What if nobody enters?
If the submission deadline has passed and there are zero valid entries:
The prize comes back in full
Cash prizes return to the available balance of your wallet, the whole amount. There is nothing to do by hand: it happens when the contest moves to its final state.
Item prizes were never physically held by DareBay, so there is nothing to return; you simply keep the item.
The commission comes back in part
The share of the commission that covered processing the prize pool is returned. The share that paid for feed placement and promotion is not: that resource was spent whether or not any submissions arrived.
The exact amounts are shown in the final contest report.
Your rating does not drop
Zero submissions does not hurt your organizer rating. It happens for honest reasons: a narrow topic, a short deadline, a prize that does not match the effort. The rating only moves when something went wrong through your own fault (you did not pay out the prize, you changed the rules mid-contest, and so on).
How to avoid it
- Give people time. Under 24 hours for anything non-trivial is too little.
- Match the prize to the effort. A 5-minute selfie for $500 will draw a crowd; a 10-hour video for $20 will not.
- Be specific in the terms. "Best content" gets you spam; "a 30-second vertical video of X in the style of Y" gets you real submissions.
- Pick the right category. Narrow categories have a smaller audience, but a relevant one.
→ See also: Create your first contest, how winners are chosen.