Promote forums with a competition?

[Eli]

Not so much a competition, but more like a giveaway, but to be eligible the readers have to sign up on the forums and post in a thread. What do you think? Has anyone been successful with such an idea?

My Photoshop forums aren't doing very well, so I thought I would try promote them with a giveaway on the main blog (400 readers)

I was thinking a 1 Year DeviantART subscription might work, since a lot of the readers I'm sure will be using it, and they damn well don't come cheap :slaugh:

[Stax]

as long as it's marketed right, and your rules are clear (i.e...make sure it isn't 'post once' to be eligible) it could work. As long as it's not a crappy prize, and you get the word out to relative niches it could work pretty well.

or...if you are lazy about it...and just throw up one post on your blog, then no, probably won't work that well unless you get a lot of good forum posts just from one blog post and hope those good forum posts spread word of mouth out from your 400 readers...which is a long shot

[superrichguy]

If you do that, get a press release done so and submit it everywhere you can. Because just sending out to 400 people wouldnt work as well imo.
Good Luck

[BatM]

I have had referral competitions before with domains as prizes.. It's just hard to control. So I gave up on domains and now offer straight paypal dollars! It seems to pay off. However I also now have set up a system with my shop to spend points on getting paypal dollars. Similar to a competition but i guess an on going thing? Depends on how much revenue you make though...