Awesome write up, I'm amazed it performed so well. Most people's first few brushes with adwords end very poorly. At work my only job is to manage display campaigns.. I'm wondering if I could do something like this in my free time.
FYI - if this test was ran for much longer or at a larger scale his adwords account probably would've been locked. Google has strict affiliate rules and you aren't supposed to have two accounts sending traffic to the same domain.
Referral links are the most amazing financial product I've ever seen.
I'll start from the end: Companies get FREE advertising from YOU, and unless you get them an actual customer, they don't pay.
Effectively companies are “forcing” you to advertise for free (forced by your desire to "make easy money"), and then they pay you a commission if you get them a paying customer.
And you may fail to realise that you are already paying them by placing their ad in your page. Because in order for you to get money, you need to get them a click that ends in a paying customer. You could have pointed that customer to something you owned and theoretically you could have received the full value of their purchase. So losing that is a payment you make in order to "refer" a customer... Its crazy!
Companies offer to buy purchasing customers from you. It's up to you if you want to take that deal or not.
> I'll start from the end: Companies get FREE advertising from YOU, and unless you get them an actual customer, they don't pay.
Essentially, commission based sales.
> You could have pointed that customer to something you owned and theoretically you could have received the full value of their purchase.
Along with all the costs of actually selling something, and assuming I have something to actually sell.
Let's phrase regular sales in the same way, and it sounds even worse.
Suppliers are "forcing" you to get stock from them (forced by your desire to "sell products and make money"), and make you pay for it even if you never manage to sell it on! You're paying them directly and have to then store it and convert the customers. The risk is entirely on you as well.
You could have sold things you built entirely from scratch. So all that purchasing cost is a payment you make in order to "sell an item".
Referral links are one of the simplest and most obvious products to me, it's just a middleman. Sell an item and get X, with no upfront commitment or cost.
I as someone with practically zero marketing budget, effectively no web or brand presence compared to what I'm selling and with no expenses for supporting the product can get a percentage of sales from the marketing, development and support efforts of a multi-million dollar international company?
There's nothing that monetizes better then affiliate links (other then building your own service of course), CPM is literally cost per thousand of views and CPC pays cents per click and you have practically zero control over the content.
Robinhood's original referral promotion (and the one I signed up for) was $10. Presumably people were just collecting the $10 and not using it to buy stock so they pretty quickly changed it to "1 stock." If it were still $10 the person would have made $230 rather than losing money.
Also, what's the TOS on this referral promotion? IIRC, for many services these referral codes are for private distribution and forbid this sort of thing.
I didn't find anything in the TOS strictly forbidding it, though I wouldn't be surprised if I overlooked it. I figure it's still a win for Robinhood if they get more sign-ups.
Have you thought about putting the code (or a similar one) in the article to try and make up the difference? Nothing like content marketing to turn a failure into a win!
SSL Certificates are easy and free to get, and they protect the privacy and security of your users. They also prevent ISPs from doing shady things like injecting ads into your site.
Actually there is SSL, but it's signed to HostGator because it isn't set up correctly, mostly I think because HostGator would make it difficult for something like letsencrypt, which raises the cost of entry.
> You are welcome to provide us with the SSL and we will install it for $10, or you can purchase a 128bit/256bit Comodo certificate directly from us for $50.00 [0]
Overtime you will make that $100 back. But quite an interesting article. I think you can do better signing people up to mealpal and their 50$ amazon GCs.
[+] [-] soared|8 years ago|reply
FYI - if this test was ran for much longer or at a larger scale his adwords account probably would've been locked. Google has strict affiliate rules and you aren't supposed to have two accounts sending traffic to the same domain.
Unfair advantage: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?rd=1
[+] [-] j_s|8 years ago|reply
One of the key points mentioned in the discussion there is that a ToS violation can be used to terminate the account years later.
[+] [-] ben1040|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurbano|8 years ago|reply
I'll start from the end: Companies get FREE advertising from YOU, and unless you get them an actual customer, they don't pay.
Effectively companies are “forcing” you to advertise for free (forced by your desire to "make easy money"), and then they pay you a commission if you get them a paying customer.
And you may fail to realise that you are already paying them by placing their ad in your page. Because in order for you to get money, you need to get them a click that ends in a paying customer. You could have pointed that customer to something you owned and theoretically you could have received the full value of their purchase. So losing that is a payment you make in order to "refer" a customer... Its crazy!
[+] [-] IanCal|8 years ago|reply
Companies offer to buy purchasing customers from you. It's up to you if you want to take that deal or not.
> I'll start from the end: Companies get FREE advertising from YOU, and unless you get them an actual customer, they don't pay.
Essentially, commission based sales.
> You could have pointed that customer to something you owned and theoretically you could have received the full value of their purchase.
Along with all the costs of actually selling something, and assuming I have something to actually sell.
Let's phrase regular sales in the same way, and it sounds even worse.
Suppliers are "forcing" you to get stock from them (forced by your desire to "sell products and make money"), and make you pay for it even if you never manage to sell it on! You're paying them directly and have to then store it and convert the customers. The risk is entirely on you as well.
You could have sold things you built entirely from scratch. So all that purchasing cost is a payment you make in order to "sell an item".
Referral links are one of the simplest and most obvious products to me, it's just a middleman. Sell an item and get X, with no upfront commitment or cost.
[+] [-] Illniyar|8 years ago|reply
I as someone with practically zero marketing budget, effectively no web or brand presence compared to what I'm selling and with no expenses for supporting the product can get a percentage of sales from the marketing, development and support efforts of a multi-million dollar international company?
There's nothing that monetizes better then affiliate links (other then building your own service of course), CPM is literally cost per thousand of views and CPC pays cents per click and you have practically zero control over the content.
[+] [-] astura|8 years ago|reply
Also, what's the TOS on this referral promotion? IIRC, for many services these referral codes are for private distribution and forbid this sort of thing.
[+] [-] uberstuber|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fitzroy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uberstuber|8 years ago|reply
Doubt it'll make up the difference but it could soften the blow a bit.
[+] [-] gizmo686|8 years ago|reply
"sign up using my link" is hyperlinked to a referal address.
[+] [-] ReverseCold|8 years ago|reply
https://letsencrypt.org/
SSL Certificates are easy and free to get, and they protect the privacy and security of your users. They also prevent ISPs from doing shady things like injecting ads into your site.
[+] [-] shakna|8 years ago|reply
> You are welcome to provide us with the SSL and we will install it for $10, or you can purchase a 128bit/256bit Comodo certificate directly from us for $50.00 [0]
[0] http://www.hostgator.com/services
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmurdog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iopq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kapauldo|8 years ago|reply