I created a contest, but (almost) nobody is interested. What I'm doing wrong?

I responded to you in your contest thread about that, if you didn't notice yet.

Maybe the contest is too much of a hassle :P

Oversaturation of the market. Or, in layman's terms, you can have too much of a good thing.

It's an interesting socio-economic phenomenon, actually.

Time is a factor. Sometimes the contest can be awesome but just at the wrong time when everyone happens to be busy with something or the other.

The really simple ones usually are the best - otherwise they have to be AWESOME. That's how the cult images happen - by somehow selecting a random image to photoshop and being lucky enough to create enough of a snowball effect.

You can't force these things, either they happen or they flop. *shrugs* :)

I think you nailed it.

Vorax

Thanks!

Your contest is just too much hassle for me, especially when you have to count the gears.

I kinda agree with this. I don't have that much time, and your contest involves points, with lots of tasks and such, so I obstained myself from it since I knew I couldn't win (since I don't have that much time).

Bazilisek is probably right. I know that's true enough for me. I won two on GOG recently and Akwater also gifted me another game on my birthday recently. Given how I never used to win anything at all that's quite a lot in the space of a month. Especially on top of other birthday gifts.

Here's what I think in more detail: there really are a lot of contests going on at the moment, which means the target audience will inevitably become very fragmented. Several factors help this fragmenting tremendously:

1) Multi-step contests, such as yours, take second seat to direct, quick competitions. This is the instant gratification age, after all. You also have to balance the effort / award ratio; $5.99 isn't a very significant amount for many people here (the community here is very much single-generation, and we're in productive age now), and you can't expect them to pay attention for very long if this is the value of the prize.

2) Due to the nature of the forum, it's really easy to overlook a contest thread. Time is also a huge issue: the place is most alive at evening time in America, when vigorous activity may easily bury a thread. Once it slips from page 1, it's often as good as dead; and the default number of threads per page is fairly low.

3) There are so many contests going on right now that I myself have stopped following them. I've won about three games altogether over the last two months or so and winning any more would feel quite selfish. In fact, I had plans for my own giveaway, but GOG died just before I actually did it and with the brouhaha around its resurrection, I have decided to postpone it indefinitely, especially seeing what's happening now.

Even free stuff stops being interesting if there's a lot of it. Curious, but true.

I'll also add a couple of things to that: setting a single challenge that people could put some thought and / or creativity into would have been better than a whole load of different tasks. You might still see people put just as much effort in, but when you break it up too much it starts to seem like a bit of a chore.

That goes double when you don't know what those tasks are going to be. Judging by the first couple of days, it seems like a lot of work was going to be needed for that $6 GOG.

Yeah as it's been said it's all effort vs the prize.

The more effort the better the prize needs to be to get more traction.

For instance CMD, 2nd to last poster after she was done eating her turkey sandwhich won a game too easy... so people would post thinking ok,... 30 min or so she should be done with her sandwhich :) Then they found out that it was a two part sandwhich :) Extra innings went into to play and the red sox won the world series (true story). People had fun with it and started talking about sandwhiches, pies, and various other things. At the same point everyone was still doing the contest as well as it didnt have a real goal other then being the 2nd to last poster.

The music part of your thing was a pain I listened to one and was like damn..... gonna drive me nuts~! so I stoped for the rest of them....

Mine, I... sometimes do code things, sometimes just random things, adlibs, etc. The other thing with mine was, I saw how many other contests were out so i asked the other contest holder type people if it was cool with them if I did a couple, (I was going to post one last night but decided not to because there are so many going on right now the market is saturated).

for 5 bucks... I'd do the contest if I could make a fairly easy attempt and have a chance.
for 10 bucks, I'm willing to be a bit silly and do adlibs, or story, or just post, type of thing.
for 100 I'd put a lot more effort into the thing.
for 1000 I'd skip work for a day :)
for 10,000 I'd tell my boss, and or coworkers about it and get ideas and what not to try and win :)

Speaking for myself here, but I'm not tired at all with these contests! I love'em, as I love this community here. It's so rare to have a nice place to chat and without vultures just coming in for the free stuff. GOG Bless!

Speaking of which, I'm eager to win a contest and get to play Planescape, and even though your contest won't do it, I'd still participate on it since there are lots of great games I'd still want for 5,99 (like Total Annihilation for example). It's just that it's too much of a hassle for me, and with the little free time I get nowadays (and my different time zone), I knew I wouldn't be able to win that one, so I took a step back.

We're coming up on the holidays, people are tired, stressed, overworked in school or at jobs and a raft of holiday titles have started launching. Fable 3 and The Force Unleashed 2 are out on Monday, a ton of folks already are into Castlevania and Fallout: New Vegas from earlier this month. Also, a lot of us need to get through 3 big GOG games sometime (PS:T, IWD, and BG).

People are busy, not sure what your contest is, but if it's timeconsuming or requires some kind of talent that people feel mediocre at (say artistic ability) they might not put in the time.