[Demo] Holding a contest [Demo]

[Demo]

I am holding a contest and I already have the prizes in mind (trust me, they are AMAZING) but here is what I need help with:

What type of contest can I hold to help the following:
1) Stimulate the market
2) Help user activity
3) Promote posting
4) Allow for a greater number of registrations
5) Increase traffic to the website (number of guests greatly increase etc)
6) Promote the website in a positive way, and encourages a friendly idea of the forum)

I'm thinking of something that would allow for several tasks and a point based system, I am looking for help from the community to make this possible.

[Harry Potter]

If you need any help with anything feel free to shoot moi a pm.

[Demo]

Looking for ideas for a specific contest, so far that's it :) but thank you

[I_royalty_I]

I'll help to think of something.
You could do something like a series of contests and such, and awards points for a certain task.
Then at the end, whoever has the most points will determine who wins the prizes.

Just an FYI everyone, the prizes are amazing (A)

[Harry Potter]

I got a head full of fluff, so good luck (:

[Kylae]

You could always do a survivor, but that takes a lot of time to set up the "challenges".

[Demo]

You could always do a survivor, but that takes a lot of time to set up the "challenges".

I'm curious, survivor in what sense? I understand the idea but what would a specific challenge include? My ultimate goal is to get all 6 of those goals accomplished through this

[Brett]

Referral and top poster are classic staples and usually do well.

[Chi]

It sounds exciting ^_^ I'll be participating either way.

Something that focuses on many things and not one skill would be great too :P

Edit; Referral and top poster ones are boring tho ;_;

[Kylae]

Well, it would probably cover everything cept the registrations, as I'd be wary of people making fake new members just to win. But you could have contests that include making guides, helping members, making outside the forum posts and lures, not directly relating to how many people they reel in but how they do it.

Alternately, you could do something along the lines of the superlatives, but instead of being voted on, you actually did things to increase the points in each catagory. Most helpful would have the most helpful posts, most talkative would (not have the most post count, STEVE) but engage the most people in conversations. Anything you say that people would have to do to earn a prize would make that area rise tenfold.

[Demo]

Referral and top poster are classic staples and usually do well.

I figure that this will be part of it, but not everybody can do it and I would prefer quality posts > quality of posts, and as far as referral goes I'm hoping that people will advertise the content on the site as incentive to join so that's part of it, but I'd like to give the option to everybody to have an equal chance to win, but I wrote these down as they are fail sale.



Well, it would probably cover everything cept the registrations, as I'd be wary of people making fake new members just to win. But you could have contests that include making guides, helping members, making outside the forum posts and lures, not directly relating to how many people they reel in but how they do it.

Alternately, you could do something along the lines of the superlatives, but instead of being voted on, you actually did things to increase the points in each catagory. Most helpful would have the most helpful posts, most talkative would (not have the most post count, STEVE) but engage the most people in conversations. Anything you say that people would have to do to earn a prize would make that area rise tenfold.


This is a simply amazing idea, I just would like to implement it within the next few days for account ownership purposes.

[Brett]

I figure that this will be part of it, but not everybody can do it and I would prefer quality posts > quality of posts, and as far as referral goes I'm hoping that people will advertise the content on the site as incentive to join so that's part of it, but I'd like to give the option to everybody to have an equal chance to win, but I wrote these down as they are fail sale.



Well both of them will more or less encompass everything you listed.

You're looking for something abstract?

[Demo]

Well both of them will more or less encompass everything you listed.

You're looking for something abstract?

Something that will keep peoples' interest, and it adds a little bit of competition to the contest, so yea in short I guess you could say I'm looking for something different

[Inq]

Demo

Here are some of my thoughts: these aren't just for your contest though, they are actually regarding the site in general. If you'd like anything more specific, feel free to ask.


