

My experience of runnning Google Ads for Dropbox referrals - timrogers
http://blog.tim-rogers.co.uk/post/17365936308/as-a-nice-little-experiment-and-after-some-posts

======
petercooper
I just did a blog post about using Dropbox from Ruby since a Ruby-based
library had just been released. Adding a note saying "If you're not yet on
Dropbox, sign up here" and within a month I maxed out my account. Indeed, I
switched the link around a few people who asked if they could do it too.

Given how much traffic you can get with a simple but smart blog post nowadays
(especially with HN and Reddit around), use content marketing instead. It's
easier, gets you more kudos, and only costs a little time.

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francescolaffi
I found that a great keyword is 'dropbocks': I got 0.01€ cpc and a very good
conversion rate. I maxed out several friend accounts spending 3€ each or less
if I remember well. The keyword is great because it filters out who already
use dropbox, if someone misspell it probably it doesn't have an account,
otherwise with other keywords you'll probably get lot of people that already
have an account clicking on your ads just to get to the dropbox login.

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mcarrano
I have managed to get 24GB of free dropbox space. I was able to do this
because I am an early adopter and when Dropbox first game out, I started
telling all my friends about it by using my referral link.

Ask your friends, you will be surprised at how many people still have not
heard of Dropbox.

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furyg3
A 'clever' intern of mine was taking the pastebin dumps from some recent
anonymous hacks, and pasting all the email addresses into Dropbox's referral
system. It's a bit more unethical than buying ads for referrals... but
certainly cheaper.

I think dropbox may need a bit more controls on how many email addresses you
can paste in...

~~~
watty
Spamming your Dropbox referral link is a quick method to get your account
disabled, not extra space.

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thinkdevcode
I did this as well a couple months ago. The keyword "dropbox" got 99% of the
clicks at around the same cost as you $0.13 cpc. I wound up spending $65 on
ads (with no voucher sadly) and now have 16GB of free space.

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gravitronic
WARNING TO THOSE WHO ATTEMPT THIS:

I did this. And it worked. But there was a cost:

I was banned from Google Adwords.

More details here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575868>

~~~
hung
Happened to me, too. I did end up getting the full amount of referrals
possible before it happened though :)

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kmfrk
I stopped using Dropbox referrals, when I discovered that I could see the
e-mail address of the people I had referred - and I assume they could do the
same with me.

It felt like an invasion of privacy on both parts, so I asked them to delete
my referrals - which, as I recall, they did. I only had two referrals or
something.

Is this still the case at Dropbox?

~~~
timrogers
Yeah, I think that's a little sketchy too. It's fairly okay for the intended
use of the referral system but it still seems a bit off. I have used it to
send emails to the people who clicked my ads but didn't download Dropbox.

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yahelc
I did the same thing, with several free Adwords vouchers I got from various
places, as well as one Bing voucher.

I preserved my data here:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AupgXsRU8E9UdDg...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AupgXsRU8E9UdDg5TkF3RTNDU1J4UW92R0JXOTdMYUE)

TL;DR My cost per completed acquisition was $13 per 500MB referral; my actual
total out of pocket cost was the ~$5 overall of where I overspent my promo.

Combined with earlier referrals, I've maxed out at 18.25 GB of free storage.

~~~
timrogers
$13 seems like a very high price per conversin - I didn't do much better, but
that still seems a little over the odds.

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planb
Funny coincidence: I started doing this just this morning (it's 1pm now in
Germany) after receiving a 100€ Coupon from Google. Right now I already have
twelve referrals, which makes 6GB of extra space for me.

~~~
timrogers
Wish I had a €100 coupon! It would have made this a lot cheaper for me and
would have got me more referrals!

------
timrogers
Thanks for the interest everyone - if you want to ask me any questions, feel
free to ask in comments or find me on Twitter, I'm @timrogers.

------
neilkelty
Alternatively, you could have hired a guy from Asia on oDesk for $3/$4 to get
40 people to signup for Dropbox with your referral link. Much more cost
effective.

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mladenkovacevic
I'm sure most everybody is aware of this but you can also get up to 8GB
additional free storage by downloading their beta client and helping them test
out the "Camera Upload" feature.

~~~
bretthardin
He actually states that in the article, "Another good way at the moment is
using the Dropbox beta client which gives you 500MB extra for every 500MB of
photos you upload, up to 5GB."

~~~
mladenkovacevic
Well that's what I get for merely skimming an article. Also sorry for posting
the wrong information. 5GB it is.

------
1123581321
Another data point: I obtained nearly 30 referrals this way for a total of
~$40.00 USD. Another 12 people signed up but didn't install the desktop
client. I said "Free Dropbox Account. Get 2.5GB of storage space. Signup takes
60 seconds." I limited the ad to the United States and only keywords with
Dropbox/drop box in them. I e-mailed everyone who registered but didn't
complete installation with a "Don't forget, you have to install Dropbox to get
the rest of your free space!" welcome e-mail. Sadly, I didn't include a
trackable link but about 25% of the stalled out referrals went on to complete,
saving me several dollars.

I think Dropbox realizes I captured some people they might have otherwise lost
and that unless I max my space, they have given me nothing.

