Contest Ideas

[Al]

In order to quick start this forum we'll be hosting some sort of contest to promote activity. I was thinking of doing a points system where members earn points by starting threads, making posts, refering new members etc. and then at the end of the month do a lottery where you get as many entries as the number of points you have. Does that sound fair?

So far we have about $600 worth of gadget prizes so it should be pretty cool.

[reapies]

Sounds pretty cool - is it open to everyone including CG crew?

[Al]

Yeah I don't see why not.

[Dan]

Sounds like a Great idea to me.

It'll definitely help boost activity :)

[Liam]

Cool :), going to let us in on how the scoring works? Or is that a secret ;).

[Al]

Not really decided yet, so off the top of my head something like:

Refer New Active Member (5+ posts) - 3 points
New Thread - 2 points
New Post - 1 pointsI'd also like to do bonus points for links on other sites just not sure how to manage that one.

[Liam]

Links would be a good idea, I think you might have to manually verify them though.

[Al]

Manually verifying isn't going to happen, so not sure how to go about that one.

[Liam]

Maybe have a javascript block of code which automatically sends something back when the link is put out kind of like adsense except with links.

[nafi]

Great idea to get the forums going. But only to get them going. (You know the old problems with post counts better than all of us.)

The linking bit can be handled by parsing the referrer page and storing it to a table in the database. But that will require coding a new ad-on for the forum software. I don't know if it is worth all the trouble, just yet.

I think we need to get the content ready BEFORE embarking on a link popularity campaign, don't you Al?

[Al]

I think we need to get the content ready BEFORE embarking on a link popularity campaign, don't you Al?
You could be right there, the most important thing at this stage is building an active community, which I'm hoping will come fairly naturally by the traffic we already have and the kind of people who are already posting. At this stage, links that bring visitors and hopefully active members because they like what they see are way more important than a link for the sake of being a link. Did that make sense :)

[Al]

I'm delighted to report that Brando (http://gadget.brando.com.hk) have kindly agreed to donate $500 worth of gadget prizes :D. This means the prize fund now totals ~$1,100 so I'm off gadget prize shopping :cool:

[Johan]

As far as the links goes, you could open a thread where people can post the link to the page where they did a blog post or other item about the CG Forums. That way you'd still have to manually go about things but at least it's all in one spot, fairly managable and fair for participants. They won't get missed as long as they posted in that thread.

[Dan]

Johan, that's quite a lot of work, and I think Al already said that the Manual part is already out, haha.

[Johan]

I'm not sure how much traffic CG gets, but say 40 people posted their blog link in that thread. That's on the opportunistic side IMO. That's 40 pages he/someone would quickly have to scan over for a link. Relatively small effort in return for great free marketing IMO.

I see what you mean, manual sucks. But insome cases it's worth it and in this instance I doubt it will cause him 6 days work.

[Al]

That is a valid point about free marketing and I suppose a little manual effort won't be too much like hard work.

CG normally gets 6-10,000 readers a day, how many of those will join here and how many will have a site they could put a link on is a bit of an unknown.

When the forums get the official opening this Friday I'm hoping all the announcements will be seen by at least 50K pairs of eyes.

[keith]

I can't wait for tomorrow. The official opening ceremony. What time is it going to be? GMT +0 or anywhere in the world?