1) Stimulate the market

Yeah, I have to say that the market is indeed a little understimulated at the moment. Right now, we mostly have a bunch of regular sellers trying to sell NP at the fixed rate of $2/1m, along with a few people buying/selling uncustomised pets, and a few advertising active accounts.

Well, the auctions you seem to be making certainly help there: unfortunately, though, the price range that those go for is way out of what most people here would be willing to invest in. Keeping that in mind, here's some ideas which I can immediately think of:

a.) Sell some smaller, yet still pretty lucrative active accounts from time to time. A few fun auctions perhaps, for moderately large items, that kind of thing. This allows other people to share in the excitement of getting stuff for cheap, without forcing them to commit to a large initial investment.

b.) Attract new customers from Neopets.com itself: go to point 4) for an idea concerning this.

c.) Co-ordinate our efforts as sellers. Joe has already made some measures to do this by fixing a cap on USD neopoint sales: this is a good start, and it avoids the emergence of over-aggressive competition, specifically out-pricing. It is my opinion that this rule, however, must be extended to all secured item and account sales, in addition to covering pure neopoint transactions. Right now there is a grey area, where people are allowed to sell secured/legit things for a low prices, simply because they have invested their initial items into some sort of non-liquid capital.

Apart from this, I believe that the sense of community which is present everywhere else on the site should start to infiltrate the crevices of the trade forum a bit more. Not that I'm saying that it is a hostile environment now, because that's far from the truth, but I think we should open up and talk to each other a little more: help each other with things that we need, treat each other kindly, and arguably most importantly, avoid stepping on each others toes financially.

2) Help user activity/ 3) Promote posting/ 6) Promote the website in a positive way, and encourages a friendly idea of the forum)

This is one area that I think we are strong in already. We have a nice community here, and people are always happy to help each other. The reputation system is a good one for promoting this kind of behaviour (although it somewhat conflicts with the "thanks" system, as has already been pointed out). Perhaps more of a focus could be placed upon it? I noticed that as soon as Joe (I think) told people to start using it more, we had a massive increase in the frequency of people repping each other: so is there any way we can take advantage of that?

A more established rewards system: a reputation currency? Obviously, these rewards shouldn't be directly financial, but how about things like these:

Custom avatars/signatures
Custom userbars/colours/user notes/fancy icons for names, etc.
Lends for premium on-site avatar items (MSPP, SuAP, BGC).
Pin cracking/birthday unlocking

And perhaps at the very top:

Access to buying one of your lists, Infamous Joe?

Each one of these benefits would be accessible at a certain stage of reputation, and each service would be buyable using reputation points as a currency (though you would keep your account rank, userbars, etc., if you were to otherwise drop down by spending.)

4) Allow for a greater number of registrations

One word: referrals. Again, I think you're going to be one of the people who is best equipped to do this. You have access to active accounts, obviously: so why not use them to spread the word about clraik, privately?

Of course, you wouldn't want to do this with the best ones (since these are your main source of income), but for smaller, yet still influential accounts, send some neomails, write some guild messages, that kind of thing. That way, we'll be getting people who very much into the game onto a site which would make it infinitely easier for them to progress. Let's not forget, a lot of these people are addicted to Neopets, in every sense of the term: if we could get them to start using our programs, and buying from us, that would be amazing for both registrations and market stimulation.

Although you would be very well equipped to do this, other people could definitely get it on it too. Here's where your contest idea would come in: I can imagine quite a few pretty cool ones you could make. Some ideas:

Most Outrageous Cheating Attempt (Unpunished)
Best On-site clraik.com Shoutout
Best On-site Trolling Board
24 Hour Cheating Contest (whoever loads a shell accounts with the most illegit stuff within 24 hours, wins.)


5) Increase traffic to the website (number of guests greatly increase etc)

What I suggested above would certainly help this as well, but I'm guessing you're talking about simple page views here. This question I'll refer to Joe:

Infamous Joe :

How are your adWords etc. set up for this site? I've noticed that we don't appear very high up on Google at the moment, when people search for terms such as "Neopets cheating", "autobuying", and "buy neopoints". I think this could be adjusted to work in our favour, perhaps to quite a surprising degree.

