For you experienced tournament holders...

JohnH · #1 12-10-2007, 06:39 PM

I've been thinking about doing some kind of tournament to help get the word out about a new site I am working on. Is it completely worthless to do a free roll? I searched PAW and have seen nothing but negative things being said about freeroll whores and such. I would hate to waste it.

Is it worth it to have a tournament with a small buy in and a good prize (like an ipod or Iphone)? Do your visitors actually sign up through your tracker, deposit, and play in the tournament?

What would be a good buy in amount to keep out the free rollers and but bring in actual players?

Anyone have any good experiences with tournaments like this?

Jeremy · #2 12-10-2007, 06:46 PM

My opinion is that freerolls are great for existing members or a community. For example if I do a freeroll for the members here at PAW, it keeps people loyal and is a fun way for people who already know each other to break away from the forum and have a little fun.

However if you are doing a freeroll to acquire new real money players, I think it is a waste of time. Surely you may get lucky and get a few people that will sign up and maybe become rmp's months down the road.

For the most part though, there is a huge circuit of freerollers out there that troll forums all day looking for passwords or entries. At the same time though, as long as you are aware of this and aren't expecting to make thousands from your freerolls, then I guess it doesn't hurt anything.

Just my thoughts

JohnH · #3 12-10-2007, 06:56 PM

What about tournaments that require a small buy in like $5 or $10? I want to take advantage of the traffic I have now by hosting a tournament of some kind.

Jeremy · #4 12-10-2007, 08:44 PM

Is it poker or non-poker traffic? I suppose it wouldn't hurt to just try one and see what the results are.

Might actually make for an interesting case study and good link bait for your blog.

Graham · #5 12-11-2007, 07:11 PM

I am currently conducting a similar study. I have found that it helped get the forum more active, so in that respect it is good. I never planned for it to make any money, but more to build up the forum, get some of the old posters coming back that hadn't posted in a while, capture a few more emails that I could market to down the road, and to raise awareness of the new site. The freeroll is going to run next weekend, and I am gonna post how it goes later in my blog.

Prenut · #6 12-11-2007, 10:44 PM

You might want to pose this question directly to Nick as it appears that he has been able to parlay an active forum into more than anyone else in this industry. From the few times that I have browsed through Cardschat it appears that he runs alot of money added freerolls that require a buy in (and hence a deposit). However, I do not know the history of how he went about this - meaning I don't know if he initially started with freerolls and then after getting more activity switching to money addeds.

PFO · #7 12-12-2007, 09:19 AM

I run many freerolls at my site, mainly to keep forum traffic and as a reward to my contributing forum members. I usually run a buy-in and a freeroll together. I don't plan on profiting anyway, but think it as a advertising cost for the website.

Try a small buy-in with added money.

J S · #8 12-12-2007, 09:24 AM

I would strongly suggest against making it a pure freeroll as you will be bombarded with freeroll whores, my god the freeroll whores. Instead, make it a smaller buy in with $$ added event and or prize added event.

You probably will not be able to limit it to ONLY players tracked to you... Reasons I say that is that you want a large number of people in the event I'm assuming and you want all of your 'regulars' (if you are doing this for a forum/community etc) to be able to play even if they do not have an account through you.

You also do not want to make a minimum post requirement in your forum unless you want tons of garbage posts and a lot of time investment managing it.

I would recommend a buy in, prize added event that requires them to at least opt-in to your newsletter, register with your forum, etc.

Even better is create a challenge of a series of tournaments where the points winner(s) at the end of the season win something special/big prize(s).

JohnH · #9 12-23-2007, 03:47 AM

I have made a post about my recent free roll on my blog.

kdollar · #10 12-23-2007, 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnH

I have made a post about my recent free roll on my blog.

Great Post, Nice to see from a webmasters perspective about putting on a freeroll