I don't use competitions to bring new members in; I use them to encourage the regulars to keep posting. I've run 2 competitions on my UBB since it first opened; an affiliation scheme, and a World Cup Sig competition. The response to both was quite good, but one definitely bought better results for the UBB than the other.
Back in May, we ran a World Cup Sig competition. The idea was to create a Sig supporting your country of choice for the World Cup. The contest was open to all members, Mods and MegaMods, while the Admins acted as judges. The competition was to be judged and the results announced on June 30th, the day of the World Cup Final. The prizes were in the form of custom titles for the winner and runner-up. The turnout was great; about 10 people entered the contest by the time we closed applications. Overall, it was a great competition.
The affiliation scheme was by far the worst idea of the two. The idea was to recommend the UBB to 10 different people, and get them to register and post. The first person to do this would receive a custom title of their choice. Of course, some people decided to log out, register 10 separate accounts, post under them and claim those members as "theirs" (these people had obviously never heard of IP addresses; they were disqualified). Others mass-IMed people on their AIM lists with the URL to the UBB, which (understandably) annoyed them. I would definitely not recommend this kind of scheme to anyone.
As I said earlier, the prizes are usually either avatars and/or custom ranks. We can't send material prizes, because (a) some members are weary of giving out their street addresses, and (b) we simply don't have enough money to buy or distribute the prizes. Plus the fact that a dozen of our members live in Australia, and I'm not paying that much money to send something to Sydney via Air-Mail.
Nice discussion, tacks
