A few days ago I made a post offering to fund four new contests with 50 SBD each.

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I think that contests are great for many reasons. Here are just a few.

• Increases community interaction.
• Creates a fun environment to interact in.
• Gives the contest organizers an opportunity to gain followers.
• Gives contest participants an opportunity to win.
• Encourages creativity.
• Can give others content for posts.

I have ran many in my time here, and am currently running two great ones, the Wild & Strange Contest and the STEEM-Pocalypse Survival Game Contest. Since I am always curious to see what ideas others can come up with, I thought my donation offer could inspire some others. Let's see what they came up with.

The 4 WINNERS

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@lepton

Ok.. crazy idea for steemit game: What about making a contest (any kind) in which the winner will be the comment with LEAST upvotes. This experiment might create an interesting upvote spiral as all contestants will try to upvote their opponents.

*Only posts from first day or two enter the competition and then 3-4 days for an upvote madness:) Otherwise it would be won by the person who comments last.

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This one seemed like it was an interesting and somewhat backwards idea, which appealed to me. To upvote comments that you didn't want to win has some huge potential, and we have already seen entries in contests earn more than the actual winning entries. This contest has the same potential, which is good for many reasons. I suspect that the community interaction this contest will generate will be on a whole different level of fun!

@scrooger

How the game works: Post number one is invite for everyone who wants to play, everyone who comments in this post is entered into the game. After 4 days the entry is closed. We will now have many players that will be placed into a knockout style chart similar to this one:

The chart will be adjusted to how many players enter. After the 4 days for entry I will select everyone who has entered and place their names into the reply that will be post at random (I love dice so will use them to decide exactly what time of day this will go out). They will get notified that they have been mentioned in my post/reply. They then have to reply on my initial reply (mentioning all the players entered) in order to knock out their opponent in their respective bracket. SPEED IS KEY HERE.

Rules:

I will use Steemd.com to track the post and make sure I can see who was 1st with the reply. I have thought of bots being super fast so in my reply with all player names I will say a simple phrase fore example: "Boomshakalaka"

They need to reply to that specific comment with the keyword as their response to knock out their opponent. Random replies in next three days will follow until the winners are crowned.

Depending on the rounds and players and with 72 hours left before payout if we have to go 5 rounds it will be 72/4=18 hours. Thus one random reply within each 18 hour window.

Payouts:

1st place: 50% of the payout
2nd place: 20% of the payout
3rd place: 10% of payout

I have tried to run this once but with very little followers at the time, did not get enough players to participate and with too little of a payout.

I plan to run this at least 2 times a week.

Let me know what you think. Even if I don't get sponsorship, do you think this game might work? I might fund it myself if there is potential.

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This one seemed peculiar, and like it would require contestants to really be paying attention. Again, I think that the creative level of interaction would be beneficial, and like people would have a lot of friendly competition. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all works out.

@oleg326756

The contest will be announced on the Contest's Main Page, posted on my blog. The rules outlined below will be presented on that page. The comments section will be used to communicate with the contest's participants.

Anyone who wishes to participate in this contest will create a Fundraising Post on their blog on Steemit, where a charity, an issue (or a campaign goal), and a call to action will be presented in a creative way: through informative text, a touching poem, a video or a piece of art.

For example, I want to raise funds for Wikimedia Foundation to keep Wikipedia free of charge and free of advertisement. On my Fundraising Post I quickly explain what Wikipedia is, how it works, why it's important to keep it free and neutral, and why your donation to the Wikimedia Foundation will help. I might choose to do it through video, song, or text.

The contestants will then solicit upvotes and donations (in STEEM and SBD) from fellow Steemians. Promoting one's Fundraising Post on other social medias will be encouraged too, because it will automatically promote Steemit as a Force for Good. All Steemians will be free to upvote and donate to any and any number of Fundraising Posts they like and whose causes they would like to support. There won't be any limits on how many posts and causes one may choose to support.

The contest will start at the moment of the Contest's Main Page's having been posted. The contest will last until three days after the participating Fundraising Posts receive their respective author rewards (three days being an adequate time to turn the author reward and STEEM/SBD-donations into donation to the charity promoted by the Fundraising Post's author). By the end of the contest the author of the Fundraising Post will have to provide a proof of donation (a payment slip, a cheque, a bank transfer order or a receipt) to the charity they promoted, equivalent or greater to the sum of the author reward earned from the Fundraising Post and the donations received as part of the contest.

There will be four winners of the contest: the Top 3 fundraisers (determined by the amount of money they raised and donated to a charity of their choice) will receive the prize of 25 SBD, 15 SBD, and 10 SBD respectively. The fourth winner will be determined by the votes of the community on the Contest's Main Page (created and managed by myself). The winner of the community vote will receive the entire SBD payout of the author reward earned by the Contest's Main Page.

Please reply to this comment, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions. I tried to make this pitch as clear as I could, but I will be happy to clarify further, if needed.

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I love giving and there sure are many worthwhile charities and causes to donate to. I think that any contest that inspires others to give is worthwhile. I'm not completely sure how this one will work out (since I'm not sure about any of them) but I have chosen to donate to this contest idea and see.

@improv

I've been thinking about this for a while. It's an open mic.

The premise:
Live performances to bring together Steemians IRL, and build community.

