the whole forum. Like i said before i want quality traffic. So I thought about giving away some free premium accounts, but how? I was thinking to start a contest in some way, so the winner could have 1 premium account. This might be not a unique idea, but does anyone knows a better idea? Or how can I realize my idea? I think i'm not allowed to just join to forum to release a contest lol

 

Yeah, I hear you. Do you have any money to invest into buying ads on these forums?

What about myspace advertising though the band sites?

Maybe you could offer more? Like streaming audio in a nice flash player so they can use it on their websites?

 

I think starting a contest on the forum is not a good idea ...I will suggest you to start a good web and invest some money so that it get indexed and then you can automatically have good traffic on it what you want...
Bye - Umesh

 

what do you exactly mean? Beside Misterupload I'm currently have started the following sites a few months ago, but don't spend time on it thoughfreepublicity.eu, barcelonacity.eu and ronaldinho10.tv

I think Ronaldinho10.tv is pretty potential because i haven't done anything and people are coming from search engines.

 

i have tried a contest at my forum (see sig), and it was initally succesful, but then it died down . I think forum contest are a dime a dozen, the best bet, I think is ( yet time consuming way) is to start posting in the forums where your targets are and tell them about your place (ina non-spammy way), but also be a good communtiy member. That and working on driving traffic though the web (search engines), so poeple find you when they are looking for your topic. Best example, when I started my fast food forum no one would come, now in Google I rank very high for fast food forum and other fast food search terms. Hope the advice helps. To be honest all I know is, it's not as easy as I thought with a forum. It takes A LOT of work. Good luck!

 

thanks! Indeed it looks easy to market through forums, but it's hard. The effect from forums is amazing. I always have good traffic from related forums.

Maybe i have to contact the moderator of the forums and just ask them to post a press release? Or are they not willing to do that? Like my business is targeted to music files, so in related forums i think my service is good for their users, right?

 

Maybe you can strike some sort of deal with the owners of the forum to host music files on your servers and allow their users to listen to them when ever they want. Maybe something like that? This will help you brand your name as well.