I have recently started a website related to financial trading and have put a forum on the site aswell but now I find that it is really hard to get people to join a forum that is practically dead. I was thinking of doing some sort of competition to get people talking. I have already added a bookmaker feature (along with a cash MOD) to the site and my plan was to have a few simple betting opportunities such as "will the FTSE end higher or lower than the previous day's close?" and a few others. What would then happen is that, over a week, the user who makes the most would win a small cash prize that would depend on how many people participate (with a minimum value set out before). Would this be an effective way of getting people to sign up? Would they actually talk or would they just place their bets and leave? I will post a link to the forum once i have enough posts here to activate this feature. Thanks in advance.
I think it depends on the amount of money. If you award $100 you could probably hold just one contest. But if they are smaller you may want to make it a weekly contest for a whole month. Just some thoughts.
I was thinking of doing it weekly, at least for a while so there can be more than one winner and hopefully get people into the habit of returning to the forum daily to see what's going on. The prize money will most probably be a small guaranteed amount, say £5 plus a bonus of say 10p for every member who participates. So each week it may be different. Do you think this is enough?
From my personal experience I think users like contests more when the ammount to be given has 3 digits or more Think of it as a user. What would you do with 5 pounds?.....
True, but remember that the contest will be held weekly and that there would be more on top of that for every user thay enters. Not to mention that I cant afford to spend that much on marketing my forum. Thanks for the comment anyway, I do appreciate that that if I were to offer £100 as a prize I would be more likely to get more signups. What about if I were to offer smaller prizes, say trading ebooks, to anyone who makes a profit over the week?
You should have a contest where whoever posts the best thread wins some cash. That would get people posting and the posts would be quality, because people are trying to win. Then at the end of a certain time, make a poll and let your visitors vote for the most useful thread to win the prize.
I hold monthly contests for fish of the month contest on my site. $15 awarded to the winner makes everyone happy
I think you would be better served using cash to promote posting in general. Either by paying for posts, using the Adsence sharing like here, or droopy's idea of a "best thread" competition.
thanks for all the input guys, I like the "best thread" or "best post" idea and might implement this along with my bookmaker promotion.