Sweepstakes marketing is one of the best ways to earn passive income from channels that affiliate marketers already own. Not only that, but if you own an organic traffic channel like an SEO website or use Instagram, you can use sweepstakes offers to gain more traction and earn profits. Media buyers who drive traffic mainly using Facebook and Google can also benefit from sweepstakes.
Below is a guide that shows how sweepstakes affiliate marketing works, what traffic sources work best with sweepstakes offers, and how to choose an affiliate network that will boost your earning potential as a sweepstakes affiliate marketer. You'll be able to fully understand sweepstake offers in order to maximize earning from this income stream as an affiliate marketer.
What Is a Sweepstake Affiliate?
In the traditional sense, a sweepstakes is a kind of drawing in which prizes are given away at random with no charge to the participants. The appeal of winning a coveted prize, typically high-value items such as the latest phones and gadgets, travel vouchers, gift cards, and the like, is an effective driver in appealing to user participation, engagement, and, eventually, conversion.
Because of this, sweepstakes are often used in affiliate marketing to get users to sign up and participate, and sweepstakes affiliate marketers are then tasked to actively promote these kinds of offers through their own channels.
For most affiliate marketers, especially those who are new to the field, sweepstakes affiliate marketing is a great way to begin. Pros consider it one of the most successful marketing verticals, running effectively for decades. This niche success is worth a closer look before moving on to other affiliate marketing methods.
How Does Sweepstake Affiliate Marketing Work?
The goal of sweepstakes affiliate marketing is to collect as many leads as possible. As an affiliate, you will promote the sweepstakes offers. Then, advertisers can then promote other offers in order to monetize those leads. You'll receive commissions for every new sign-up you refer.
Affiliate marketers receive ongoing and passive revenue for their marketing efforts through these targeted campaigns. However, in order to make a conversion, leads must submit the required information depending on the sweepstakes category they are participating in.
Sweepstakes are generally divided into two main categories: credit card info submits and email submissions. You can further divide these two categories into subcategories. Check out the following types of sweepstakes for affiliate marketing that work:
Credit Card Submit Free Trial - This type of sweepstakes counts a conversion when users submit their credit card details without getting a charge immediately. Only after a trial period, usually 7 to 14 days, will the card be charged for the amount.
Email Submits SOI (Single Opt-in) - The user needs to fill in their contact details such as first and last name, email address, and occasionally their physical address.
Email Submits DOI (Double Opt-in) - Besides filling in their contact details, typically first and last name, email address, and sometimes their physical address, users must verify the email address they provided.
What Is a Traffic Source?
Not all traffic sources will yield the same. Some traffic sources may be more effective than others, depending on many different factors. You should consider the goals and targets of a specific marketing campaign. When picking a traffic source to tap into, think about the following elements that may impact a campaign’s success.
Things to consider when picking a traffic source:
- Cost of the traffic source - some sources are worth more than others for a fraction of the cost, generating both volume and quality. These are the sources worth going after, especially with a challenging field of competitors all vying for coveted marketing space.
- Amount of traffic available - different ad networks have different volumes of traffic. The trick is to find a marketing source that maximizes the amount of traffic that actually gets converted into leads. Some sites have high volume but poor quality traffic; therefore, you should avoid those kinds.
- Restrictions, regulations, and rules - different traffic sources have their own guidelines that everyone needs to follow. Non-adherence to these regulations is mostly related to misleading banners. If that is the case, you can get banned.
- The overall quality of the traffic source - this area is mostly about acquiring clean and not fraudulent traffic that is often generated through bots or click farms. Bots and click farms may generate traffic, but this doesn’t result in leads, so it is wise to look closely into the traffic source to avoid these.
- Targeting options available - check if the traffic source allows campaigns to target specific audiences. Targeting enables marketing affiliates to specify which segment of their audience will have the most use for an ad and will most likely convert, making campaigns more successful.
Top Converting Traffic Sources
There are many reasons why email is still one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies around. Just look at the numbers: Email is the third most influential traffic source of information for B2B audiences, with about 4.2 billion users as of 2022, most of whom check their email daily. The user base alone points to the importance of email as a communication medium, with 73% of millennials identifying it as their preferred means of communication.
Moreover, consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers, with the median ROI for an email campaign at 122%. This means that campaigns can expect a return of $38 for every dollar spent on email marketing, yielding 4x more ROI than any other digital channel.
As if these statistics don’t spell success enough, the inherent characteristics of email marketing alone indicate that it should live up to its potential. It shows that email increases website traffic faster than SEO and ranking on Google search pages, with the benefits of being effortless to track and measure and integrating into other marketing channels with easy automation.
