
Gaming Robinhood’s Free Stock Promotion – Or, How to Blow $350 - uberstuber
http://jamesstuber.com/gaming-robinhood
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soared
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.

Unfair advantage:
[https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?rd=1](https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?rd=1)

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j_s
Running Dropbox affiliate ads cost me my Adwords account |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575868)
(Feb 2012, 112 comments)

One of the key points mentioned in the discussion there is that a ToS
violation can be used to terminate the account years later.

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aurbano
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!

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IanCal
This is a remarkable use of the word "force".

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.

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aurbano
I agree with you, and I should’ve phrased it differently to get the point
across better.

I really enjoy looking at something from an unusual perspective. The upside to
you if you’re referring people is what you mentioned, the ability to sell
something without any risk or upfront payments. So in reality its a purely
symbiotic relationship...

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astura
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.

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uberstuber
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.

~~~
stockstream
I'm quite certain its ok to share referral codes in that way- I've referred
probably thousands of people though my project.

Shameless plug: [https://stockstream.live/](https://stockstream.live/)

~~~
astura
Ok, thanks. I had just saw something like that for another service at some
point so I thought it might be common.

For example, the Uber policy:

>Uber may, in its sole discretion, create referral and/or promotional codes
("Promo Codes") that may be redeemed for discounts on future Services and/or a
Third Party Provider's services, or other features or benefits related to the
Services and/or a Third Party Provider's services, subject to any additional
terms that Uber establishes. You agree that Promo Codes: (i) must be used for
the intended audience and purpose, and in a lawful manner; (ii) may not be
duplicated, sold or transferred in any manner, or made available to the
general public (whether posted to a public form or otherwise), unless
expressly permitted by Uber;

Reading it again that might not actually say what I thought it did.

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fitzroy
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!

~~~
uberstuber
I did put the referral link in the article :)

Doubt it'll make up the difference but it could soften the blow a bit.

~~~
fitzroy
Ahh... I completely missed that. :)

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ReverseCold
Hey, I noticed your site doesn't have SSL.

[https://letsencrypt.org/](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.

~~~
leggomylibro
Any suggestions for good guides for setting up LetsEncrypt with something
like, say, a DigitalOcean droplet with a default Wordpress install?

~~~
tribby
certbot[1] is a tool for automating the Lets Encrypt process on something like
a DO droplet. there's some info about SSL in the wordpress docs[2]

1\. [https://certbot.eff.org/](https://certbot.eff.org/)

2\. [https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/web-
publishin...](https://make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/web-
publishing/https-for-wordpress/#implementing-https-for-wordpress)

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mattmurdog
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.

~~~
iopq
Well, he could have just bought $350 in stock and make even more.

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kapauldo
What a great write up. Thanks for sharing this.

