Show HN: Give away iOS promo codes on Twitter in exchange for retweets | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Give away iOS promo codes on Twitter in exchange for retweets

productpush.io

36 pointsZhL16 comments

Sorry but I don't get it. Why I'm going to pay you if at the end it's me the one creating the tweets, the coupons and there is no extra exposure?

It is not for everybody, that's for sure. But if you want to run a giveaway of iOS promo codes on Twitter then you'll see that it is kind of a tedious task. You need to constantly check who retweeted your tweet, get a new promo code from the list, send a message to the person, delete the promo code from the list of available.. I was so bored doing that, I decided to build this service. :) Also, you get extra exposure every time when your tweet is retweeted by one of your followers.

Just like Facebook adverts this will be filled with fake accounts in no time

I thought about this possibility actually. At least for my apps I only get retweets from real users. In future, I can try to implement a combo of: a) Flat campaign fee with no charges for retweets. So you won't pay for bots. b) Send a link instead of a promo code. The code is only displayed (and considered as used) after the receiver follows the link or solves a captcha.

Beside the initial fee/campaign, the cost is 0.40$/retweet. Isn't it a bit risky, especially considering how easy is to create a fake twitter account? An option could be 0.40$/retweet with at least 100-200 followers, so to protect customers from trivial cheats.

Not to mention that RTs are trivially reversible: You can undo them in the UI, and all tweets can be deleted.

That's true. But my service doesn't detect the retweet right away. So it has to stay retweeted for some (currently about 1 minute) period of time. I can tweak this parameter in future if I see that users misuse the service and undo retweets after receiving a code.

Perhaps at minimum write code to monitor tweets say 24h later so you can measure this.

Surely after a few hours it doesn't really matter if the retweet is removed. Sure, it won't appear on their history but the recent timeline is the biggest use case.

Perhaps send the code after say 15-30 mins, or base the time on their follower count.

Edit: Does this violate any Apple or Twitter ToS? I've a feeling Apple won't like this, but they probably won't care.

That's what I thought, only most recent timeline counts. From my experience anything older than 15-30 minutes is not noticed anymore. So I agree, that's a good amount of time to use as the grace period. Just intuitively I think people wouldn't care to remove their retweets. I might be wrong though. Need to get more data on this. I read Twitter ToS pretty carefully, and I didn't find anything that my service would violate. As for Apple, still need to look into that.. It is something I see all the time though. And I do it for my own apps without any issues so far.

That's a good point. Thank you for the suggestion. I guess I'm a bit naive not thinking about this right away. :) Not sure if it is fair to only count retweets with 100-200 followers though.. Plenty of novice Twitter users don't have that amount of followers. What if I just charge a flat campaign fee? Or maybe a duration based fee? Need to think a bit more about it..

Just wanted to share another thought about protection from bots. In my tests, I didn't get any retweets from bots or other fake accounts. I think it is because iOS promo codes don't have any tangible value to a bot operator. You cannot easily resell a promo code (AFAIK). And money is what they are after. I'm telling this from experience because I also tried to run a gift card giveaway from the same account I usually run promo code giveaways. I don't have many followers, just a bit shy of 200. The rules were similar: chance to win a $25 gift card for a retweet. I had about 20 retweets, only one of them was a real person. Everything else was retweeted by seemingly fake accounts, who followed my right before retweeting. I'm not saying bots will not be an issue. But I'd like to gather more data on this.

Very nice, very nice. How much?

Seriously, this solves a very specific and real problem and I'm happy you guys shaped it into a simple package. Two questions I have are - (1) how much does it cost (2) how is it iOS app specific (I assume it's not).

From https://www.productpush.io/pricing

$3/campaign + $0.40/code.

Thanks! I built it because I wanted to use it myself. You can read more about pricing here: https://www.productpush.io/pricing Essentially, i wanted to have per usage fee people would be comfortable paying instead of doing the same task manually.

I know the post title says iOS promo codes, but the copy on the site says promo / coupon codes. Is there any reason this is limited to iOS app codes or can deliver any kind of "string" as a reward?

That's right, it can deliver any "string" as a reward. I personally only needed to deliver iOS promo codes, so it seemed like the most useful application to me.

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