Contests & Other Promotions?

[deronsizemore]

For a golf site I've got planned I figured once it was up and running I could maybe have some sort of contest for a free club, balls, accessory, etc. Possible drive some traffic to the site from word of mouth.

I can't really think of anything I could do in the way of a contest that would allow poeple to enter to win the prize. Just visiting the site wouldn't do, I'd need some sort of thing to sign up for maybe a newsletter, or maybe if you refer a friend you get entered into the contest...can you guys think of any other things like this where is someone does something on the site, they get entered to win a prize?

[thebillionaire]

well the thing is that how will you promote this contest. Thats the hard part

[Shawn]

Promotions for a golf site would be easy -- the target demographic is great, 18-XX year old males. Fark.com would be great, cheap advertising. It'd be awesome short term traffic, especially for a contest.

Stay away from anything that makes people enter in their e-mail address, if possible. That would drop your conversion rate for signups really low. Although, it depends on your site's appearance -- people just need to feel that they can trust you.

[deronsizemore]

Ahh...forgot about fark.

thanks for the replies!

[Masetek]

You could say that you'll be announcing the winner on the website. That way you don't need email addresses, and people have to check back to see if they've won it.

[thebillionaire]

I dont know I thinking having a newsletter signup might develop good visitors that will come again and again. I see alot of sites like doing this sign up for a newsletter to have a chance to win.

[Emancipator]

that is exactly how I am doing my 31 days of hallows'eve contest. 31 prizes, 31 days. The readers love the huge score of prizes and they continue to read the latest content.

[Cutter]

Definately do a newsletter. You can kill two birds with one stone on this one.

#1 this is a really good incentive to get people on your e-mail list. #2 it makes gathering and managing a list of contestants very easy.

Once you have the site up and running send me a PM or e-mail. There are a few details you'll need to hammer out to maximize the number of people that sign up/enter the contest.

I actually run a golf blog, I'd be happy to give you some free publicity when you launch your site.

[deronsizemore]

I thought the newsletter would be probably the best idea, but some visitors might not like the idea of a news letter simply because with a newer site without much credibility people don't like putting personal info into the site with fear of getting nothing but spam, etc... in their email. I still think its the best way to go though for that type of contest/promo.

I'll PM you here sometime when I get everything up and running. I am just gathing info right now for the site. I want to be as prepared as possible for when the site goes live. I've not even designed it yet. :) Some free publicity sounds great!

[Cutter]

I have a site I launched a couple of months ago and I already have close to 1000 newsletter subscribers, so credibility hasn't been an issue for me.

Its double opt-in and I follow all of the United States CAN SPAM law rules (I hate that name, because it sounds like you have permission to spam or something.)

Oddly enough, I did get one spam complaint so far by some idiot.