Well, I was thinking that adding a contributor-rank and above lottery would be a way to cause (possibly) more people to pay the $5.
It does not even have to be an official plug-in. Anyone who wants to, puts forth say 10 coins to enter, and one person wins it. Do a weekly draw? and allow people to buy more then one ticket.
Possibly something like:
1 Ticket~ 10 coins
3 Tickets~ 25 coins
5 tickets~ 40 coins
One issue I see is who would be the person to hold onto the money? An admin most-likely. - assuming no bank exists-
The way somebody would win/ How the draw would be execute like: Starting on Monday, Everytime someone buys a ticket, they get whatever number is next. IE:
Mrepic buys the first 2 Tickets, he gets ticket #1, and #2.
Later that day, v6LRu buys 5 tickets. He gets # 3,4,5,6,7.
This would go on for 6 days, and on the 7th, a winner would be chosen using a random number service (free online)
Some Snags/Side-notes:
I don't think a ticket cap is needed. I have seen many times the person with one ticket, beat the person with 20. The cost / How long it lasts / When the draw occurs - are all changeable
How the "banker" will sell tickets while he/she is offline Tickets will not be a physical item, I think it would be much easier for the "banker" to keep track of it in a program like note-pad. If the lotto sells tickets for the next draw starting Monday at 4PM PST (or whatever) and the "banker" is not online, how will he/she know who tried to buy first? a plug-in for this does exist, making it much easier. But I do not know anything about it, and if you can restrict it to certain ranks. I do not know the name either.