Top poster of the month gets $

[jozomannen]

I have just bought a forum with 2,000 members in. There are like 20 posts made by the members, so the forums are not active at all.

I thought of making a competition where the top poster of the month gets $50.

I'm afraid that I will be getting a lot of spamm post, so there will be some moderating work, but I'll make time for that.

Have anyone ever tried this, how did it go?

[kevinpate]

It would give me great pause to try such a contest.

[2oddSox]

You'll be inviting far less problems if you awarded the prize for the most useful post or forum contributor (at your discretion), rather than the most number of posts.

[LifeinAsia]

Or let the users vote.

[reuben101]

I agree with Soxx

Consider rewarding the most helpful member or the most useful post as voted on by your membership. Spammers won't have the interest, your mod requirements are low and you build good content - and the rep for wanting to attract and maintain good members

[Anlina]

I agree, reward for quality, not quantity.

If you are interested in community building in addition to increasing post count, you might wish to consider a more commmunity oriented incentive - with money it's easy to take your prize and move on, and monetary incentives don't always attract the best type of posters.

Have you considered doing a user spotlight or something similar where the incentive is intra-community recognition? An incentive that requires caring about the community to be appealing?

I guess I'd worry about a money prize as well, because no matter how clearly you lay down rules there will be people who just see, "Win $50," and spam the hell out of your forum without understanding the requirements to win.

The forum I moderate provides incentives for participation in the way of forum currency that can be exchanged for avatar enhancements, and despite the fact that spamming in the wrong place will loose your account and all the currency you have accumulated, spam is still a rampant problem - people's greed overwhelms their common sense.

[Lexur]

You can simply send a Gmail invitation with some text like "Hello. We think you're a valuable member of our comunity and..."

[jozomannen]

I liked the idea to give it to the most useful member. It would be pretty hard to judge though.

Do you think it would be many members that would compete for a $50 first price?

[jozomannen]

What if I don't do this, what could I else do for $50 that will get more inactive posters back?