Creating a paid online contest: a short guide

Are you looking to promote your company or your product? Paid online contests are a great way to do this while simultaneously generating revenue through entry fees. Here’s the short guide to creating and running a paid online competition.

Setting up a paid platform

A paid contest platform can be a way for you to not only monetise your campaign, but also reap all the usual benefits free online contests bring to businesses: increased audience engagement, greater levels of participation among target users, and brand exposure and increased social media attention across the likes of Facebook and Instagram.

Having to pay to play a contest or prize giveaway can potentially bring friction for participants, but this can be circumvented by first offering a free entry phase that then leads to paid entry phases, the latter with larger prizes or giveaways to justify the financial requirement of entry.

Choosing the right game mechanics

To run a successful online contest, paid or free, you will first of all obviously have to define the type of platform you wish to develop. Then also the themes you want to explore through the experience you’re delivering.

In casino mode

It is possible to use instant win game mechanics for your paid online contest, which can be associated with the casino universe, such as the Scratch Card, the Spin the Wheel games, and the Wheel of Fortune. These contests allow the user to win gifts, promo codes, or even money directly.

To run this type of contest successfully, and to replicate some of the excitement of a casino with your online contest is to propose different game mechanics to bring variety, and keep your offer fresh and engaging so you not only grow your audience, but retain users and foster loyalty.

The online lottery

You can also imagine and create an online lottery concept for your online contest. With the luck factor at the heart of the concept, participants have to play different types of competitions in order to win more tickets to participate in the lottery, which effectively gives them more chances to win, and increase engagement levels.

Paid entertainment

You could also simply offer games of all types, be it entertainment games, instant win games or even quizzes, so that users earn points.

The objective for the user is to increase their prize pool and earn more with each play. In order to monetize your paid contest platform, you can offer advertisement space or brand placement, and essentially sell the branding to other businesses in order to earn more from your online contest.

How do you best manage the payment?

For your paid online contest project to work, you will need to set up a payment platform that allows:

• Your users to easily pay for access to additional competitions
• Offer options that allow customers to win more

There are various online payment solutions and secure platforms available to ensure the best possible payment experience on your website or mobile application.

At Drimify, we can’t necessarily help you create this payment infrastructure because it is very specific to your project, your concept, and your business model. The ideal solution is to use a developer or a specialised company that can help you with this, as well as the implementation of payment methods on your website.

Your project should also include a “customer profile” principle to be able to associate payments to different games and customers. In practice, a user will pay online, and then they could potentially have access to credits, which will give them a certain number of plays.

This is where Drimify comes in!

We can work with you to create various game mechanics for users to use their credits to earn points. These points can then potentially be converted into prizes, promo codes, or even cash.

Make sure your competition is compliant with local regulations

First of all, it is important to establish clear and concise contest rules so that all participants know what is expected of them, and understand their terms of entry, and how the winner is decided (or winners, depending on your prize offerings). Be sure to include restrictions on methods of participation, voting procedures, or any other necessary details.

All of this should obviously be in accordance with the laws of your country or the country where the paid online contest is being run. Paid online games are usually subject to very specific legislation.

We advise you to contact a lawyer or a specialised consultancy firm for the legal and judicial aspects of your paid game platform. By using a bailiff, your company can ensure that the whole process is properly implemented, organised, and controlled.

A bailiff will be able to guide you through the steps you need to take to make your business and your digital project feasible, and compliant with relevant regulations.

Work with gamification experts to bring your competitions to life

The Drimify team will be able to help you with all aspects of contest creation and game creation on your platform. Drimify is an intuitive and easy-to-use gamification platform that is designed to work in self-service mode, but we have optional assistance add-ons so you can get as much or as little support with your project as you need..

We have already enabled an online lottery website for a client to offer their customers new game mechanics that are fully interconnected with their platform. This created more user engagement and resulted in higher revenue for the website publisher. This is a great way to offer gamification experiences without having to develop them from scratch yourself, and allows you to integrate them very quickly and efficiently into your platform.

Drimify’s extensive catalogue of games allows for regular renewal of game mechanics, which can also be customised to suit the season and the campaign. Whether it’s a specific graphic design for Valentine’s Day, summer, the end of year celebrations, or any other annual highlight that could be associated with your business, there is no shortage of ideas for different types of contests and gamified experiences.

You can make unique experiences and game concepts for your marketing operations tailored to any occasion, and share them on all communication channels (website landing pages, mobile applications, social networks, etc.) to excite and engage your audience.

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