Ask HN: A small reward to everyone who signs up vs. a big reward to the best 3?

And depending on what your reward is, I wouldn't be representing Zynga well if I didn't say you should test it. :-)

The conversation was about (insert major cable tv operator here) calling him up randomly asking him to take a quick survey, at which point he hung up the phone.

Now, had the same person / company called him asking the same thing, but offering a gift card of $x amount (regardless of what $x is), it would be worth his time. X could be as low as $5 with the sky being the limit, but the point being, if you want something from him that would waste his time, any gift, no matter how small, would make it worth his time / effort.

Moral of the story; most people would be willing to do something, so long as a gift / award was involved, no matter how small the gift / award might be. The more you ask them to do; the bigger the gift should be.