Do you use any contests to gain members? And if so what type?

Or what have you seen?

Not yet, but we are thinking of holding a PSP tourny. Not sure how we are goin to do it yet but it would be based threw Socom3, either Dubs or 4 on 4 wars, the winning team chooses who gets the psp. kinda cool idea for a gaming community.

I'm preparing to have a referral contest hopefully by this weekend. I already have the prizes, but I'm still researching on the best way to optimize the contest and try to cover all angles, ie cheating, scamming, rules, etc.

So far, I've found Vision Scripts Invites System, Bulletproof referral awards at registration, & e-steki Referrer Statistics.

http://www.musclearmy.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=34

I'm gonna spend almost $1,000 for next month

1k on a contest???

I gave away a $1,000 cruise last month ;)

Alright, I put everything together for my site tonight to have a contest that will run til the end of June, and the winner will get a t-shirt. (may sound insignificant, but for most of the users, the shirts are priceless)

In a nutshell, the whole contest is to see who can refer the most people, and these people that are referred need to be active. I posted a set of guidlines that I hope the members will follow, and gave them the "email your friend an iniviation" tool. In a few minutes, I'm going to send out a mass emailing to all the current members in regards to the contest, and as soon as myspace comes up, I'm going to blog the contest, and send it to all the current myspacers on my site's myspace user list.

I'd like to post a link to the contest thread and/or my site, but rules here prevent it because of the site's content.

Here's the current stats:
Threads: 1,334, Posts: 2,686, Members: 563, Active Members: 526

I'll update this thread later on in time to give an update on how it went.

Keep us updated, can't wait to see your results.

I look forward to seeing the results as well.