[Deleted]

Damned if you do them, damned if you don't.

I've always had mixed feelings about advertising contests - they leave a bad taste in my mouth - but I simply lack the time and ability to do necessary advertising myself. Rather than devise my own on a whim, I'd like to ask you guys on what has and hasn't been successful for you as far as ad contests go.

What do you think works, and what do you encourage?

What doesn't work and is a big no-no?

How do you make sure people don't double or triple post ads on a site, or follow the rules, and what do you do if they break them?

Anything helps, guys.

[Kuroya]

Unfortunately, in my experience, the first sentence really sums it up aptly.

I've done a couple with DTA and those were probably the ones that worked the best. It was a tiered thing with prizes that stacked, but I capped it out (not until it got pretty high, aka at 100) so that eventually there was a stopping point. We had one member twice go all the way to the max and then others did somewhere inbetween. There's also halfway decent prizes for first/second/third, but basically, everyone gets something, so you do get some participants, even if they only post bare minimum for rewards (which was ten)

I make it clear in the rules that you do have to check for ads and obey the rules and not post on affiliates (since they're affiliated with us, it's kind of a jerk move to drop ads there), but unfortunately, that doesn't always work. There's always going to be people who are just looking for the rewards, and in those cases, I actually make it entirely clear that if you break the rules listed on the ad contest, I don't count the ad. If the ad has been deleted, I don't count it since that usually means it broke rules.

Regardless, at the end of the day, you still really don't win a whole lot of anything since it's just a bunch of ads being spammed out and if you don't have the activity to back it up, it can do more harm than good. And you're entirely reliant on people not being jerkwads and listening to your rules, and we all know that there's those two or three who just don't read or who skim too fast to notice things you have. I've had someone come and yell at me during the end of an ad contest about how "you have advertising rules so don't break them on other sites" and it was really embarrassing but at the same time... you really got some time on your hands if you're going out of your way like that.

I guess one thing I will recommend though is a reward for referring people. Give an incentive to members to bring their friends and an incentive for those friends to make and finish a character. You do, again, run into some shifty folks like that, but at least you can promote people getting onto the site without really worrying so much about ad rules and all that.

[SIFR]

You know why I don't do them anymore. Lol.

[Deleted]

Mar 20, 2015 6:48:14 GMT -8 SIFR said:

You know why I don't do them anymore. Lol.

We don't talk about that. 

[THE LEVIATHAN]

Okay, here's my two cents!
Fair warning: I'm not an admin. Just a code mod and the mod that does all the BG work. /scuttles.

Advertising contests are fun and all, but they seem tacky when members are blatantly advertising and making it clear it's a contest. I suggested an ad contest (on BRSW) and it went fine. Rules were people had to post a numbered list of all the sites they advertised on (direct link) and then I (the contest creator) went through and verified all of them. We capped it off at a certain site currency for [x] amount of advertisements, but whoever did the most in total received the site currency in addition to a plot bomb.

Anyone who had their ad deleted had that ad removed from their list. So if you double posted or it got deleted for some other reason (such as not following a rule), it was removed from their total count.

The contest was easy because BRSW is a small site, but this might be more difficult to implement on bigger ones. People are often greedy for site currency, but I think you can deter people who are just going to post without a regard for other site's rules by making it clear that you will check things. The contest worked nicely, everyone got a reward, and we got some people who stopped by.

An alternative is to simply hire a temporary (or permanent?) advertising moderator for your site if you can't handle the constant advertising but you don't want to offer a contest. I personally advise against constantly running ad contests - they're best for a twice a month thing.

Best of luck.