How to Run a Photo Contest in WordPress (Step-by-Step)

The first time I ran a photo contest, I was just trying to get more people to share our new product on Instagram. What I didn’t expect was how quickly it drove traffic and email signups too.

Whether you run a food blog, a product brand, or a local business, a photo competition gives you something no other campaign type delivers: real photos from real customers, created willingly.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the exact steps I used to set up a photo contest in WordPress with RafflePress, including how to pick a theme, write your rules, and announce the winner.

Why Run a Photo Contest?

A photography contest can cost as little as the prize itself. Here are the outcomes worth targeting:

• Grow your email list: Participants can earn extra entries by subscribing, turning a UGC contest into a list-building campaign.
• Collect user-generated content: Submitted photos become marketing assets you can reshare with permission across social and email.
• Boost reach through referrals: RafflePress lets entrants earn bonus entries by referring friends, turning 100 participants into 500 through compounding shares.
• Grow your social following: Entry actions can require follows, shares, or tags on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and more.

How to Run a Photo Contest in WordPress

1. Install the RafflePress Plugin in WordPress

Start by adding RafflePress to your WordPress site. This gives you everything you need to create and manage your photo contest without touching code.

RafflePress is a WordPress giveaway plugin that handles photo submissions, winner selection, and viral sharing from inside your dashboard. The Pro plan adds email integrations, bonus entry actions, and built-in landing pages.

To begin, from your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins » Add New.

Search for RafflePress and click Install Now, then Activate.

Alternatively, you can download the RafflePress plugin file from WordPress and upload it to your site. This guide has a great explanation for installing WordPress plugins if you need help.

2. Set a Clear Goal for Your Photo Contest

Before anything else, decide what you want this contest to do. Your goal shapes every other decision, from the prize to the entry actions you enable.

Common goals include growing your email list, promoting a product launch, boosting social engagement, or collecting user-generated content. Pick one primary goal so you know which metrics to track when it’s over.

On contest length: run your contest for 1-2 weeks. That’s long enough for word to spread but short enough to keep urgency alive.

Shorter than a week and most people don’t have time to share it with friends. Longer than two weeks and momentum usually drops, because people assume they have plenty of time and never get around to entering.

3. Choose a Theme for Your Contest

The theme determines what photos people submit, and that determines whether those photos are actually useful to you after the contest closes.

A well-chosen theme aligns with your brand and produces images you can genuinely reshare. A vague theme produces a pile of random photos nobody asked for.

Here are a few directions that work well:

• Product-in-use: Ask entrants to show your product doing something. A coffee brand might ask for morning routine photos. A fitness brand might ask for workout shots. You get real customer UGC you can use in ads.
• Seasonal or topical: Tie the theme to an upcoming event, holiday, or cultural moment. These have built-in urgency and shared reference points.
• Niche lifestyle: A food blogger could ask for “your favorite homemade cake” without featuring a product at all. You build engagement and association without making it feel commercial.
• Creative challenge: Give people a constraint and let them surprise you. “Show us your workspace” or “capture something blue” invites creativity and produces more interesting images than “show us your [product].”

If you want something more playful, a selfie contest is a low-barrier variation that works well for brands with a younger audience.

4. Choose a Prize That Attracts the Right People

A great giveaway prize gets the right people to enter. Pick something closely tied to your product or service so you attract potential customers, not freebie seekers.

The main purpose of this contest is to increase leads, sales, and customers. You want to avoid people who will unsubscribe or unfollow as soon as the contest is over. Choosing a prize that’s desirable to the right people is the key.

Offering a voucher or gift certificate for your business can work well. These appeal to potential customers but hold little interest for casual freebie hunters.

Remember: you don’t want as many entrants as possible. You want the right entrants.

5. Decide What Type of Photo Entries You Want

Think about what kind of photos you want people to submit. It could be product shots, themed images, or anything that fits your niche.

