Tips For A Successful Holiday Forum Contest

Once again, the holidays are fast approaching. Thousands of Internet marketers are anxiously searching for some innovative ways to get traffic flowing to their site. A holiday forum contest may be just the ticket. It's the perfect time of year to start planning and advertising for it.

To start things off...there are a few things you will need to take into consideration before attempting to hold a successful contest.

1. For a successful contest you will of course need to have a good amount of active members that would be interested in participating in the competition. People that visit your forum on a weekly or daily basis.

2. Know in advance what type of contest you want to have. (What your members will actually be doing for the competition). Try and be creative with this...as there are lots of ideas to consider.

3. How will you entice your forum members and prospective members to WANT to enter your contest?
The number one thing that your members will immediately ask themselves is of course, "What's in it for me?"

Well, there are a number of prize ideas that you could offer:

* If it's financially feasible, you could offer a cash prize.
* A free advertising package would be an excellent prize idea. You will want to make your free advertising package as attractive as possible. If you have more than one website where the member's link, button, or banner would appear...that would mean double rewards. And who wouldn't appreciate free advertising?!
* If you operate a direct selling business...you could give away a product package. And to make your give away even better, perhaps offer additional various mix and match freebies.
* Offer free ebooks or ecourses for your business. Marketers will always appreciate prizes such as these. Plus it would be a big boost for your business.
* If you have a "featured business" or a "featured website" section on your website...this would be a great prize to offer. Have the winner of the contest featured in that section for a full month or however many months you choose.

4. Start a poll thread two or three months ahead of time for prospective entries for the contest including full details and reward offers. Offer two options in your poll.
*YES, Count me in!
*I am not interested at this time

5. Advertise for your forum contest. The best places that I have found and also offers the best immediate results are other message forums. A lot of message forums have a specific section just for contests. Start advertising two to three months in advance.

* Place text links and ads for your contest on all your websites.
* Mass email all your forum members about your contest with all the details and award prizes and encourage them to tell others.
* If you have a newsletter, do a write up about the contest.
* If you own any blogs, post blog entries and include all details and award prizes.

There you have it...some helpful tips for a successful forum contest.

One last thing...Have fun with it and be creative. Don't have an ordinary event that you see everyday on other forums. Try and come up with something extraordinary or unusual. Most importantly...something that you think your members would have a lot of fun doing.

Article Written By: Tammy Embrich

Tammy has been successful in the work at home industry for 4 years now. She is an Internet marketer, article marketer, and ghostwriter. She offers free job leads for the job seeker, as well as other work at home resources, work at home articles, tips, and more at Work At Home Jobs.

You can also find Tammy at WAH Job Leads, offering legitimate work at home companies, more free job leads, work at home articles, and much more.

You can also find Tammy at her Grandma Blogs blog, offering grandmother's experiences, brags, recipes, tips, photos, and more.