Is offering rewards for a forum based contest bad for indexing?

[JS_Harris]

I'm considering offering a cash reward (nothing major, $100 - $50 - $25) for the top 3 forum members who accomplish (insert contest specifics) the best as judged by a member poll.

The reward will likely generate interest, may generate incoming links though they won't be solicited and might land me in trouble with Google?

If I go ahead with this monthly contest idea do I need to worry that my forums search rankings may fall for offering "paid incentives"? Would such a contest even be considered a paid incentive in the spirit of "not paying for traffic"?

I'd like to generate forum interest and the site earns enough that I can give some back but I'm wondering if such an effort would be self defeating because of search engine backlash. Many visitors find the forum via search.

[ogletree]

That is a legitimate way to promote and grow a website. Google has no problem with that kind of thing. The thing is just not to have people be paying you for links. You are paying them to create content.

[Timetraveler]

No worries with Google penalties, but with quality of posts. :)