There are a few options to consider for your image submission contest:

• Anything that fits your niche: It could be something specific to your niche. For example, a food blogger could ask for pictures of their favorite cake. While products or services aren’t featured, you’ll be creating engagement.
• Photos of your products being used: Asking people to share photos of your product in action is a powerful way to get your audience to share content. This promotes your products in an authentic way.
• Creative use of your product: Creative or unusual photos of your product can increase engagement and give people inspiration.

6. Set Up Your Photo Contest in RafflePress

RafflePress includes image submissions as a built-in entry action, which handles photo collection in a few clicks. Here’s how to set it up.

Scroll down to the Actions panel in your giveaway editor and select the Submit an Image action. From there you can:

• Add instructions for entrants.
• Allow daily entries.
• Set the number of entries per submission.
• Make image submissions mandatory.

As the host, you can view all submitted images on the Entries screen. When the contest closes, you can either choose the winner manually or let RafflePress randomly draw one.

7. Customize Your Contest Details and Design

This step covers both the contest setup and the visual presentation. Getting both right matters: a contest that looks mismatched from your site can make people hesitate before entering.

To add contest details, click the Design tab and fill in your title, description, and prize image (Pro accounts). Set your timezone, start date, and end date. If you have more than one prize, click +Add Another Prize.

To customize entry options, click the Actions tab and adjust the titles and entry values for each action.

For the design, click the Design tab and adjust fonts, button color, background color, and layout. If you know CSS, you can add custom styles there too.

8. Add Rules and Configure Entry Settings

Every contest needs rules, and RafflePress generates a basic set in about 30 seconds.

Go to Settings, select Giveaway Rules, and click the orange +Generate Rules button. Enter your contest details and click Generate Rules.

A basic set of rules is generated for you.

You can also choose to display the contest winners, enable email verification, and more. When you’re finished, click Save in the top right corner.

How to select a winner. Photo contests give you four options, each with a different trade-off:

• Random draw: RafflePress handles this natively. It’s the fairest option for participation-based contests and takes the pressure off you to judge.
• Judge panel: You or a small group scores submissions against preset criteria. Adds credibility and produces a more deliberate winner selection, but takes more time.
• Public vote: Entrants promote their submissions to gather votes, which drives additional organic reach. Watch for vote gaming if the stakes are high.
• Internal selection: You review submissions and choose the winner based on fit with your brand goals. Good when the purpose is collecting specific types of UGC.

Photo rights and consent.

RafflePress’s rule generator covers the basics, but photo contests need an additional clause: participants should affirm that the photo is their own original work and that they grant you permission to use it in future marketing. This needs to be added manually to the generated rules.

If you plan to use submitted photos in paid advertising, consulting a lawyer or using a platform terms template is worth the effort.

9. Publish the Photo Contest on Your Website

It’s time to publish. You have three options:

• Giveaway Landing Page: Create a landing page specifically for your contest.
• WordPress Shortcode: Using the Classic WordPress editor, embed the contest with a shortcode.
• RafflePress WordPress Block: Embed the contest in any post or page using the block editor.

To add your contest to a new page or post, click the + icon and locate the RafflePress widget.

Select the contest you want to embed.

Then click Publish to embed the contest on your site.

10. Share and Promote Your Contest

Promotion determines whether 50 people see your contest or 5,000. Share it everywhere your audience already is: email list, social media bios, email signature, and any online communities relevant to your niche.

Here’s a list of contest promotion ideas to get you started. Keep posting reminders until the contest closes, and consider sharing some of the photos you’ve already received to generate interest from people who haven’t entered yet.

Create a contest hashtag.

A unique, brand-aligned hashtag makes submissions easier to track and gives entrants a way to participate publicly. Before settling on one, search the hashtag on Instagram and X to confirm it isn’t already in use for something unrelated. Use it across all your promotional posts and include it in the entry instructions so participants know to tag their submissions.

If you want to run a hashtag contest as the primary entry mechanic, RafflePress supports that too.

