A starting a forum

[Phazar]

I'm starting a forum and I was thinking of giving away cellphones and cd players as part of a forum contest. Is this a good idea? I have three members but they are all my accounts.

 

[cyberworkspace]

I'm starting a forum and I was thinking of giving away cellphones and cd players as part of a forum contest. Is this a good idea? I have three members but they are all my accounts.

you would definitely need to connect the contest idea with a viral element, because otherwise people tend to keep the contest a secret so that there chances for winning are higher (less competition).

so, yes. i would say its a good idea, but what matters more is, that you actually provide value and content so that the people are incentivized to stay after the contest is over.

 

[jened]

i don't know about cd players - do they still make those? if your forum targets older people, they may not care about cell phones. perhaps the prize should be related to your forum topic? you can also pay companies to have people login and post messages to make the board seem more active. may be worth doing, before you advertise a contest. there's no attraction to joining a forum with zero activity.

 

[Phazar]

I dont have much money to spend on prizes

I have some old cellphones lying around , cd players and some CDs so I thougth those would make suitable prizes.

 

[one2]

What i've done in the past is have a "spam-a-thon" contest. I set each entering member up with their own url to their site so I can track their progress. The top 3 referring members get prizes, a great way to increase traffic to your site/forums. However you aren't in control of how they are sending your links, so you may want to outline some terms and conditions or something. I run some shock sites so they tend to be spammed anyway, I haven't had any problems, but have gained tons of traffic

 

[Phazar]

Thanks for the ideas guys

 

[nachoninja]

congrats phazar you just made my ignore list

 

[one2]

P.S. I wouldn't say that old cell phone and used stuff would be suitable prizes. Make sure you have a way to make money from the traffic you recieve, and purchase some decent prizes.

 

[MyOwnDemon]

congrats phazar you just made my ignore list

Haha. I second that. What a tool.

 

[Andrew]

Whats your forum about? You need a traffic source first.

With WickedFire, the traffic came from blogs and other forums, word spread fast.

With my forums, most of my members come from my content sites that get organic search engine traffic.

If you don't have traffic, your going to have the chicken or the egg problem -- which is a fast path to a dead forum.

 

[Bodhost]

I'm starting a forum and I was thinking of giving away cellphones and cd players as part of a forum contest. Is this a good idea? I have three members but they are all my accounts.

Good idea of selling those stuff. But still three members are not enough. You need to increase the the no. of accounts and also the users.

 

[Reefer420]

What i've done in the past is have a "spam-a-thon" contest. I set each entering member up with their own url to their site so I can track their progress. The top 3 referring members get prizes, a great way to increase traffic to your site/forums. However you aren't in control of how they are sending your links, so you may want to outline some terms and conditions or something. I run some shock sites so they tend to be spammed anyway, I haven't had any problems, but have gained tons of traffic

Interesting idea... I like!