How are winners chosen?
Every DareBay contest uses one of three selection types. The type is fixed before the start: the organizer picks it at creation and cannot change it mid-run.
Whichever type a contest uses, the budget is locked on the platform from the moment it is published, and the platform guarantees the payout to the winner.
Random draw among the most-liked (RANDOM)
When the entry window closes, the system takes the top N most-liked submissions and draws the winners at random from that pool.
- Good for: giveaways, contests with no expert judging, hype campaigns.
- Feels like: a lottery with a popularity filter.
- What the participant does: submits work that people will like; the draw decides the rest.
The organizer's own call (CREATOR_DECISION)
After the deadline the organizer reviews the submissions and names the winner themselves, by the selection deadline they fixed at creation.
- Good for: subjective quality (design, copy, craft), curated contests.
- Feels like: classic judging.
- What the participant does: follows the task to the letter and shows real quality.
- On trust: contests decided by the organizer lean heavily on their rating. Low-rated organizers who judge their own contests draw few entries, and rightly so.
A vote by the audience (VIEWER_VOTING)
Submissions move into a voting phase where viewers vote for the ones they like (one vote per account per contest). The top of the vote count wins.
- Good for: community contests, brand activations, anything where "who the crowd picked" is the whole point.
- Feels like: a talent show final.
- What the participant does: submits, then gathers support honestly (sharing is fine, bots are not).
Protection against vote fraud
It applies to all three types:
- Likes and votes from fake accounts are caught and do not count. A repeat attempt costs the account.
- Organizers do not vote in their own contests.
- Participants do not vote for their own submission.
- Suspicious patterns (thousands of votes from one IP, coordinated timing, freshly created accounts voting in unison) go to review, and the result is recounted if the fraud is confirmed.
For an honest participant it comes down to one thing: inflated votes never reach the money.
What if the winner never responds
If a named winner does not claim the prize in time, the prize passes to the next in line (voting and top-liked contests) or the organizer picks again (the organizer's own call). The claim deadline is always stated in the notification the winner receives.
→ See also: Create your first contest, fake submissions.