Again, I'll edit in anything else that comes to mind later.

////////
Just to get the mods (and Sherri!) in on this as well:
Sherri,Ben,Maxx,Kylae,Cara,5252, darn you ./m

[Demo]

^ I thoroughly enjoy the above ideas/comments/thoughts on the site, now just how to turn that into a content (other than what was already stated) and I will work on auctioning up lower priced items.

[Inq]

Demo

If I was to make 4 contests, 1 for each of those areas that we've been talking about?


1.) Sniping Contest

Brief: Make a special auction in the trade forum for a real high-end item. The item starts at $1, and the maximum increment for each bid is an additional $1. Bids are done by posting, and no-one is allowed to bid more than $1 than the last poster.

After exactly an hour, the auction ends, and the last, valid bid gets it.

The winner not only gets a cool item, but they also get points for the greater contest (explained later)


2.) The Clraik Award

Brief: This one would be completely decided by members of the forum. The idea is simple: a thread is made, and everyone is able to cast a vote for who they believe to be the most valuable member of the site. The duration for this could be a day to a couple of days: it won't take long for everybody to post (our members all pretty much all active right now).


3.) Neopets.com Cheating Contest

Brief: If there is anything members of the site know how to do, it is how to cheat. Basically, people would be free to do ANYTHING they want on site: along as it's against the rules. Proof would be required for any claims made, and participants would be judged on how outrageous/inventive their successful cheating is deemed, along with how well they tell the story of how it happened.


4.) clraik.com Viral Marketing Contest

Brief: This one is pretty self-explanatory: the aim is to create the best viral marketing campaign for clraik.com. Users will post screenshots, other proof, basically anything that is relevent to what they've done, and winners will be picked out based upon how well the word was spread.



The winner of each contest would get 3 points, second place would get 2, third place would get 1.

After all 5 contests are finished, you're almost certain to have your winner.

And if not: well, everybody loves a tie-breaker, right?

[Demo]

Demo

If I was to make 4 contests, 1 for each of those areas that we've been talking about?


1.) Sniping Contest

Brief: Make a special auction in the trade forum for a real high-end item. The item starts at $1, and the max increment for each bid is an additional $1. Bids are done by posting, and no-one is allowed to bid more than $1 than the last poster.

After exactly an hour, the auction ends, and the last, valid bid gets it.

The winner not only gets a cool item, but they also get points for the greater contest (explained later)


2.) The Clraik Award

Brief: This one would be completely decided by members of the forum. The idea is simple: a thread is made, and everyone is able to cast a vote for who they believe to be the most valuable member of the site. The duration for this could be a day to a couple of days: it won't take long for everybody to post (our members all pretty much all active right now).


3.) Neopets.com Cheating Contest

Brief: If there is anything members of the site know how to do, cheat. Basically, people would be free to do ANYTHING they want on site: along as it's against the rules. Proof would be required for any claims made, and participants would be judged on how outrageous/inventing their successful cheating is deemed, along with how well they tell the story of how it happened.


4.) clraik.com Viral Marketing Contest

Brief: This one is pretty self-explanatory: the aim is to create the best viral marketing campaign for clraik.com. Users will post screenshots, other proof, anything that is relevent to what they've done, and winners will be picked out based upon how well the word was spread.



The winner of each contest would get 3 points, second place would get 2, third place would get 1.

After all 5 contests are finished, you're almost certain to have your winner.

And if not: well, everybody loves a tie-breaker, right?

This is perfect. I will be setting up the contest tonight.

[gudboy]

wow it's like one of the creative brief i got. lolz

[kooldude888]

cant wait for the contest to start!! that was an excellent idea!!!

[Mikey]

Id be interested in the Referral or Survivor one if you did it