Some CC's suck, but mine never did

I've seen Costume Contests deliver mass inf to a single player out of 50 or so hopefulls. Pure laziness, or maybe just a ringer. Lame.

Many contests offer 3 prizes. Still weak, imo.

The ones I used to run (infrequently) would offer 3 prizes for costume, 2 or 3 for Bio, and every other mid to lowbie participent would recieve at the very least a 50 SO (to sell), and a medium or large inspirition. Blasters and squishies would get Wakes (haha) or Breaks for instance.

Naturally this required a couple/few peeps to help out with storage and bio checking, or bringing them to base and using the Insp Collecter (and when will we ever be able to buy directly from it?!).

Things I can now do to improve my Contests:
Redside (now) it occured to me to port peeps to ferry or use the base to get to Grandville and bring them to the JetPack store guy. Very usefull for lowbies of course.

What else can I do to improve them, if I decide to have a CC? Give forth.

If you are going to hold CCs on redside, advertisements in global channels are key, due to the lack of a generalized meeting spot.

Just holding newbie CC's would be worthwhile as well. So many of the best looking characters are people who have 50s and have been around. Let's see what no vet badge, or 3-12 month vet badge players can do.

The last major CC I held with my level 50 main went something like this:
I was looking for overall character concepts that I liked- costume AND bio. I announced this in advance, so anyone without a bio could write one if they liked. It didn't have to be long, I've seen good bios in all lengths.

I looked over the contestants and picked seven finalists. But before I called out the finalists, I handed out a couple of honourable mentions for great costumes that had no bios attached. I called out my finalists, but told the others to stay put, and went down the line giving each player about 5k inf as a consolation prize and thanks for coming out.
Then I had all of my finalists answer some questions in character, and made my final choices based on costume+bio+good answers to my questions. And of course, the four runners-up also got a larger consolation prize for their efforts. So everyone who came to my CC got a little something as a treat.

As a participant in CC's, I like it when judges do things like this for their contestants. Even if you don't win, you get a little something just for coming out and playing.

Pick the best 4 costumes. Winners face eachother in a knockout round style of rock/paper/scissors.

Winner gets the money

I've never seen a "good" costume contest. The award always seems to go to either they darkity dark guy with all the horns/spikes/crap all over, or the female that shows the most skin.

Needless to say, me playing a Silver Age hero.... never won one.

I've been to CC's where I won first place. I've been to CC's in the same costume where the judge didn't even pause to look at me as he ran back and forth down the line.

I've found it's best to just treat them as social occasions and a chance to hang with the community rather than sweat the prize money.