~~~
timrogers
Dropbox's business model is successful because they give you 2GB space but you
can guarantee that most people will only use a fraction of that.

I took a similar path and decided to email those who signed up but didn't
"complete" their registration with a download - it doesn't appear to have been
successful, but time will tell.

~~~
1123581321
I just checked my referral log. It's been a few months now and it looks like
either one or none of them have converted since I hit the limit. I may e-mail
mine a second time to see if that converts a few more. When I e-mailed my
referrals the first time, it was less than 24 hours after they signed up and I
think that's why I saw as many conversions as I did.

------
timrogers
I'm now doing this same thing with Bing advertising using a free voucher for
£30 (~$47) - I'll make a post with my results when done :)

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LogicX
You should update your linked article with your Dropbox referral link, seeing
as you're being linked to/getting traffic -- you never know!

~~~
timrogers
I've done that now - thanks! Annoyed now that I didn't have Analytics on my
blog, got no idea how much traffic I got from this.

------
jwblackwell
Further from patio11's point - I'm very surprised Dropbox allow this, and
wouldn't be surprised at all if they don't. I do a lot of affiliate stuff and
9/10 it is forbidden to used PPC (Adwords) to bid for the brand name, or any
variation of it. Normally the advertiser will provide affiliates with a list
of stop words that cannot be bid on to prevent this stuff occurring.

Still if there cool with it and you plan on keeping Dropbox for a few years
this could prove to be a very cost effective way of getting more space :).
Just be warned, if it's against the t's and c's then I would expect people
will have their free space revoked.

~~~
sirclueless
I really don't see why in this case. They aren't actually arbitraging ad space
that Dropbox would be in otherwise. If anything, it's Google that is getting
fleeced $50 a pop. But really, Dropbox is getting cheap advertising for the
low cost of hard drive space, Google is getting fresh-faced hackers to try
their cash cow product, aforementioned hackers get larger folders, and people
looking for Dropbox find Dropbox, so really it's win-win-win-win all around.

~~~
waitwhat
If people are googling for a brand which only has one product, then the sale
had effectively already been made.

This extra "advertising" doesn't actually bring in any extra users, and is
only an extra cost for Dropbox.

~~~
yahelc
When I did this, most of my most clicked terms were for things like "free
online storage". "Dropbox" didn't really get many clicks. Though, I have no
way of knowing which terms ultimately converted better.

------
caublestone
$2 + Mechanical Turk = 16GB of DB Space.

~~~
agscala
This violates Mechanical Turk's ToS, unfortunately.

~~~
caublestone
Doesn't this violate DB policy too?

------
patio11
Sidenote: This is called "brand arbitrage" and it is very, very common in many
affiliate spaces, principally because it works disgustingly well. The brand
has already made the sale, the affiliate just needs to step in the middle of
the purchasing funnel. Many companies will be less than happy if you do it --
sending CPC traffic from brand keywords is explicitly forbidden in a lot of
affiliate agreements, and even at places where it isn't explicitly forbidden
it will often get you warned or your account closed.

Sidenote #2: If one gets good with using AdWords, one will very quickly not
need to worry about the cost of Dropbox. One option is managing campaigns for
people, which generally runs on a percent-of-spend model with a monthly
minimum (of, say, $2k) for far less than full-time work.

Another option is either becoming an affiliate or promoting your own products,
which tend to involve actual risk but have higher upsides and less dependence
on your ability to convince clients with $10~100k per month advertising spends
to use you as their account manager.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
You're, as always, right; but this particular guy spent ~$50 and cost Dropbox
only 3GB of storage space. I'm not entirely convinced that they should be
unhappy about that - if nothing else, he made "their" keyword more expensive
for competitors.

~~~
brador
Agreed, but here's something he's missing. That voucher code is one use, per
person, per life (they do send extra vouchers out every year or two though).
He could have used it for his own project, which may have led to a greater
financial reward.

Instead, he's effectively "paid" ~$50 for 3GB of cloud space, for life. Which,
on a shared server, would come to cents a year.

Plus, the value of that 3GB is going to decrease over time, as other competing
services appear, and file sizes get larger.

All in all, I say he's got a bad deal here. It wasn't "free money" as many are
reading.

~~~
marekmroz
>That voucher code is one use, per person, per life (they do send extra
vouchers out every year or two though). He could have used it for his own
project, which may have led to a greater financial reward.

Couple points: 1\. It is just a free coupon, it is not a "once in a lifetime"
opportunity. AdWords coupon != money, it is not like you can get $50 in cash
if you dont use it. Coupon was free so it is definitely not the same as paying
$50 for 3GB of cloud storage.

2\. He may have used id a year later for some project, that just may have led
to more money. Or, he may have had an unused coupon sitting there collecting
dust. I had a coupon for $100 and could not find any use for it, so I used it
to bump up my free Dropbox storage. If I ever need to advertise on AdWords, I
will just pay for it.

3\. When starting a potentially profitable venture the fact that you don't
have a $50 coupon will hardly matter. I mean, why worry now that maybe, just
maybe, when a pet project becomes the next Tumblr/Twitter/whathaveyou one
could use a free AdWords coupon? It is not like anyone will abandon their
plans to go big b/c they can't get $50 worth of ads for free.

