Grand Opening Contests

[Savage X]

Do many of you open your forums with a contest of some sort?

If so, what is the theme of your contest, and some potential prizes?

Is it a simple referral contest, or is it something that has more to do with the niche of your forum?

[Nick]

Since my site populated rapidly, we were able to start a monthly contest at the first of the next month.
It is a "best photo" contest relative to my niche.
Each month is a different theme.

We now have caption contests for user-selected photos from around the forum.

However, on other forums that didn't start out too quickly we didn't immediately start contests, for they would be empty and would not be appealing.

[Daniel]

Nick, what sort of success did you have with them?

[Nick]

They are going very well. They are a lot of fun and users really look forward to them.

My site started in the beginning of February but wasn't officially 'launched' until the end of Feb.
However, we did the first contest in Feb.

I will least each month, and how many submissions we received.
Feb - 6
Mar - 7
Apr - 6
May - 5
Jun - 5
Jul - 5
Aug - 7 so far. Submission deadline is Monday.

It's not a ton of participants, but I find them to be very fun. Everybody loves voting and seeing the submissions.
But I honestly was surprised at how soon they became successful. I don't think it can get much sooner than the first month. LOL

For caption contests, we don't have a set schedule. We just keep them going, one after another.
We started them much later so we've only completed 3 of them and the poll for the 4th one just opened yesterday.
Number of submissions:
Contest 1 - 6
Contest 2 - 6
Contest 3 - 6
Contest 4 - 9

The winner of each caption contest gets to choose the photo we use for the next contest.
Members really like these, too :)

Currently, I'm working on getting a sponsor for the monthly contest. I've contacted the owner of an online store relative to my niche and they agreed that they will "sponsor" my contests and each month, the winner gets a free item or a discount on a purchase at the online store. I'm hoping this will draw a larger crowd to participate in the contests.