Voting Blocks
Voting Block are great way for your contest to raise funds, accept donations and sweeten the prize pool. They work by allowing votes to be cast via Stripe or Paypal payments.
How can Voting Blocks be used?
Paid votes can be used in conjunction with free votes
The number Paid Voting Blocks and frequency of Paid Voting is controllable via configuration and does not prevent free voting.
Paid votes are a great way to receive donations for fundraisers
The prize winner of your contest can be determined by the entrant who generates the most donations. This is an effective way of making your entrants use their social networks to help your contest engage with as many users as possible!
Paid votes can be used to generate a prize pool
A proportion of the money generated by the paid voting can be used to sweeten the prize pool – giving your voters more incentive to vote!
We also provide a Ticker element, so you can display the money raised (or percentage) on the website in real time!
Voting Blocks are fully configurable, allow you to specify:
the number of Voting Blocks options presented to the user
the cost of each block
the number of votes included with each block
whether paid voting is included in the vote limitation rules (24 hours, 1 vote only, etc)
We recommend that vote blocks are organized so that as the cost of the block increases, the cost per vote decreases. This discount incentivizes voters to purchase larger blocks – as they are perceived as being of better value.
Configuring Vote Blocks
Voting Blocks requires the configuration of a Voting Form, Voting Period and a valid Payment Gateway.
Creating the Vote Form
Log into the Admin section: <contest-site>.us.launchpad.com/admin
Press the Contest Icon:
Click the Manage button for the contest that requires Voting Blocks.
Select the Settings tab.
Choose Forms from the sub-navigation panel of the left.
Click the Add Form and select the option Add Vote Form. The Vote form dialog will be displayed.
If you are using multiple Vote Forms, change the Form Name and press Save.
Click the Add Field button, the Add Vote Entry Field will be shown.
Set the fields:
Label: Vote Block (or whatever you want displayed)
Description: [Optional] A message displayed under the Label.
Mandatory: Yes
Active: On
Type: Payment
Entry Fee Currency: [As required]
Vote Purchase Type: Vote Blocks
Vote Blocks:
Set the Number of votes and fee.
Add Blocks as required by pressing Add another.
If the fee is set to 0 (zero), the option for free votes will appear to the Voter.
Add the Vote Blocks in the order from lowest dollar value to highest (there is no sorting option).
Ignore Vote Rules for amount > $0: Generally, this option is checked – allowing vote purchases at any time during the Voting period.
10. Press the Save button.
Configuring the Vote Period
Now that the form has been specified, you can attach it to a Voting Period. If you haven’t set up a Voting Period yet – See the tutorial Setting up voting periods.
Log into the Admin section: <contest-site>.us.launchpad.com/admin
Press the Contest Icon:
Click the Manage button for the contest you want to add the Voting Blocks to.
Select the Settings tab.
Choose Voting & Judging from the sub-navigation panel of the left.
Select the Voting Period to include the new the Vote Form.
The important setting is Vote Form. Choose your Voting Form from the drop-down list. It will be listed as the Form Name you used when configuring the form.
Press the Submit button.
Payment Gateway
The Vote Block dialog will not appear to the Voter, unless at least one Payment Gateway option is set to Active.
To configure the Payment Gateway, see the articles:
When configured, the Voting Block will become visible when the Voter presses the Vote Now button. It should something like this:
