I believe/know contests can be a very effective way to bring in ACTIVE visitors to a site. But how do you go for promoting your contest? I've tried every possible way (putting links/banners all over my site), found a few sponsors for the event ("media" sponsors if I may say, they just put info about the contest on the front page), and added the contest to my sig on deviantart, commented on lot's of works, so the contest can be seen (i hope). These methods did prove useful/working, but very limited. Most of the signups for the contest I got from friends referring friends.

Any suggestions on how to go about promoting the contest further?

Thank you all for your time.

Have you considered spamming? Im personally a big fan and if you can get the right script you can end up using someone elses computer remotely to nail out thousands of emails to various address books. he he ehe

IM KIDDING!!!! I do however suggest you make an email newsletter  and send it out to your friends to forward out to their address books and so forth, oh, and make sure it doesnt look like a casino add.... nobody will look twice. And, try not to send it to the same people twice.... that (IMO) is coming dangerously close to tripping over the spam line.

I asked this same question in another thread a while back ...still waiting for responses LOL

I have registered my contests/competitions on sites that are set up specifically for this see my caricatures site (Link below) and click on win a caricature. At the bottom of that page are the sites I have registered with. Not bringing the hoped for numbers, but if anyone knows of a similar contest promotion sites in the US I like to hear about them

Any of my recommendations are a decade old, so picture Netscape...ummm, I mean the Internet back then.

Contests and/or sweepstakes are one of those things included in your every six weeks PR drive for your carefully nurtured local media and Internet media folks. The idea for PRs always included getting to know your local (and online, although that's tougher) media editors through occasional phone calls, free lunches, and such. Work with them, so they get to know, and more importantly, REMEMBER you.

The PRs about your business are supposed to go out roughly once every six weeks, giving the latest and greatest stuff your business does -- opening, new areas or people for your business, interviews, sponsoring something -- like sending underprivilege kids to the circus, or maybe sponsor money towards your local Little League park or teams, or some exhibit coming to a museum near you. Doesn't have to be a whole lot of money, but enough to catch the attention of those already schmoozed editors. Then keep sending out your every six week PR stuff when you hire someone new, or move to a new location, or donate books to your local library, or host your local business association, etc. Once you get your editor friends to expect and publish your latest offerings, THEN you pick it up a notch by offering contests or sweepstakes, and donating your time or expertise to some deserving charity. (I was going to do resumes for free to homeless men in a shelter in town, but, instead, my body opted to go with becoming disabled, and now, not only is my business gone, but my mind isn't quick enough to pull off donating resumes to anyone.)

From my ancient memories of PR work, it has to be a lot of what-my-business-has-done-for-my-community stuff and how it's growing and improving. before getting to the point of offering special contests and sweepstakes, or offering services for free or greatly discounted prices to folks in need.

Then again, I repeat, my info is a decade old. I strongly recommend studying up on PR stuff to establish your own PR work. And, once again, to do this cheaply and efficiently, I recommend books by Jay (Conrad) Levinson.

so, by the looks of things, I need to have already a good "user base" or at least media/site partners that have a good user base, that would promote my contests. And I need to have established myself as a good "news" source, prior to the contest announcement...

Did I get things right?

Wekky wrote:

so, by the looks of things, I need to have already a good "user base" or at least media/site partners that have a good user base, that would promote my contests. And I need to have established myself as a good "news" source, prior to the contest announcement...

Did I get things right?

Yup! Pretty much! Sorry.

I actually didn't answer matte's request, (sorry, matte) because I didn't want to sound like I'm the bearer of bad news. Now that this is a repeated question (not your fault. I'm sure you wouldn't have done it, if matte got the response he was hoping to get.) I've tried the same thing both of you are trying and it had down right embarrassing results for me. (Not so embarassing that I haven't told the story on another thread in this forum, but I do believe others can learn from my mistakes.) Unless you know how to promote just the contest in enough places where folks will be interested to make it a worthwhile effort. (You might actually be able to do that, if you know a lot more about social networking then I do! Matter of fact, I think I'll start a thread in the Social Bookmarking folder to see if maybe we can come up with marketing ideas for one another, if we list what we all know about different networks.)

On the positive side, I do tend to find the odd contest online, and it's been quite useful for me, since I was one of one or one of ninty, who responded to the contests. So far, along with a little free publicity for my sites, I've won a Google Mail account invitation (back when they were hard to come by), a novel, and a gift certificate for Borders.

There is that little piece of good news though -- you do realize that among the suggestions made for "news worthy" were little things like opening the business, adding to it (products, services, or employees), and relocating. (I've moved enough in my life to never recommend relocating, but, if you gotta....) Those things don't sound very newsworthy, but when I worked in the little ad agency long ago, they were enough to be annouced in AdAge, Ad Week, (the equivalent of being mentioned in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal) and a couple of other industry related magazines and newspapers. If you can find industry related publications, particularly online (assuming that's why your on this forum), they need to be included in your "local" editors.

Also, despite how long winded I am, Jay Levinson explains it all much better, and his books are so chalk-full of free or cheap ways of promoting your business, well, within a month after reading just one of his books, and applying what I learned, my monthly earning rose from $20 for the whole month (I read his stuff the first month I started my business) to a little over $200. I know, big deal! But, hey, getting that $200 was a lot less work then getting the $20! LOL