Sweepstakes – what are they from a webmaster’s perspective?

Sweepstakes or, simply put, raffles are a time-tested niche in affiliate marketing. It brings income to webmasters, and both experienced and beginners work with it. Over time, affiliate marketing trends have changed, but sweepstakes are still relevant. So, let's consider what sweepstakes are and how to run traffic on them?

Sweepstakes - what are they?

Sweepstakes are commonly understood as a variety of lotteries and drawings, where users have the opportunity to win a valuable prize. Initially it was only about phone raffles. Participants could win an iPhone or a top Samsung. Today, however, sweepstake offer a variety of prizes. These can be gift cards for large sums from famous stores, a variety of gadgets, children's goods, game consoles (PlayStation or Xbox), top sneakers and much more. For the new year, you can often find raffles with Advent calendars.

To participate in the raffle, the user needs to perform a targeted action:

• 

• leave contact information;
• fill out a questionnaire;
• transfer a small amount of money, and so on.

For this, he gets the opportunity to win a valuable gift.

Conversion is determined not only by the type of prize, but also by geo. For example, in some locations, a fashionable model of sneakers will convert even better than gadgets. In the summer of 2020, in the era of pandemic in Australia, lotteries with cards broke into the top. More affiliate networks in the Sweepstakes vertical can be found in the ranking of our site at the link.

What is the point of Sweepstakes for an advertiser?

The purpose of participating in the raffle for ordinary users is clear. However, why do advertisers need Sweepstakes? The organizer at the end gets a ready client base for further processing. Lotteries are accompanied by a small questionnaire, where users need to specify gender, age, city of residence, habits. Thanks to them, the advertiser receives a base with emails of potential customers, as well as useful information about them. For example, in the U.S. there are many contractor companies that are engaged in the supply and installation of communications. It will be useful for them to know whether the user's house is connected to the Internet, whether he is satisfied with the level of services of his provider.

Sweepstakes allow large companies to get data on the basis of which they can make promotional mailings, create marketing strategies. Advertisers also receive additional income from the resale of the collected and already used base.

Webmaster have an additional opportunity to earn money on drawings, if additionally several thematic questions will be added to the questionnaire. For example, if a question about the presence of children and their age is added when drawing cards for IKEA, later this base can be sold to large stores of children's goods.

CC Submit sweepstakes

CC Submit offers have a complex funnel. Conversion will be counted only when a small amount of money is debited from the user's card. Usually such offers involve a fee of a few dollars for participation or a subscription to certain services (for example, to watch TV series) for a demo period. During the trial period the cost is low, but after its expiration you will have to pay the full amount.

In this case, affiliate marketing involves correctly leading the audience to the need to pay. He must be interested enough to indicate his card details. It is impossible to do this without lendings.

Before launching Credit Card Submit offers with sweepstakes, when choosing a Tier 2 or 3 geo, it is important to understand how widespread card payments are and whether the offer runs the most common geo-payment systems in the country. This is necessary because not all countries have a high level of digitalization and widespread payment cards.

Sources of traffic for Sweepstakes

The sources of traffic for Sweepstakes can vary. Some of them are losing popularity due to their complex operation. However, new opportunities are emerging. The most popular at the moment are:

1. Facebook - has wide targeting opportunities, however, the site has strict moderation and CC Submit offers are banned.
2. Pops - a source with low prices, quite simple moderation, but often gives out bot traffic.
3. Email distribution - the main disadvantage is that it is problematic to find a good base.
4. Push notifications.

Push notifications is a traffic source that appeared relatively recently, in 2018. However, it is currently the most popular for sweepstakes offers. This source has a number of advantages:

• works with all types of offers;
• quite simple and loyal moderation system, the rules are simple, for example, you can not mislead users or use the faces of celebrities. However, even these prohibitions experienced marketers are able to overcome them;
• low cost;
• allows you to run a lot of traffic;
• 100% visibility of advertising.

In our section “Ad networks” we have collected a cool ranking of traffic sources, go and choose the best one.

To summarize

You can run on fluff both standard offers with drawings of Samsung and iPhones, and gift cards. However, in this case, you should give preference to offers from large companies, they will work much better.