- What you're questing for.
How much your item(s) will cost.
How much you've raised/saved so far
Who you're bumpers and donators are (Some people don't put up who they're bumpers are, which is a biggie. People wany some regognition.)
Other things you can do to attract people are:
- Point out the number of bumps people do for you (not only does this earn you more gold from browsing and editing posts, but it shows how dedicated you are and people are more inclined to loosen up their purse strings! wink )
Keep a log, either in your quest page or in a journal (although the quest thread would be better because journals aren't always accessible and if your thread isn't accessible then neither is most of Gaia), to let people know how things are progressing, what you're doing (ie setting daily goals for how much you want to earn, what you've done so far, etc.) Again, this makes people more inclined to help out because this is stuff shows you are working towards your quest.
Post the date (and time if you feel inclined) at the bottom of your most frequently updated posts so people can see how current your gold count is, and your bumpers and donattors list are.
Be fancy by using different font colours (Color Codes here) and font sizes, but remember to keep it easy on your visitor's eyes! While you may operate your monitor at such and such specifications, someone else *coughmecough* could have a slightly behind the times monitor that could make your beautiful quest thread look like crap and make it a real pain in the butt to read. (Yes, visitors sometimes needed to be treated with a gloved hand.)
Other things you could do are to make items for sale specifically for your quest. One fellow had help from someone who drew wonderful ponies. She drew him the one style and coloured it in different variations and he was able to get his chickie slippers. It's good to befriend shop owners and see if any of them will help you and authorize you to sell a tailorized item from their shop for your quest. I've seen a few people do it.
If that's not an option, you could try to make some items yourself. I tried that route, but I wasn't very successful with that venture. sweatdrop But it was an option that I included in my quest thread and I've seen people have it too.
Other suggestions are:
Have an interesting thread title & thread all together
A post of questions that you come up with that perhaps you're visitors may be wondering about. Humour helps here.
Post a story of why you're questing. One questor wrote that when she first started, she hadn't gotten the hang of what donation letters were all about and so missed out on a bunch of letters. However, because she figured them out, she began a quest for them and I feel that because of her story, she did well in her quest.
Some people have official quest mascots and will give them a voice, so that they're like one of the non-playing characters (or whatever NPC stands for) found around Gaia.
If you have a reliable hoster or can get by with a freebie hoster not always being up 24/7 or don't mind going over your bandwidth, you could use graphics. These could be graphics you've made yourself or that someone else has made, such as buying one or more of their items from their shops (stealing images is a no-no and can get you in trouble). If this isn't possible (no reliable server, don't want to have that ugly gone over bandwidth picture, or couldn't make graphics if you're life depended on it (like me!) or don't have funds to buy graphics from someone else), you can use graphics found around Gaia. I've seen people use images of angelic scarves to dress up their angelic scarf quest. I've used various brown paper bags for my bumps, just so that they were colourful and not simply "bump" (I also coloured my bump sayings too!).
Oh, one more tip: don't overuse these icons: gonk , or sad These icons will deter people from giving to your quest because they're negative and a put off to most people. You're more than likely to receive a cold reception than a warm offering of gold.
So, start with the first few items that I posted earlier. From there, decided what you want to add and not add. Some will work for you. Some won't. Do browse around in the Quest/Charity forum and look at threads for ideas. Are there some that make you inclined to help them (if you weren't on a quest yourself)? Are there some that make you want to click the back button or some other link just to get out of there? What's the first thing that catches your eye in a quest thread? Does it give you a good impression or does it turn you off? Those are the sort of things you need to keep in mind.
Once you can answer those questions, have a choosen a few things to stick in your thread, then you're on your way to building an excellent quest thread in the Charity/Quest Forum. Don't be afraid to save a couple of posts if you think later on you might use them. It's never a problem if you have too many posts reserved, but not having enough can cause a problem, because at some point, you will hit a character limit for a post, and you don't want people having to go to another page to find a certain post. If you can reserve whatever number of posts in the first page (usually "don't post! I'm setting up!" works great) you think you need, the better your thread will be.
