10+ TOP Sweepstakes Affiliate Networks [2024]

Promoting sweepstakes affiliate programs is a great way to make money online. They are one of the most newcomer-friendly niches in the business. You don't really need a website or youtube channel to start, so anyone can sign up to them. But you do need an affiliate network.

Sweepstake affiliate networks connect enthusiastic affiliate marketers with affiliate programs that allow them to promote sweepstakes-related offers. Selecting the best affiliate network for you can make your job easier and more enjoyable. In this comprehensive guide, we'll learn everything there is to know about sweepstakes and how to advertise them.

What Are Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are giveaway prizes where the winner is chosen randomly. While free to participate, sweepstakes usually require a form of action on behalf of the user. For the most part, users are required to fulfill a form asking for their name, email address, phone number, etc. But some companies enter their users in sweepstakes as an incentive for purchases or as a show of gratitude. Apple products, vacation offers, and gift cards are among the most popular prizes in sweepstakes.

The user won't have to pay anything, but affiliate marketers will be compensated for each user participating through their affiliate link. Emails and phone numbers are much more valuable than anything a company can charge for a sweepstake. These leads will then be targeted for any future marketing campaigns the publisher runs.

Types of Sweepstake Offers and Payment Models

There are two main types of sweepstake offers:

• Email submits. Email submit offers ask users to enter their email addresses. But there are two types of email submit offers; SOI and DOI. With single opt-in offers, a simple registration from the lead is enough. For example, if you're asking for an email address, confirming the email won't be necessary. SOI offers are the simplest and therefore have lower payouts. Double opt-in offers are pickier and require the user to confirm their email address. A bit more difficult to work with than SOI offers and with lower conversion rates, but the payouts are higher.
• CC submit. Some sweepstakes might ask for the users' credit card and billing info. Credit card submission offers are less commonly found, aren't all together legal, and are the most difficult but have the highest payouts. Not all affiliate programs work with it.

Advertisers use submitted credit cards in two ways. They may charge the user $1-2 to check the legitimacy of the credit card. It's a form of quality assurance and stolen, fake or prepaid credit cards will be blocklisted.

But the second way is signing leads for free trials. These trials usually last only 3-14 days. After that the user will be charged a monthly bill, the amount of which is usually high. The profit advertisers make off those who stick with their subscription is high enough to warrant the high payouts of CC submit sweepstake offers.

How to Promote Sweepstake Offers

The popularity of sweepstakes keeps rising. People benefit from it and realize it's no scam or hype. But then, doesn't this also mean the competition gets fiercer? It does. However, the classic approaches continue to do well in this niche, unlike others in affiliate marketing.

A factor that can help boost your conversion rates is hype. Is there a new iPhone coming out? Or maybe the school season is about to start again. The sense of urgency and hype revolving around your offer is the secret to a successful sweepstake title. You can also create this sense of urgency by limiting the time for registering or accepting applications.

If the draw has no time limitation, mention other benefits of it. Use phrases and words such as free, for $1, quickly, immediately, effortlessly, new, etc.

Here are some converting sweepstake titles and messages:

• Great news for students! Win a year-long supply of school items for free!
• Do you want an iPhone 13? Participate in the draw and pick up your prize immediately.
• The draw is on June 15thFill out the application and win a trip to France for two

For push traffic, indicate the deadline and date on the notification. Let the user know there's a time limit. Give them a push to click on the push ad and tell them when to expect the results. Don't hide this info on your landing page.

Classic Creatives

When the visitor arrives at the landing page, they receive the message "You are our 1000th visitor! This is no internet scam! You have won a $20 Amazon gift card." or something similar. This sums up the classic approach to promoting sweepstake offers online. This method has become questionable, and some will think of it as a scam, but it still works great in practice. Also note that some sweepstakes are in fact scams, which is why we're going to be using trusted affiliate networks.

This brings us to the primary distinction between sweepstakes and other niches. Even the oldest tricks and forms of creatives in this vertical never go out of style. They always work with the same efficiency. However, you should be aware that sweepstakes have relatively low rates, particularly the classic form.

Take a look at this sweepstake creative example from Luster. The prize is a $350 AirBNB gift card. The dates are clearly stated, and there's more information on the buttom stating that it's free of charge. The design is clean without many distractions, is explicit in instructions and has an attractive call to action.

And above, we have a pre-lander for a year's supply of Lululemon sports gear and KIND bars. To participate, visitors only need to enter their email addresses. Beginning and end dates are mentioned and bolded, and there isn't much time either. Below is further information reminding users of the Terms & Conditions of this sweepstake, which includes being over 18 years old and a resident of the United States.

Choosing Traffic Source and GEO

A landing page is essential because sweepstake offers don't do well with direct linking. Popunders, push notifications, native ads, and email are among your top choices for a traffic source. The GEO and audience also vary and are tightly related to your promoting offer. As a result, affiliate marketers need to be very strategic when choosing the type of sweepstake they want to run.

For any affiliate campaign to be successful, you need to know your audience. This goes double for sweepstakes because if your audience isn't interested in the prize, you will not be making money. Choosing traffic sources with vast targeting options helps you ensure you reach the correct targets. The rest is up to you.

