I Need Your Help - Contest Ideas
Posted in Community, Business, Events, News from Chuck on October 17th, 2006First off, I want to congratulate the winner of last week’s NashobaValley.com Members Contest. It was…
Carol Roberts of Townsend!
Carol’s tip was:
Apple Fest
Celebrate Fall on October 14th! The Townsend United Methodist Church will be having an Apple Fest from 8:30 AM to 3:00 Pm. There will be tours of the bell tower and Johnny Appleseed will be visiting from noon to 2:00 PM. There will be antique appraisals (3 items for $10.00) from 8:30 to noon and a Ham and Bean Supper from 4:30 to 6:30. Home made apple pies and other apple goodies will be available for sale as well. Stop and visit the “Church on the Hill”, 265 Main Street, and while you are there, visit the Flea Market across the street on the Common.
From what I hear, the Apple Fest was a big success! Congratulations Carol!
Now, I’m going to ask you for yet another favor (oh boy, here he goes again!)…
In order for NashobaValley.com to be a success, I need to get as many residents of the Nashoba Valley region to sign up for the site as possible. This will allow me to go to businesses and say, “hey, we have over 1,000 residents who want to hear about your business and want to come in with some savings coupons.”
Sounds reasonable, right? The problem comes in trying to entice your friends and neighbors to sign up for the site. I’ve been advertising in the local paper (in the Nashoba Valley Chronicle). This has given me very mixed results, and I’ve changed my ad for this week. But, the bottom line is the site is growing a bit slower than I’d hoped.
So, what I want to do is create a contest to help promote new members, and I’ve come up with a few different ideas:
- Pay $1 for every person that you send to the site who signs up. This is very similar to the Tell A Friend Race Contest we had during the pre-launch, but this time, I’m paying cash for every sign-up. I would have to make $5 the minimum I would pay out because I can’t send out hundreds of checks. In addition, I would give an iPod Nano to the first person to refer 15 people.
- Create a Nashoba Valley screensaver and have a contest for the photos that would be included in the screensaver. I would choose the five photos I thought best represented each town (for a total of 55 photos), and pay $10 per photos for a total of $550 in prize money. The screensaver would only be available to registered members of the site.
- A school fundraiser contest where I would donate $250 to the school system for each town when 150 people had signed up from that town. This would be a total of $2,750 for the school systems.
What I’d like to know is what you think of each of these ideas, and I’ll put the top vote getter in action as soon as next week. You can vote for your favorite idea at:
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about my vision for NashobaValley.com, and everyone has been very positive. I would really like to make this site work for the communities of the Nashoba Valley, and the only way is to get help from the people who will benefit most.
So please take a couple of seconds to take the little poll I have set up and let me know what you think is the best way to attract new visitors. And, if you have a better idea, there’s an “Other Ideas” category that you can fill in and let me know.
Thanks, and I’ll be sending out another email a little later this week with my smiling face. I think I’m just about ready to smile after all the work I’ve been putting in getting the site to work the way it should.
Regards,
Chuck
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