5 Things You Should Know Before Promoting Sweepstakes Offers

You have heard the hype and have presumably met someone by now who makes a living through affiliate marketing—probably wondering if you can break into this business model and start a side hustle that can become self-sustaining. If that has ever crossed your mind, I am here to tell you that it is a great business to get into. And doing affiliate marketing through the promotion of sweepstakes offers is one of the easiest offers to break into, promote and collect some money.

There are many offers in the affiliate marketing world, but sweepstake offers fall within the pay-per-lead model. This means that the owner of the offer is willing to pay you a predetermined price per lead that you drive to their offer, independent of whether that lead ultimately turns into a customer or not. 

The Beauty of Sweepstakes Offers

This is a segment categorized as evergreen. It means that you are promoting a sweepstake offer that will always yield results no matter what time of the year or anything else that may be happening. Of course, since it is a sweepstake, the possible price needs to be something that many people would deem desirable. Shopping sprees, trips, or high-ticket items like the new iPhone are always top of the line.

The beauty of these sweepstakes is that no matter who you talk to, most people would be happy to enter a sweepstake for the possibility of winning a prize. Of course, there are shady sweepstakes that are not giving any compensation, and as a newbie in this field, it would be recommended to look into the offer yourself and who is offering it to validate whether it is real or not. 

The Types of Sweepstakes Offers

In this vertical type of affiliate offer, your job is to drive as much traffic to the sweepstake as possible. And because the end goal is just to collect data from the lead, your commission is based on getting them there. Yet, once the lead is there, the amount of that commission differs a bit. It depends on how much the lead needs to do. There are basically three levels or types of sweepstake offers. 

The SOI (Single Opt-In)

Here, you get paid for the lead to just enter the details the sweepstake is trying to collect. Usually, the information is straightforward and can often be auto-filled depending on the platform used to bring the lead. Info such as name and email or name and phone number is rather typical to enter the free sweepstake. Because of the simplicity of the action, these types of sweepstake offers bring the lowest commission. 

The DOI (Double Opt-In)

Here, you get paid after the lead has imputed the information and given confirmation. This means that after the lead inputs the info required to enter the sweepstake, an email or text will be sent to the lead, and they need to confirm. In essence, they are verifying that the info they imputed is accurate. You would get paid after that confirmation gets done. Because there is an additional step, your payout would be higher than with an SOI sweepstake offer. 

The CC Submit (Credit Card Submit)

With this type of offer, you get paid after the trial or free offer has run out and the lead’s credit card actually begins getting charged for the actual regular price of the service or subscription. This would be the hardest to achieve and the one with the lowest conversion rate of the three because so much more is required from the lead. As a newbie trying to promote sweepstake offers, you can stay away from this until you are more seasoned with affiliate marketing. 

Avenues to Run These Sweepstake Offers

There are myriad avenues to run these promotions through to generate traffic, and it would be your job to test and try many different ones to see which one yields the best results. Here are some of the most common avenues. Remember that whatever vehicle you use, you must post a link to where you will be taking the lead. Whether that link is a banner, an ad, or a video, will be determined by you and will have to go well with the offer. Here are some of my favorites:

-Writing blogs

-Creating videos for social media

-Posting on forums

-Writing Google articles

-Promoting tweets

-Posting on your website

-Partnering with YouTube creators

-Including in email newsletters

-Creating and promoting social media posts

Copy, Design, or Landing Page: What’s More Important?

Usually, for affiliate marketing with higher commission payouts, the copy is essential. But for sweepstake offers, having an eye-catching design is way more important. The design has to show, remember “pictures are worth a thousand words,” the prize! Get people excited to claim that which they would win if they entered. High-resolution images with eye-popping design elements are key.

Resounding evidence points to the ineffectiveness of promoting sweepstake offers directly; that’s why creating a landing page is necessary. This does not have to be fancy or with a lot of copy; again, less is more. Images of the price are key and simple instructions on what will be asked to enter, and any valuable tip you may want to give will suffice. Before you spend a dime on any ads, if that was your route, make sure to have this in place. You don’t want to be throwing money down the toilet if there is zero change of conversion. 

Testing, Testing, and More Testing

As with anything you want to do in affiliate marketing, creating and testing separates the average from the amazing. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone since many powerful tools will help you get there. 

Knowing, for example, when your audience is most active will allow you to laser-focus your ad efforts and invest the most money at those times. Same for geolocation, being purposeful with your promotion efforts. Remember, the goal is to drive the most traffic to the offer, but ultimately you want them to convert, which in this case, would be to enter the sweepstake offer. 

Ultimately, affiliate marketing is an industry that is still growing, and there are plenty of opportunities to be explored. The good news for a newbie affiliate marketer is that sweepstake offers have one of the lowest barriers to entry. So, get on and move. That side hustle may just turn into a highly profitable business!

Do you promote sweepstakes offers? Comment below if these tips help you along the way!

Interested in becoming an affiliate marketer? Join Olavivo.