For example, the younger generation might favor a brand new iPhone or a gaming console. And while Amazon gift cards are a popular prize in western countries, another online retailer does better in other GEOs.

Push and In-Page Push Notifications Traffic

Push ads started out as just a way for mobile users to be notified of emails, news, and anything else the app wanted them to know. But they have evolved into a trendy advertising method in affiliate marketing.

Push notifications are an excellent advertising format for promoting sweepstake offers. Statistically, push notifications are highly engaging. While more expensive than some other traffic sources, push notification advertising benefits more than make up for it. Good creatives play a significant role in the success of push ads. One issue with this format is the unavailability on iOS, which is easily fixed with their counterpart, in-page push notifications.

Push advertisements, like emails, allow affiliate marketers to adapt their push adverts to their users’ preferences. There are targeting options available to affiliate marketers based on the affiliate network they work with. But with push notifications, you can select the users' device operating system, their GEO, subscription age (recent users are more likely to interact), browser, day and time.

You can use push ads to notify users about the upcoming draws. As we said before, hype and urgency play a vital role in the success of sweepstake campaigns. And since push notifications are just a form of notification, they deliver this feeling better than any other advert format.

The traffic from push ads is invaluable since your targets are users who have opted-in to receive ads. Users who want to receive ads are more likely to interact with them. Plus, push notification traffic is 100% real.

Pop-unders

Popunders as a traffic source for sweepstake offers are so popular that almost all of us have at least once encountered them. If you don't know, popunder ads are the sneakier sibling of pop-up ads. Instead of showing up on top of the websites you're browsing, they linger in the background. Users will see the page once they close the current browser window.

Pop-under ad formats are cost-effective traffic sources. They may only constitute 2% of online advertising, but no one can argue their effectiveness; after all, pop-ups and pop-unders have been around since the 1990s. On average, popup ads’ CTR is 6 times higher than that of banner ads.

There is a significant obstacle with pop traffic: ad blockers and browsers taking up measures against them. This is followed by the majority of internet users complaining about the intrusiveness of pop ads. However, browsers haven't completely stopped publishers from displaying them. Popunders are less intrusive than pop-ups, but you should try push notifications for the most user-friendly traffic source.

Pre-landers

To get results on a sweepstakes advertising campaign, users need to know about the prize and be encouraged about it. Direct linking doesn't work with this particular niche, and you always need a pre-lander or landing page. You can easily create a customized one in a matter of minutes. The top affiliate networks for sweepstakes may also provide you a pre-lander with your offer. You can use tools like Canva for design ideas and affiliate spy tools as an inspiration for titles, messages, and creatives. A well-done lander that converts features:

• An explicit call-to-action that clearly instructs the visitors on how they can apply for the draw.
• An attractive design to lure the visitors in. The visual aspect of your pre-lander accounts for 80% of its success.
• The native and most commonly spoken language of the GEO you've chosen. The closer
• A quick loading time. The visitor is gone if your pre-lander takes too long to load because you've riddled it with lots of animations and high-quality images.

Native Ads

The Facebook ads network is one of your best options for native ads. Facebook's advertising platform takes advantage of the most complicated algorithms and about 2 billion daily active users. But if you've chosen sweepstakes affiliate programs because they are user-friendly, you may want to look for another advertising platform. To advertise on Facebook, you must pass moderation, respond quickly to changes, continually find new payments, and be prepared to pay high prices per click.

Nevertheless, native advertising, also called sponsored content, is a good traffic source for sweepstakes offers. Many companies use native ads such as Facebook ads to promote their own campaigns. As an example:

Email

Suppose you have built a list of email addresses and wish to monetize it for your sweepstakes promotion campaign. In that case, the format is simple and similar to any other affiliate vertical. Write a personalized text that focuses on the sweepstake, and its prize, provide a link to your lander and send the email to everyone on your list.

If you're looking for a quick lead generation hack, emails aren't your best bet. It takes time to build a valuable email list. Usually, you need to have a worthy digital asset first to get subscribers. Buying emails isn't a good idea because you'll be marked as spam or blocked by the user.

GEO

Many newbies start with sweepstake affiliate programs because it converts easily. The common mistake they make is not choosing the right GEO or getting fooled by the high payouts of tier 1 countries. Look for offers in tier 2 and 3 countries if you’re new to the affiliate market. The competition in 1st tier countries is exceptionally high and you will most likely waste your time and money on them.

Tier 2 and 3 however, have an abundance of cheap traffic and don't have strict laws on your online activity. With cheap traffic, you can spend more on optimizing. You can gain valuable insights and experience starting with tier 2 and 3 GEOs when starting out.

Testing and Optimizing

To test your sweepstake campaign, create different pre-landers, experiment with many traffic sources, and try various GEOs. The testing phase shouldn't take long. After a while, you'll have enough data to analyze. Once you know what's working and what isn't, optimizing becomes a piece of cake. Blocklist all sources that are lacking. You can use trackers to gather more data, such as the most converting time and hour of the day, top-performing sources, users' device and browser type, etc.

Conclusion

Sweepstakes programs are an excellent way to begin your affiliate marketing career. To establish the ideal mix, create several landers, run different sweepstakes, and buy from multiple traffic sources while using trackers.