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Getting Stuff From Free Google AdWords Credits

Daniel — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:01:32 +0000

So two months ago Lifehacker detailed some steps to max out bonus referral space on Dropbox with Google AdWords and free ad credits. I ran this as a short experiment with SugarSync, a service similar to Dropbox, which I’ll talk about my experience with. But first a quick overview, The idea is to take free advertising credits offered for Google AdWords and use that to run text ads pointing at your referral link to get people to sign up and get the bonus space offered for the referrals.

The Lifehacker article didn’t have quite the same success as the article they originally based the idea from. It looks like they spent $60 of their $100 credit to get 8 GB of free space, the original article maxed out 16 GB using just under $10. Both of them used Dropbox while I went a similar route with SugarSync. There are some advantages of SugarSync over Dropbox. The two that stand out the most are they currently offer a larger amount of free storage over Dropbox (5 GB vs. 2 GB), and they don’t cap the maximum amount you can get from their referral bonus (which is also larger than Dropbox, 500 MB vs 250 MB).

While running the ads for about 3 days I spent a total of $43 in credits; this netted me 304 click-throughs, 33 sign-ups, with 13 currently completed that have awarded me bonus space. Of course if those other sign-ups can download the SugarSync software in the future, and I’ll get the bonus space when they do. Read more after the break for some ideas I have regarding this method along with some other ideas for using my free AdWord Credits.

While this works pretty well, I think there are some various tips that I have that might improve on the steps given by Lifehacker.

Set the ads Cost-Per-Click (CPC) really low. The original article set the default CPC at $0.05 (five cents) and Lifehacker left theirs at an “Auto” setting which set the CPC at $0.94. This is part of the reason that Lifehacker spent so much on the campaign and the source article only spent $10. I set my default CPC in between at $0.50 and I would recommend setting it lower than that. If I was doing this again, I would set the default at $0.10 and then move some keywords up if I needed to.
Be sure to target the ads in all countries and for all languages. Most of my sign-ups came from GMail addresses but I did get a few from non-English speaking countries (.vn, .th and .pl). If you’re feeling up to it you could target just the countries that the service is offered in which will save you any clicks from someone who probably can’t sign up anyway. But be aware that the lower you set your CPC, the more important foreign sign-ups will become (cheaper advertising costs).
You need to be aware of the AdWords “Delay.” As much as Google loves to bring real-time information to everyone, the AdWords team hasn’t caught up yet. Any stats that you get from AdWords dashboard are going to be about a day old. But if your campaign is still active, your ads will still be running and you’ll be paying for any clicks. Keep that in mind if you want to stop your campaign before your credit runs out.

If you’re like I am, you might be asking what else you can do with with leftover credits. Obviously there’s always the option to use them to advertise your website or business. Here are some other options that have been mentioned and some that I’ve thought of.

Dropbox space. This has been the bulk of this post, you can get a max of 8 GB extra for free accounts and 16 GB for their pro accounts.
SugarSync space. I talked about this here and it is also mentioned in the Lifehacker article comments. SugarSync offers unlimited bonus space for referrals. You get 500 MB if your referral signs up for a free account and 10 GB (bonus space) if they sign up for a paid account.
SpiderOak: This is a service that is similar to Dropbox and SugarSync. This is one that I found after running my SugarSync ads, it appears they have a couple of different options. One looks like a referral link that grants an additional GB to you and your referral up to a maximum of 50 GB extra. It also looks like they offer an affiliate program that “compensates” (money?) when people sign up for free or paid accounts. I haven’t looked into this yet but getting paid when someone signs up for a free service sounds pretty sweet.
Other Various Affiliate programs. There are to many of these to list. You can Google anything about making money online and run across plenty. The bulk will usually involves the end user buying something and lets face it, it’s WAY easier to get someone to sign up for a free service than to buy something. But, it might be worth it since the credits are “Free Money” to try your hand at it.

Our Home Walkway Gets a Face lift

Daniel — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:57:36 +0000

Our front yard seems to be a never ending pursuit of needing improvement on the curb appeal. One project that we did a while ago was adding a graveled parking spot to the front yard for one car. As part of that we also put in a little walkway from the spot to our front porch. I made the mistake of using some cheap landscape edging that I had sitting around to use for the walkway, it looked ok at first, but then it started to come up and lose it’s shape and became more of an eyesore than anything else. So I decided to give it a face lift and match the stone edging that I used for the parking spot for the walkway too. I also decided to have it go in a straight line with a 90 degree turn than the curve shape that it was before. I don’t know what else to say about it, so look for some pictures if you want after the jump.

Before

simple, got the job done, not very good looking…

After

This is missing some of the lava rock and some stepping stones but looks much better as you can see.

Change of Direction

Daniel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:40:50 +0000

I’ve decided I’m going to take this site in a new direction. Instead of trying to strictly work on write ups for here I’m going to use this more as a kind of status report for my many ongoing projects that I always seem to be working on. I’m thinking that this will hopefully motivate me to work on them more often and maybe even bring some of them to completion. Doing status reports at work usually gets me to work on tasks more often, so I’m hoping that blog posts here will have the same affects on my personal projects. I still haven’t decided on a file structure of what I’m going to do specifically; break everything down by pages, use just posts, or a combination of the two. I also might do another more personal site with another of my domains I have I’ll have to wait and see.

Super easy way to save on the water bill…

Daniel — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:41:32 +0000

A how-to on WikiHow has been making the rounds on some blogs and I figure I’ll add to that here since many places in the US are still under moderate to severe drought including my part of the country. The article is “How to Convert Any Toilet to a Low Flush Toilet” and the just of it is to take a half-gallon container of milk or juice, remove any labels, put in something to make it sink (pebbles, sand, gravel, whatever…), and then add water so it doesn’t move around. Take this unit you just put together seal it shut (put on the lid) and place it the tank of the toilet so it doesn’t interfere with the mechanism. Replace the lid and then use as normal. The container will displace an equal amount of water up to a half gallon depending on the type of toilet you already have.

There are a number of other things you can do if you feel to lazy to put together this milk jug, simply putting a rock in the tank can have the same affect, of course you’ll want to be VERY careful not to crack the tank and make sure to clean it off very well before you put it in the tank. As you can see you can use about anything to take up space in the tank, the big criteria is that it doesn’t get in the way of the mechanism or damage the toilet or septic system.