General Cycling Discussion - Referral Contest?

Im thinking of starting a monthly referral contest, winner will recive ~$50 of gear each month from a sponsor. To enter the contest, you would referr friends, family, co-workers, or members of your website to the forums here, for each referral; you would be entered once into the contest. The more you referr, the more likely you are to win. Looking to boost the member and post count, i think this may be the ticket.

What do you guys think? Would you be interested? Please vote.

I am interested, but I don't have any freinds that I haven't told about bikeforums.

Well, you could link to the forums in your signature in newsgroups, email lists, and other forums you participate in. Just dont spam thoes recourses, i'll ban ya! ;)

Yeah. I hang out here for the most part though. HEY GUYS!! JOIN BIKEFORUMS.NET!!! ha ha :) It's a good idea Joe.

I have a link here to register in my Sig... ;) It gets clicked on quite a bit, actualy.

I can vote in polls again!

Ra!

(this is a continuation of the FACT thread from last month...)

In addition to a referral contest, what about an active member contest, to reward the current members of the forum? We could do this on post quality, count (bleh!), random, profile, vote, essay's etc etc...

Im open to ideas, i would really like to see this site grow, The site can grow 5times in size without any additional out of pocket costs, might as well take advantage of that fact :)

Ok Joe, I put a link in my signature..So if people click it will it go towards my referral count?

Nope, you need to put in your referral ID#, ie, the link to register would be:


http://bikeforums.net/register.php?s=&action=signup&referrerid=997

If / When we do the contest, i'll include ways to link directly to a forum (it, mtn biking forum), the main index page, and to register. I'll also have a few buttons / banners made up for webmasters :)

Another way to referr somebody, would be to email the thread to a friend. The link is at the bottom of each thread [Email this page].

The output of this email includes this text:

I thought you might be interested in reading this web page:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?threadid=5553&referrerid=3

From,
Joe Gardner

As you can see, that also includes your referral ID number. The referral cookie is good for 1 year, if the member comes back and registers in a year, you will get the credit.

Joe, Since this site isn't banner supported, how are you coming up with the money for the gear? If you're some sort of cycle loving philanthropist, that's great, but I really hate to see you lose $50 every month in a "contest" that doesn't bring you any financial gain for all of your hard work.

Just my two cents. BTW - I've already referred one person, but it doesn't count because I didn't use the right referral link.

PH
:D

PH; I’m looking at getting a sponsor to help with the costs. I'll have more information on this in the near future. The forums will have some advertising if we go this route, however donating members (members with the red star), will have the choice to turn off advertising.

Thanks for fixing my signature Joe.

No problem. :)

Originally posted by Joe Gardner
(this is a continuation of the FACT thread from last month...)

In addition to a referral contest, what about an active member contest, to reward the current members of the forum? We could do this on post quality, count (bleh!), random, profile, vote, essay's etc etc...

Im open to ideas, i would really like to see this site grow, The site can grow 5times in size without any additional out of pocket costs, might as well take advantage of that fact :)

I like the idea of the active member contrest. I think it should be based on post quality rather than quantity. I think I already voiced my preference for a 'Post of the Week' contest. It would probably be too difficult to rate the average quality of each members posts over any time period.

I also like the essay contest idea. Bicycle Bob ran one of these just before his site closed down, and it was moderately successful. The winner (our own Stumpjumper) was decided by popular vote, which seemed to work well. If you did this on a regular basis, you could have essays written on a particular subject for each comp. Winning essay (and perhaps even the 'also rans') could be stored on the site for permanent access, or even on a sister site. It could end up being a useful resource.

Thats a great idea, i'll talk to Bob about his contests he runs.

The essay idea is cool with me too.

Originally posted by Allister
I like the idea of the active member contrest. I think it should be based on post quality rather than quantity. I think I already voiced my preference for a 'Post of the Week' contest.

I like this idea, even though I never actually managed to win it at the old bicycleforum site. The only question would be who gets to judge it?

Darn it!! I added the friggin link to my signature and nobody has joined all day!!!!! What the heck?