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Just wrote this up after running an AdWords campaign against my Uber referral link earlier this week. I know that this method is well-publicized for maxing out

Just wrote this up after running an AdWords campaign against my Uber referral link earlier this week. I know that this method is well-publicized for maxing out your Dropbox storage - has anyone else tried this for other services?

Osiris 14y ago
For Dropbox, I earned my credit by linking to my referral URL in the download page of my website, which gets about 1k hits a day. It took a while but I maxed about my Dropbox credit and have over 20GB on my free account now. This was basically an ad that I placed myself, so an Adword campaign should work quite well especially with a free advertising code.
patio11 14y ago
Brand arbitrage is a mainstay of many affiliate marketers. Given that one can transform success with it into (large piles of) generally spendable currency, most don't spend too much time optimizing for (small piles of) gift cards.
- alexshipillo 14y ago
  Great point. I mentioned in my post that "there isn’t a huge amount of upside" financially, but I definitely got personal value out of just doing the experiment. I'd suspect that most of the truly lucrative affiliate opportunities are extremely competitive.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
calbear81 14y ago
I did this for a few days a while back when Fab.com was offering the credit for new referrals on both ends (money for them, money for me) but wasn't able to get it to ROI positive. There were a ton of sign ups but not enough people made that first purchase to get me the credit and they're pretty smart about expiring credits and the putting in a 30-day limit on when the referral must have completed their first purchase.
- alexshipillo 14y ago
  Interesting. Does the person need you sign up through you, or just use your referral code at checkout? If it's the later, I wonder if you could target your keywords to "fab promo code" or "fab discount" to try to get people that were near the end of the purchase cycle and were just looking for a promo to complete their purchase.
  - calbear81 14y ago
    Actually, it was simpler than that. The link on my ad went to a Fab.com sign up page that already had my referral code embedded. The user simply needed to make a purchase within the first 30 days to enable me to receive my referral credit. Many of the users I paid for most likely did buy something but not within the 30 day timeframe.

Osiris 14y ago

For Dropbox, I earned my credit by linking to my referral URL in the download page of my website, which gets about 1k hits a day. It took a while but I maxed about my Dropbox credit and have over 20GB on my free account now. This was basically an ad that I placed myself, so an Adword campaign should work quite well especially with a free advertising code.

patio11 14y ago

Brand arbitrage is a mainstay of many affiliate marketers. Given that one can transform success with it into (large piles of) generally spendable currency, most don't spend too much time optimizing for (small piles of) gift cards.

alexshipillo 14y ago
Great point. I mentioned in my post that "there isn’t a huge amount of upside" financially, but I definitely got personal value out of just doing the experiment. I'd suspect that most of the truly lucrative affiliate opportunities are extremely competitive.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

calbear81 14y ago

I did this for a few days a while back when Fab.com was offering the credit for new referrals on both ends (money for them, money for me) but wasn't able to get it to ROI positive. There were a ton of sign ups but not enough people made that first purchase to get me the credit and they're pretty smart about expiring credits and the putting in a 30-day limit on when the referral must have completed their first purchase.

alexshipillo 14y ago
Interesting. Does the person need you sign up through you, or just use your referral code at checkout? If it's the later, I wonder if you could target your keywords to "fab promo code" or "fab discount" to try to get people that were near the end of the purchase cycle and were just looking for a promo to complete their purchase.
- calbear81 14y ago
  Actually, it was simpler than that. The link on my ad went to a Fab.com sign up page that already had my referral code embedded. The user simply needed to make a purchase within the first 30 days to enable me to receive my referral credit. Many of the users I paid for most likely did buy something but not within the 30 day timeframe.