How to set up online voting for a competition

WhatsApp polls and Google Forms were never built to decide a winner. Numbers go missing, one person votes fifty times, and someone always screenshots a different total. Proper online voting fixes all three: it counts every entry, it shows the same leaderboard to everyone, and it can raise real money for your competition. Here is how to set it up.

Free votes, paid votes, or both

There are two kinds of vote, and most competitions run both at once:

Free daily vote: supporters can vote for free each day, and you set how many free votes they get per contestant. It costs the supporter nothing and brings people back day after day, which is exactly the traffic you want.
Paid vote packages: supporters buy votes in bundles, say 10, 50, or 100 at a set price. This is where the competition funds itself. The more someone wants their person to win, the more they can put in.

Running them together is the sweet spot. The free vote keeps the leaderboard busy and the contest visible; the paid packages turn that attention into money.

Setting it up, step by step

Create your event and add your contestants, each with a name, a photo, and a short story.
Turn on the free daily vote if you want the traffic, which you almost always do.
Add one or more paid vote packages. Keep the prices simple and round. Three options is plenty; more than that just slows the decision.
Set the voting window: when voting opens and when it closes. A clear closing time creates the final-hours rush that brings the most votes.
Publish. Share each contestant’s link and let it run.

The live leaderboard does the work

Once voting is open, every contestant page shows a running tally and the event page shows the standings. Supporters check it, share it, and push their person up it. You do not announce numbers by hand or settle disputes over a screenshot: the leaderboard is the single source of truth, the same for everyone looking at it.

Keeping the result clean

A vote nobody trusts is worse than no vote at all. Two things protect the count:

Paid votes are tied to a real payment. Every paid vote is a card or instant-EFT transaction through a registered South African provider, so a paid total is a paid total. There is no editing it after the fact.
Free votes have a daily limit you set. The cap stops a single person refreshing their way to a landslide, so the free count reflects genuine support rather than a bot.

Publish your rules before voting opens: when it closes, whether the public vote is the whole result or part of it, and that paid votes do not refund. Settling the rules up front is the difference between a happy winner and a week of arguments.

Voting alongside the door

Online voting pairs naturally with a ticketed finale: the vote builds the crowd for weeks, then that crowd buys tickets to watch the crowning. If you are running both, set the voting window to close on the night, and sell your tickets the same way. See how to sell event tickets online and the full guide to running a pageant.

What it costs

Listing and running the vote is free. iKhetha takes 15% of paid votes and you keep 85%, settled straight to your bank account. Free votes are free to everyone, including you. The full breakdown is on pricing, or you can set up your vote now.