Today I’m going to dissect the sweepstake niche!

You know those free iPhone/iPad/Grocery voucher type offers? I will uncover insights that separate the guys doing 50k/day and those of you stuck on $100/days.

Before I start digging down too far I want to briefly show the overview of a sweepstakes offer.

This is what a typical flow looks like:

  • First page – the email submit (data monetised).
  • Second page – more information asked for such as data of birth, area code, phone number (data monetised).
  • Third page and onwards – co-registration offers.
  • Last page – very dependent on the advertiser.

Depending on the advertiser they may present users with as little as 10 co-reg offers, or literally hundreds.

Typically advertisers set things up in three ways:

  1. They put people in a draw to win the prize after they enter their full details.
  2. They give people the prize after they have filled out a certain amount of other offers.
  3. They use a relevant mobile pin submit offer as the exit page, and pass the responsibility for the prize over to that offer owner.

Sweet, got that?! Good.

Now the big question is…what on earth are the big sweepstakes affiliates doing that the minnows aren’t?

The big guys understand how the offer monetisation works, and adjust accordingly.

Have you ever noticed your sweepstake campaigns die off towards the end of the month? Then they start picking up at the start of the month?

For the majority of sweepstake offer owners a lead is worth more to them at the start of the month then at the end of the month.

Why?

The advertisers all have caps. They can only a sell a certain amount of data per month.

Example: Let’s say a offer owner has 20 partners at the start of the month buying their data. Each partner pays them $0.50 each, meaning each lead would be worth $10 to the advertiser. By the end of the month the advertiser will usually cap out with a few of their partners, meaning their lead value could drop in big time. Then when a new month starts all the caps are refreshed again.

So why should you care if you are getting paid out in a fixed CPA?

Towards the end of the month one of three things will happen.

  1. You will get capped.
  2. You will get scrubbed to adjust for the drop of lead value (likely)
  3. You can continue running volume as is with no changes (very unlikely).

So what should you do about this?

Set up big ad buys at the start of the month! Timing is key here.

Alright, next tip!

Th ...

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