Display
The Google Display Network (GDN) is a collection of 200 million+ sites, apps, and videos where Google ads can appear. As this network reaches over 90% of global internet users, joining will significantly increase the number of ad viewers. Apart from its worldwide scope and influence, GDN allows easy tracking and helps affiliates predict the costs of promoting offers. Plus, GDN is easy to set up and use, allowing affiliates not only access to a vast audience but also the ability to target them.
Push Notifications
Push notifications were originally meant for mobile users to get instant email notifications on their devices. However, they have since evolved into a powerful ad format with typically high click-through rates or CTRs, with some verticals approaching 30%. When buying push traffic, this translates to great results when using Cost per Mille (CPM) or Cost per Click (CPC) models.
This type of traffic source has many advantages. Not only does it have genuine users who have opted in to receive notifications, yielding high-quality traffic, but it also has highly visible, customizable ads displayed at eye level on the user’s device, creating an ad impression that a real user views.
With a broad reach and excellent accessibility, push notifications can target millions of users in all GEOs, even as hyper-localized as the city level, making it one of the most effective traffic sources for campaigns that involve sweepstakes, mobile content, finance offers, as well as coupons and vouchers.
Native Ads
Native ads resemble the look and feel of the specific context in which they are displayed, allowing them to blend in and become less intrusive. Therefore, they are less prone to hate and vilification from users, subsequently increasing user retention. For this high user retention rate - about three times higher than banner ads - publishers make native ads their traffic source of choice.
On the other hand, advertisers choose native ads because they increase engagement by approximately 60%, making it an excellent source of traffic that, according to a Business Insider report, is now responsible for 74% of all ad revenue in 2021.
Social Media
Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Snapchat, and Pinterest are other excellent traffic sources. With the ability to target specific audiences based on interest, location, demographic, age, and the like, social media ads have the ability to run a campaign and cater to particular users.
Facebook alone provides a considerable amount of data to guide reports. At the same time, Facebook Audience to Insights helps campaigns perform a primary search to optimize ads based on data from the information. With billions of users, Facebook and other social media platforms give marketing affiliates a vast audience to capture with the ability to scale up successfully once campaigns find initial success.
Olavivo Affiliate Benefits
As an affiliate marketer, connecting with the right affiliate network is essential. Doing so will open up a whole world of possibilities that enables not only lucrative monetization but also the ability to set up a passive income stream while creating meaningful connections between brands and target audiences.
Sweepstakes affiliate marketing, in particular, is a lucrative endeavor all year round. There is no specific season for sweepstakes marketing, so many advertisers run these campaigns without limitations on timing. With a healthy range of marketing tools at their disposal - landing pages, push notifications, banner ads, and exclusive codes, among them - affiliate marketers will find sweepstakes not only to be profitable but also a flexible source of passive income.
But with many affiliate networks to select from, it can be quite overwhelming to determine which one to choose. The trick is to find networks focusing on achievable payment thresholds, supported verticals, and a flexible payment method offering weekly payments through various payment channels.
Olavivo is a boutique affiliate network that checks off all those boxes and more. With a focus on Cryptocurrency / Forex, Sweepstakes, and Leadgen verticals, Olavivo offers its partners great benefits, including:
- Full transparency and multiple goal levels
- Essential data for your campaign optimization procedures
- Solid payouts
- Trendy, top converting, worldwide CPA offers
- Weekly/ biweekly/ monthly payments
- Multiple payment methods
- Cutting-edge tracking system
- 30-90 day conversion cookie lifespan
- Support from experienced and professional account managers
- Exceptional referral program
At a glance, here is what Olavivo has to offer:
Total Amount of Offers | 112 |
Languages | English / Arabic / Bulgarian / Czech / Danish / German / Greek / Spanish / Finnish / French / Hebrew / Croatian / Hungarian / Italian / Japanese / Indonesian / Norwegian / Dutch / Polish / Portuguese / Romanian / Russian / Turkish |
Countries | 85+ GEOs |
Average EPC Per Traffic Source | $0.40 - $0.80 |
Conversion Rates | 1% - 5% |
Monetization | Cost Per Action (CPA) |
With a clear advantage in sweepstakes affiliate marketing, Olavivo has the ability to turn your existing platform - whether it’s a blog, a YouTube channel, or an Instagram following - into a source of passive income by promoting sweepstakes products and services.
Join as a media partner on Olavivo and start earning with affiliate marketing sweepstakes now!