 Contests & Activities: July 25, 2007 Issue [#1848] |
  Contests & Activities
This week: Edited by: Melissa is fashionably late!  
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How many times have you come upon a raffle and wondered how to do it yourself? This edition of the Contest/Activities newsletter discusses the set up and execution of running your own raffle! 
My name is Melissa is fashionably late! and I am your editor for this week! |
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Raffle Me This!
Writing.Com is an ever-evolving community. We are constantly coming up with new ways to raise Gift Points for charity groups, contests, and our own upgrades. We've held fee-based contests, we've held auctions, we've sold signatures and cNotes, and we've held raffles. Exactly what is required to organize, run, and hold a raffle? That is the question I'm going to address this week.
 Way to organize!
Organizing a raffle is not an easy feat. Do you offer physical prizes, or Gift Point prizes? How much do you charge for a ticket? How many tickets are you going to sell? How are you going to choose a winner? Will you choose more than one winner? These are all questions you need to answer before you open the raffle to the public. You want to have as many rules as possible ironed out in advance, so that you don't have to make arbitrary rule changes in the middle of executing your idea.
Physical prizes vs. Gift Point prizes
 Asking friends or group members to donate items for prizes (an awardicon, a merit badge, reviews, a custom-made signature or offline prizes that require shipping) will enable for multiple drawings, thus making the chances of winning something higher. Tickets will probably sell faster, in this case, because everybody likes a good chance of winning. In this case, if you're using the Gift Points to fund your own upgrade, I would offer a portion of the proceeds to each person who donated, as a courtesy and thank you for their assistance.
When offering Gift Point prizes, you can either set up a single prize, where the winner gets a certain amount of the GPs raised by the raffle ticket sales, or you can split the GPs up for multiple drawings. This will enable more winners, but lessen the prize value. Most raffles have a single payout, where the winner receives around 50% of the GPs raised as a result of the ticket sales. In most cases, the higher the prize available, the better the ticket sales.
What's a ticket worth?
The value of your ticket should be directly proportionate to the value of the prizes offered. If you have several items that could cost the donator a lot, price the tickets higher, while still making it possible for your potential ticket purchaser to be able to afford tickets and feel like they're getting a good deal if they win the drawing. If you have a Amazon gift card in the pot, asking 5,000 GPs or even 50,000 GPs for a ticket is more than reasonable, since the cash value of the GPs is far less than the cash value of the prize offered.
If you're offering a portion of the GPs raised as the prize, remember that if you price tickets lower, you're going to have to sell more tickets in order to get a higher payout. I see raffles selling tickets for 100 GPs apiece, that generally sell quite a few tickets. On the inverse, selling tickets for 1,000 GPs apiece makes it sell a little slower, but you have to sell less tickets in order to make your projected goal.
So how many tickets do I have to sell?
In order to answer this question, you need to answer these questions:
How much am I selling each ticket for?
How many Gift Points do I need to raise in this raffle?
General math works to your favor, in this case, because if you divide the amount of your Gift Point goal by the amount of Gift Points you're requiring for each ticket, you have the amount of tickets you need to sell.
On the inverse, you may not want to set a goal of the amount of tickets you'd like to sell for physical prizes. Set a time frame for sales and once that time frame has passed, hold your drawing and announce your winners. You don't have to worry about the amount of Gift Points being output if the prize isn't a portion of the proceeds.
And the winner is...
With the introduction of the virtual dice, announcing a winner has become much easier than it was in the past. As you sell tickets, you can assign each person a set of numbers, depending on how many tickets you sell. When the time for drawing comes, you go to the virtual dice roller, set up your variables, and give the dice a roll. You can choose to do multiple dice at once, or one at a time. Just remember that the virtual dice are not programmed to not repeat numbers, and do not have an option for no repeats, so even if you roll multiple dice at once, you still have the possibility of repeating a number.
(Unfortunately, I couldn't find any article on how to use the virtual dice tool. Otherwise, I would have helped those of you who have never used it out by linking to it here.)
And the other winner is...
Choosing multiple winners works best when you have multiple prizes to offer. This can mean splitting your Gift Point pool between multiple people or if you have multiple prizes, allowing more than one person to win them. I recommend rolling one of the virtual dice at a time, in this case. That way, if you repeat a number, you don't have to decide whether or not to discount the others. It may take longer, but it makes it less quirky for you.
Come one, come all!
You've gotten all of the technicals figured out, so why aren't you selling any tickets? How do you get people to see your raffle, and most of all, how do you get them to participate and help you raise the Gift Points you need? There are a few things you need to consider before you open your doors to the public:
 Does my forum/item look inviting and easy to read?
Are my rules clearly stated and easy to find?
Have I posted a welcoming post if I'm using a forum?
Do I have a way for participants to find out what their ticket numbers are and the current ticket tally?
Are my asking prices for tickets reasonable and do the prizes offer a reasonable payout in relation to the ticket prices?
Once you have all of this taken care of, then you just need to make sure you advertise your raffle appropriately. There are different ways you can advertise:
Post your item on "The Activities Page". Make sure to include an intriguing description!
Submit your item for this newsletter! One of the editors will take a look and determine if it is something she wants to feature as an editor's pick. You can submit your item via the form at the bottom of any Contest/Activities newsletter or by going to the following link: http://www.writing.com/main/newsletters.php?action=nli_form
Plug your raffle in scroll. Be careful of posting it too often, though. You're less likely to get willing participants if you're constantly plugging your raffle and not participating in conversation.
Sponsor your raffle via BidClick. This is a great way to get attention, but may be Gift Point costly.
Additionally, you can post the raffle in your signature, your blog or journal, your billboard (if you have one), in your Highlighted Items, or the Group item page (if you're hosting the raffle to raise Gift Points for a group).
Raising the bar...
Once your raffle tickets have been sold and your drawings have been made, you need to make sure that you follow through on the prizes and donations, if you're donating the proceeds to a charity. If others are responsible for providing the prizes, make sure that they follow through as they've promised. This is important, because if you want to hold auctions or raffles in the future, members of Writing.Com will remember how it went previously. If you've done everything you've promised, then you will be able to be successful in the future. If not, then you may find it difficult to sell tickets for future events.
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