Prizes & Contests

[mikeinjersey]

I'd really like to get something like this up & running as I really think it would bring in more people & traffic.

My forums already get decent traffic , but i'd like to increase it a lot more.

My idea is this :

A Mod that gives away real prizes.

#1 First you would click on a button to register yourself for the contest for that particular month.

#2 For each 5 legitimate posts the user makes that month, they get 1 entry into the contest. (For example : From December 1st to December 31st)

#3 The more entries a user has, the better the chance the user has to winning the prize for that month.

#4 Then I guess... a Master Random Draw button to draw the winner for that month. Once again, the more entries they have...the better the chance they'll be selected for the prize.

I'm talking big prizes here too... not some 1 potato, 2 potato stuff.. I'd like to give away a Xbox 360 & PS3 once a month on my forum.

I might be losing money the first few months, but as long as I put an announcement at the top of the forum saying something along the lines us

"Special Announcement : We at LLL Forums are giving away a free PS3 & Xbox 360 every month. No bull. All you have to do is be a member & post to have a chance each month."

Am I the only one thinking , or is this an amazing idea to increase traffic to our forums ? And why isn't there a similar mod yet ? this should be epic.

[DeanLag]

Every month? Thats a bit too much *imo* but if you can afford it, why not.
However, if you can afford that everymonth, why not post in Paid Services? More people will be willing to do that as most coders don't really do volunteering because, maybe, they're not going to use the mod itself on their board =p

However, theres other alternatives:
I kind of use the same method to try to increase traffic to my board (Although I don't give $15+ prizes =p). I use vBcredits with vbCommerce (available at vbcredits.com). When users post, they earn 'forum points' (Can call it $, potatoes, cookies or whatever currency you want it to be called) and then they use the currency to buy tickets in the lottery.
The lottery system is quite versatile. You can run multiple instances of lotteries and you can also schedule an end-date. The winner will be shown in ACP and the winner will be PM'd as well (Everything automatically!)
Each ticket increases their chances of winning the lottery (duh) and you can price the ticket at any amount. Might want to put the prize to 1 'forum point', so that the next lottery so that the winner doesn't use the winnings to buy more tickets.

Moreover, with vBcommerce you can buy items in a 'shop' and the items will be displayed on their postbit, and I assure you, forum users LOVE to differentiate from the 'average' member.

I'm not associated with vBcredits in anyway but I'm really glad and grateful that such a versatile product is free to download and use. Might want to check on the tons of features the mod offers.

[mikeinjersey]

Dean, can you give away real items using that combo ? ( vbCredits & vbCommerce ) They look like nice addons.. but we probably wouldnt even use the virtual items.

I realize if were only going to give away mediocre prizes, it wont bring in too many new people. But put a big prize out there, and it'll get attention.

[DeanLag]

I know theres an add-on that you can use with vbCredits that allows people to set up a shop but its a paid add-on so I didn't really look into it too much. But yes, definitely, you can give away real items with it.