have a section of images and banner that promote and link to Gears Garage like most sites have.

The staff and I have been talking about setting up a referral program and contest for the members. We were thinking maybe having a contest for members that refer the most people to GearsGarage and the winners would receive some sort of prize. We still haven't worked out the details. Some of our concerns are unwanted spamming and cheating.

Any suggestions on how we could promote the site cheaply would be greatly appreciated.

I'll get to designing GG image links

this is the best I can do with access to Paint right now, I'll do better ones when I get home and onto Photoshop Elements.

the best idea is word of mouth. I mean, online advertising always works well, but it can be expensive. We're all car people, which means we must have at least one friend into cars... that's what I do.. I tell peeps at school. I love being able to just talk about cars.

I'm not talking in terms of what your thinking, I'm talking about putting a link on your signature on another forum/community site or posting a link on your myspace profile.

yeah totally. do it to it.

I would totally put a gears garage banner on my myspace page. So you should make some! Yes yes!

OK I'll get to work on one tomarrow then.

Awesome! Thanks!

Here's a small animated one I made. I will probably make few more for variety.
You can also just snag the logo at the top of the site aswell (the default or the one used in "Dark" profile template).

I have Flash and Photoshop but I don't know how to use everything, pretty sad, huh?