The holidays at Phenomenal women are busy, busy, busy! November is usually full of Thanksgiving prep and December is full of Secret Santa, holiday cards and our annual charity drive.

This year I want to start early, and rope in October. It's the first real month of fall, so there will be lots of decorating for the season change, plus with Halloween there are opportunities for great pumpkin carving and costume threads.

I want to give away a prize for participation-- not really a contest because I just don't want to encourage competition, especially where the kidlets might be concerned. One of my members is a graphic designer... I was thinking of having her design a certificate of participation to every member who participates in a 'Post your Pumpkin' or 'Halloween Hooligans' event.

I was going to try to get little trinkets to send to everyone but I can't really think of what to get. Plus there's the mailing out and such.

Cheesy? Endearing? Cute? Stupid and cheap?


Opinions, please!

Note: My members would love it anyway even if no prize were attached... I'm just into creating events with incentive and they could not care less about added forum permissions or a fancy user title.

__________________

Phenomenal Women
Coming soon: CrimeOnTV.com

Does McDonald's still print those $5 gift certiicates? Maybe I can give out out some of those! Lol.

__________________

Phenomenal Women
Coming soon: CrimeOnTV.com

Ummm...I can't really decide. I'm having trouble making a decision, because on one hand, I think that most forum members would not be interested in any sort of physical "certificate" for something like this, but on the other hand, as you've pointed out, your members do see more in these things than most other forum members.

What about instead of sending out a physical item, you highlight/archive the entries somewhere in your forum? I know it's not exactly creative or different, but you could always just place them in a gallery. You could also give them a username badge, but if you're like me, you hate cluttering up already cluttered-up postbits!

What about t-shirts, bumper stickers, keychains, mouse pads, etc...? Something that says "Look at me, I shared my Halloween shenanigans at PhenomenalWomen.com" ...It would be more expensive, yeah, but some parents love that kind of stuff to show off to friends and co-workers, and it also makes for great advertising for you.

__________________
...some super-sweet signature

I thought about those tangibles... I just couldn't think of anything that had any "oomph". In addition the design, purchase, printing and shipping are not costs I can come out of pocket with. I thought a certificate might be the next best thing.

Heck yeah you feel me on the postbit. Plus I try not to mess with the postbit because competition among women where some appear to have something special and others don't......it's just not a good idea for us. I try to stay away from that kind of thing. It's amazing how a forum can quickly degrade to Jr High.

I've always liked fridge magnets, they're relatively inexpensive if you buy in bulk, have a really useful purpose and can fit in a 50c envelope

__________________

Have you tried cafepress.com? You can actually make money off of them and the same time offer merchandise from PW to your members

__________________

I've not seen anything at cafepress that I really like but I admit I haven't dug into it very deeply.

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice. I saw some very cute Halloween-y magnets at Zazzle. I am going to buy a small lot and send 1 or 2 to every participant. It will be mostly children participating and I'm not promising a large gift or anything. I just want to be able to send them something for participating.

I dumped the costume fashion show because they'll take and post pics without prodding anyway.

I have just started a promotion at my forum today where we are giving away FREE 'Chat Daily' pens. I'm not sure if that is something you may want to consider but I'm hoping the members will like it