Re:DoorDash and pizza arbitrage (2020)
by travisjungroth on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @04:38PM
(#32088455)
When I worked at Coinbase, a Data Scientist did that to some huge volume. Company didn't care. Instead of hiring a bunch of people to manage ads, it was someone doing it in off-hours for $10 per signup.
Why wouldn't they like that?
Because they can pay Google directly. The affiliate links are for people with existing readers/clients to push them toward the company, not for finding randos on Google search.
Re:DoorDash and pizza arbitrage (2020)
by Dylan16807 on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @06:09PM
(#32089357)
Presumably the affiliate program is more cost-effective than paying Google directly, or why even have it?
Maybe the customers kelnos found were much lower quality than normal affiliate customers? That's the only reason I would think this makes sense money-wise.
It's also possible they didn't want to anger google with "misspent" free credits.
But it's also possible they had an ego about it.
It's funny, because there was no deception involved: the ad text I used was something like "Sign up for [service] and get $[discount] off", which was true, as the affiliate link offered a discount for the person signing up (in addition to the credit I would get as the affiliate). The company in the end just didn't like that I spent $75 of someone else's money to acquire customers for them.