Sweepstakes Offers: How to promote them

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Hello,

dear friends.

After a little summer break, we are ready to give you precious advice about media buying and affiliate marketing. 

A lot of our readers and advertisers promote sweepstakes offers with us, that’s why today we will cover the sweepstakes vertical and will try to answer the most common questions:

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Q: What are the sweepstakes offers?

A: Sweepstakes is a term used for the various offers that present users with the opportunity to win a prize (the new iPhone, $500 Amazon Voucher, etc.) in return for the desired action, i.e., email or contact entry, or subscription.  The sweepstakes vertical is one of the more popular verticals in media buying, and we always recommend it to beginners. It includes several subcategories such as sweepstakes, surveys, lead generation, and voucher offers. A lot of the sweepstakes' popularity comes from its low difficulty (for the SOI and DOI offers) and budget required to start.  

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Q: What is the recommended budget to start with the sweepstakes vertical?

Our advice is to start doing sweepstakes media buying with at least $500 and to invest this amount only for traffic. Keep other costs like trackers, spying tools, servers, etc. separately. In total your minimum budget is around $700 and of course, the more money you can afford for traffic buying the better.

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Q: Should I use a tracker when I run sweepstakes campaigns?

A: Definitely, you should have a tracker. Optimization is an essential part of every media buying campaign, and the tracker tool will make it much easier to achieve the desired results. Two of the best tools that you can use to make your sweepstakes campaigns profitable are RedTrack and Keitaro. The first option is cloud-hosted, which means you don't need a server or other technical knowledge to use it. The second one is self-hosted, which means you should install it on your server. Both trackers are great with a lot of functionalities and integrated templates and maybe at the moment, they are the best tracking tools, especially regarding their monthly price subscription. We highly recommend RedTrack and Keitaro to all media buyers, not only to those who run sweepstakes.   

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Q: Which country (GEO) should I start my first sweepstakes campaigns in?

A: The answer to this question is rather complicated. One advantage of Tier 1 offers is that they can earn you more money, but on the other hand, an inexperienced media buyer could end up spending their budget in just a few days. If you are not confident in your abilities, better start with campaigns in Tier 2 or even Tier 3 countries. It is true that the payouts there are not so juicy, but for beginners, at this phase, it is more important to learn more skills. 

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Q: Which types of sweepstakes should I begin with?

A: We recommend starting with SOI or DOI offers. Yes, they have lower payouts than the Credit Card (CC) Submit ones, but do not worry, SOI (DOI) are much easier to convert and if you send good volumes to the affiliate networks, you can make good profits easy. Here you can find the volumes, the recommended, and the top bids for every GEO we have in our inventory.  Use this tool and plan your campaigns smart.

We do not recommend beginners and media buyers with smaller budgets to start campaigns with this type of offers. Indeed, they have much higher payouts, but precisely because of this they require a larger initial budget and are more difficult to optimize.

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Q: What is the TEST budget that I should spend for a single sweepstakes campaign:

A: This depends on the offer(s) payout and your skills. We recommend testing at least two different affiliate offers on the same GEO from two different affiliate networks. Let's look at an example: a media buyer starts a new campaign and tests two offers with a $1 payout each, two pre-landing pages, and six creative variations. Usually, you need to spend 10 times the offer’s PO per creative to start optimizing.  So the budget for this campaign would be 10*1*2*2*6 = $240.  

It is in your best interest to avoid the advice of most fake media buyers on YouTube. It will be hard to make your campaign profitable if you only invest $20-30 because you won't have enough data that you need to optimize.

Q: How many creatives per ad push notification I have to use?

A: Of course, you can use more creatives, but remember that every additional creative will increase your test budget. That is the reason we recommend starting your campaign with a minimum of five and a maximum of eight creatives. 

Q: Is it better to use pre-landing pages or to directly link to the offer?

A: Direct linking is typically not an option. Always use pre-landing pages. You don't have to be a skilled developer for this. You do not have to create them from scratch - the creators of Purelander have collected and prepared for work many landing pages that have been proven to work and have been tested by many affiliates in recent years. Also, always use a pre-landing page in the language spoken in the targeted GEO. For example, if you launch a campaign in Italy, you must translate the entire funnel into Italian, using a native translator for this purpose, not tools like Google Translate. 

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Q: When I use spy tools, I see that many media buyers use the same creatives again and again. Is that good practice? 

A: Don't be lazy and spy on your competitors only for ideas and to see what works, don’t copy–paste their creatives on your campaigns. For sure, that will affect your CTR and will cost you money. The better approach is to use tools like Anstrex for inspiration, and then test your angles and images close to the ones that work. 

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Q: I invested a large amount of money into traffic, why do I not see any profits?

A: Check the angles, creatives, and pre-landing pages in your funnel and if they are misleading or inappropriate in any way, change them. Also, do not over-optimize your campaign, or you will destroy it. 

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Q: What Ad formats to choose for my sweepstakes campaign?

A: Start with a classic push notification format, and after you make it profitable, scale with in-page push traffic. For better optimization, keep the different traffic types on separate campaigns.  

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Ok, friends. For now, we have answered the most frequently asked questions regarding the sweepstakes vertical. If you have additional questions, please ask your account manager, who will be happy to assist you. You can find more information about sweepstakes and affiliate networks with good enough offers here.

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See you soon! Stay safe and profitable. 

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