Use the refer-a-friend mechanic.

This is where RafflePress has an edge no SaaS competitor can match in WordPress. Entrants earn bonus entries by referring friends directly through the contest widget. That mechanic turns a contest with 100 participants into one with 300 or 500 through compounding referrals, because every person who enters becomes an active promoter.

I’ve seen this play out with the photo contests we’ve run, and it’s consistently the entry action that drives the highest share volume. Set it up under the refer-a-friend giveaway action in your entry settings.

11. Announce the Winner and Follow Up

What you do after the contest closes determines whether participants feel good about your brand or forget you exist by the following week.

Here’s the sequence that works:

• Notify non-winners first: Send a thank-you email to all participants before the public announcement. Let them know who won and offer them something for taking part, even a small discount.
• Announce publicly: Post the winner’s photo on your social channels and tag them if they consent. Make it feel like a celebration, not an admin update.
• Send the prize promptly: Don’t let days go by. Slow fulfillment is a quick way to undo the goodwill a well-run contest builds.
• Ask the winner for a follow-up photo: A photo of them with their prize is another piece of authentic UGC and closes the loop publicly.

How to Know If Your Photo Contest Worked

Running a contest without checking results makes it hard to improve the next one. These are the metrics worth tracking:

• Total submissions: How many photos you received tells you whether the theme and prize were compelling enough.
• Unique participants: How many distinct entrants joined, separate from total entries.
• Email list growth during the contest window: Compare your list size on day 1 and close date.
• Social follower growth: Track before and after across the platforms you required follows on.
• Website traffic spike: Check Google Analytics or MonsterInsights for a bump during the contest period.
• Post-contest engagement rate: Did the new followers stick around? Check your engagement rate 2-3 weeks after the contest closes.

And don’t let the photos sit unused after the contest. Reshare the best submissions on social media (with the photographer’s permission), repurpose them in email campaigns, and tag the original photographers when you do. This extends the value of the contest well past its close date and turns participants into ongoing brand advocates.

FAQ: How to Run a Photo Contest

How long should a photo contest run?

Run your contest for 1-2 weeks. That’s long enough for word to spread but short enough to maintain urgency. Shorter than a week and most people won’t have time to share it. Longer than two weeks and momentum drops because people assume they have plenty of time and never get around to entering.

How do I pick a winner for a photo contest?

You have four options: random draw (RafflePress handles this natively), judge panel (you or a small group score submissions), public vote (entrants promote their entry to gather votes), or internal selection (you review and choose based on brand fit).

Random draw is the simplest and fairest for participation-based contests. Public voting drives the most additional reach but requires monitoring for gaming. Use this guide to picking a giveaway winner for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Do I need legal rules or terms and conditions for a photo contest?

Yes. Photo contests require rules covering eligibility, how winners are selected, prize details, and photo rights. RafflePress generates a basic set automatically, but you need to add a photo rights clause manually: participants should affirm the photo is their own work and grant you permission to use it in marketing.

Requirements vary by country and platform. If you plan to use photos in paid advertising, consulting a lawyer or using a platform-specific terms template is worth the investment.

Can I run a photo contest on Instagram using WordPress?

Yes. RafflePress lets you run a photo contest that includes Instagram-specific entry actions, such as following your account, tagging a friend in a post, or sharing your contest post to stories. You can host an Instagram photo contest with submissions collected through RafflePress and manage everything from your WordPress dashboard.

The photo contest I ran to promote our product on Instagram drove more email signups in one week than we’d seen in the previous month. Your results will vary, but the mechanics work.

Over 200,000 WordPress sites run their giveaways with RafflePress, and it holds a 5-star rating on WordPress.org. Get RafflePress Pro and you can have your first photo contest live today.

If you want to learn about other types of contests, here are some related tutorials:

• How to Run a Social Media Photo Contest
• How to Run a Photo Contest on Facebook
• How to Run a Blog Giveaway
• How to Run a Book Giveaway

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