So I've been thinking about havnig a contest to generate traffic to my website and ultimately members to my forum. Since I have a college related site and forum, I was thinking of offering out an Amazon.com giftcard that can be used to textbooks (or anything really). I can't afford much right now, so it would probably only be $25, maybe $50.

I need some ideas for the contest though. I was thinking of something with referrals. Like whoever registers to the forum and refers the most people will win. Let's say John registers and gets 50 friends to register, and Mary only gets 40 friends to register.. John would win. Very simple idea. I would just need a mod on my forum registraiton page to include a referral box/link.

Any other ideas?

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Contests are always such a hard thing to decide. Honestly, I feel like referral contests are the least effective in the long run for a couple reasons. First of all, they are hard for members to get motivated for. It isnt easy referring people to your forums. On top of that, it is even harder to do it when you aren't guanteed the prize, although this is the case for any contest . The second, most important reason I dont like referral contests is that after all is said and done...they typically do not help after the contest. The majority of those members who were referred will not return for whatever reason...I'm not really sure why.

So...other contests...there is always the posting contests. Whoever has the mosts posts at the end of the given time period wins the prize. These are usually more successful than referral contests. First of all, you see some cold, hard results - posts. The biggest problem you will run into is spam, and this is all a matter of how much you wish to tolerate. If you dont want to see any of it, make some strict guidelines against it...if people blatantly spam for your contest, they'll be disqualified. This can become controversial, so be careful.

Other contest ideas...time to get creative...You can hold a "member of the week/month" contest in which at the end of the period, all of your members vote on the person they felt contributed most to the community - this is a great way to encourage good posts. You can hold some sort of article or review contest...in your case, perhaps reviews on certain majors, or articles on how to succeed in college...study for a test...etc.

If I come up with more ideas, I'll let you know...I'm a bit short on time right now so cant think 100%

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