I'm going to be launching a new site here pretty soon, probably a week or so. I'm going to have drawings for home page link space that will be occupied by the winners for 3 months free. I will also be having drawings for banner space. Those who join will be given a certain amount of credits (that can only be spent on my site). I might even have a drawing for a link in my PR4 web master related blog and the winner's site will get blogged about. Would things like the above entice you to visit my new site, or do I need some bigger prizes giveaways? What kind of prizes would make you want to join a site?
My goal would be to have people not only register "join" my site, but actually become a regular user, but before anyone would think of joining they would first need to visit my site. I'm going to have prizes that will entice people to first of all visit the site, secondly register, and thirdly actually put items up for auction. To be entered into the drawings for the biggest prizes, a person must register and put a product up for auction. So the proper question for me to ask is what kind of prizes would entice you to visit, register, and put a product up for auction?
Interesting idea, don't think I've seen that one before. I'd suggest testing out your idea with a few select users who can write up testimonials saying how fantastic the results are. Testimonials definitely help bring the trust factor. That's really what you need, some proven results and trust building content to help grow your actual user base into active participants.
hmmm. it is interesting. it gave me an idea too. i have recently created an affiliate-based site that can take fairly general traffic and monetize it. i might be able to get forum posters to add a link to their signature to both create traffic and put money in their pockets at the same time. could work...
Forum posters have crossed my mind, usually forum posters are in dead forums or semi dead forums. That's why they are there, to bring life to the forum. Forum posters sigs wouldn't be worth as much because they won't bring as much traffic into a person's site. But they could always sell a package deal, soemthing like 5 forum links in 5 different forums for a very reasonable price.