The live how:
Each month, I'd choose a city in which a Steemian I know lives (We'll call them The Organizer). (I'd choose myself at The Organizer first, so Los Angeles first, since that's where I live, there are probably a bunch of Steemians here, and there's definitely already an open mic culture). In that city, The Organizer will choose a venue (I have hosted a number of open mics here), and announce on Steem the time/date/location, inviting any Steemian performers to come with up to 5 minutes of material and any non-performers to come be in the audience. I'd also advertise this to muggles. We'd shoot the performances.

The online how:
Each Steemian will be sent their up-to-5-minutes-of-fame, and asked to choose their best 1 minute from it to upload as a comment on a contest post. (Steemians not at the live event would also be able to enter the contest, but wouldn't have the advantage of live audience reactions and would not be eligible for some special prizes).

The choosing:
The top 10% of upvote getters in the comments plus my top 10% of picks will be presented to a panel of judges. The judges will include anybody (Steemians or muggles) who has donated at least 30 Steem to the prize pool. I'll arrange a Skype session between the judges. Each will get to choose one Champion (unique - they may not choose the same Champion as another) and cast one vote for any non-champion. The champions will each receive 30 Steem. The highest non-champion vote-getter will receive 5 Steem. The most upvoted comment performance will receive 5 Steem. The most-upvoted performance from the live open mic will receive 5 Steem. The Organizer will choose one performance to receive 5 Steem.

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This one also struck me as an interesting concept that could take things to another level. I'm willing to let others give things a try and see how they work out, so I chose this contest idea as my final winner.

Runners Up - Wait, You Didn't Say Anything About Runners Up!

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No, I didn't. However, I chose to give out a little more SBD to get some more contests going. Each of the following users will receive 20 SBD to get the contest started.

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Runner Up Number One - @beordo

I'll provide 3 writing prompts the first week, out of which the contestants can choose and write their entry. > Every following week, the contestants will continue the story of last weeks winner.
I really enjoy reading the writing prompts on Reddit but unfortunately, most of those stories stop after the first entry. With this contest I hope the keep the writing chain going :)
(I only did a quick search and couldn't find a contest like this on Steemit, but let me know if I'm wrong.)

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I thought that with so many creative and talented writers on steemit this idea would be a good one to support too! Best wishes as you move forward with this contest idea @beordo!

Runner Up Number Two - @joewantsfreedom

Design Grand Steemit User Experience (I didn't settle on the name yet, this is a working project name so far)

Idea
How successful anything is depends on the User Experience (UX) and Steemit is no an exception. Though good and proper User-Experience takes a long time to design and develop and often it is something technical teams don't think about at all.

Therefore I want to utilize the Users of Steemit as they know the best how they feel about the current UX, what can be improved and changed, or what is missing.
This would help Steemit even more and in turn help everyone on here.

How will it work?
Contest would be every two or three weeks lasting 5 rounds. (so 10 SBD per winner + whatever they get from getting their submission upvoted and whatever SBD would the post generate would go towards development/or to the winner - I'd have to decide)
There would be topic for each installment of the content, eg. "Improving Onboarding", "Improving finding relevant content", "Helping new users feel welcome in the community", "Starting Conversations with Blog posts", "Improving Long-term quality of Blogposts by supporting great content that's valuable for Lifetime", etc.

Though the topics would be gathered from the community as the community knows best what's missing, and then the contest can start.

People then submit their thought process behind certain Feature or UX design, create a prototype, and then let people vote for the best "solution" to the problem.

Why this
I want to quit my job and change careers completely and User Experience Design is on my mind and I think it's great. And I want to see how it could work if the actual Users do the design. If it's successfull then it will even improve Steemit.
And it's also very community driven and decentralized so I would be in no seat of power, and I like that.

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It seems like this would be a worthy contest too, and something that would benefit steemit. Give it a go @joewantsfreedom! Let's see where this goes!

Runner Up Number Three - @drpuffnstuff

My idea is hold a contest for who can make the best graphic or art for users to add to there posts. I would do it weekly or bi-weekly. Whatever would allow the best amount of time to get quality additions. Themes could include badges, minnow/whale/dolphins, steem banners, steem in space, steemit mascots, steem was here (photography). Maybe themes for words people have to look on creative commons websites (pixabay pexel etc). All things so we can spice up our posts (and even to use to help promote steemit on other sites). Payouts to the top 3, and special mentions to others! All the top submissions could then be added to peoples posts as they please. I think this type of challenge could really do good things for everyone here, and I will try my best to get it started regardless. Thanks for looking!

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I thought that this one would also provide a great opportunity for talented steemians to create some work that would also benefit the community! I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens with this one!

OTHER USERS RUNNING CONTESTS I HAVE RECENTLY DONATED TO

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• @avarice

• @daveks

• @destinysaid

• @hopehuggs

• @themanualbot

• @aiqabrago

• @marialin

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I have recently sent some funds to each of the users listed above to help fund some contests. Check out their pages to see what they are up to and how you could enter their contests for your chance to win.

Also, all my donations have already been paid out. It is up to the users who received these donations to produce the contests and pay out the winnings. I hope that this effort and my donations can increase the engagement, interaction, and fun that we all can experience here on steemit. Be blessed!

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Until next time…

Don’t waste your time online, invest it with steemit.com

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