Referal Contests

[Stope]

Have you ever had a referal contest on your site? Did it work very well for you? I would like to know because we are trying it on our site and if its not worth the money to pay the people who get the most referals then we might just go with ads on other sites. Just would like a little input on the subject.

Thanks,
Stope

 

[Equinox]

I know that my webhost (Glob@t) frquently offers me 6months free hosting if I can get 3 of my friends/family to sign up. It seems to work for them, because its a great incentive for me!
~Equinox

 

[ThinkSupport]

Really a good strategy to think about :crazy2:

 

[Stope]

Equinox,
Has it worked very well for your host? I mean does it get a lot of singup. That is what I am looking for really. People to sign up that want to contribute to my community and I hope that works to acomplish that.

 

[Exon]

It all depends who you target, how you target, and who your targets refer.

I never would've done the Free iPod thing that was popular a couple months back, but a trusted friend of mine got me started on it - I ended up getting my iPod and was pretty happy about it. Had he not talked to me about it, I never would've considered it, and I don't do any of these others that popup around the place either (Read: free flat screen, digital camera, vacation, etc...) as I just flat out don't trust 'em, and the time can be better spent elsewhere.

It all boils down to who you target, how you target, and who your targets try and refer.

 

[Stope]

Thats a good point Exon. For an online community I would probably want to find the designers and people who will be active on my forums. I think that is definantly a good point because if you target bad people for a community you're steering right into the ground.

 

[Exon]

Well, you might target users who can refer people easily enough - but you want to target people who will refer people who will not only register/post a bit, but remain after their reward is collected because they like the community.

 

[Equinox]

Stope, like I said :

It seems to work for them

 

[SQNWK]

A referral contest/program should work well if it's setup correctly, in the sense that the incentive that your offering if valuable to the refer (i.e. free hosting, free domain names) and easily attainable (i.g. refer 2-3 people) and be able to receive the incentive. The world of mouth is the cheapest form of advertising.