How I turned $26.24 into $1,000+ of Bitcoin

Written by peter.e.schroeder | Published 2017/08/21
Tech Story Tags: bitcoin | cryptocurrency | ethereum | coinbase | crypto

TLDRvia the TL;DR App

Without spending a single dime on Bitcoin… 💵

The concept behind my idea was relatively simple. I wanted to use the $10 Coinbase referral program to offer my own Coinbase promo code. (Basically, when someone signs up for Coinbase and spends $100 USD, Coinbase gives you $10 USD worth of Bitcoin.)

With the meteoric rise in Bitcoin and the ease of entry into Coinbase, I assumed that people would look for a Coinbase promo codes to buy bitcoin.

To prove my assumption, I looked at the keyword volume on Goggle Keyword Planner and the popularity on Google Trends.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Trends

Turns out, it’s a relatively hot topic. 🔥 (I get 1k — 10k a month isn’t a ton of search volume, but it’s enough to move the needle for something like this.)

So I decided to go for it. I created a URL where I shared my unique referral code. I then claimed some free advertising credits and ran some ads to my site directed at those looking to use Coinbase for the first time (the only way my referral code works).

So, here’s how I did it

  1. Register a domain. 💰

I used Google Domains coupled with Honey to get a significant discount from the original $12 price tag to a $1.24 domain registration fee.

Google Domains

I bought coinbasepromo.com

2. Create a website. 👨‍💻

If you haven’t heard about Carrd on Product Hunt, I suggest you take a look. Basically, it’s the easiest one-page website builder in the world.

I spun up a site for coinbasepromo.com using their super simple interface.

Carrd.co

I was able to make coinbasepromo.com in less than 15 minutes.

3. Create free ads on AdWords. 💸

All you need to do is Google “Google AdWords” and hit the first link. They should have the steps there to get your first $75 of Google AdWords money for free (when you spend $25).

Google AdWords

I made some general text ads in less than 10 minutes and pointed them to coinbasepromo.com

Note: You can do the same thing on other platforms (e.g. Bing), which I still might do. I’m just not as familiar with Bing’s ads.

4. Rank organically on Google. 💫

Ranking my page will take a little bit of time, but I’m hoping to eventually rank organically for Coinbase promo code related search queries.

Google Search Results

So, How Did I Do? 🤔

With the fluctuation of Bitcoin, it’s hard to give a solid number — but it’s been a pretty fun experiment! The whole thing took me less time to do than to write this article. That is about 2 hours of work.

At the time of this writing, Bitcoin is at $16,000+ USD and growing fast (isn’t it always). 🤑

I’m happy to answer any questions people have in the comments below, as well as continually update this article if enough people are interested. 🍻

If you know someone who want’s to get into Bitcoin, be sure to send them to coinbasepromo.com 🚀

Update

Thanks everyone for the support! I’m happy to see people experimenting on their own, as well as trying variations of this experiment with a vast number of use cases.

In just a matter of days, the site is now ranking organically as the number 3 organic result on Google and has reached the top page for the term ‘coinbase promo code’.

Also, this article is ranking on the 3rd page of google for the same term.


Published by HackerNoon on 2017/08/21