You're, as always, right; but this particular guy spent ~$50 and cost Dropbox only 3GB of storage space. I'm not entirely convinced that they should be unhappy about that - if nothing else, he made "their" keyword more expensive for competitors.
Agreed, but here's something he's missing. That voucher code is one use, per person, per life (they do send extra vouchers out every year or two though). He could have used it for his own project, which may have led to a greater financial reward.
Instead, he's effectively "paid" ~$50 for 3GB of cloud space, for life. Which, on a shared server, would come to cents a year.
Plus, the value of that 3GB is going to decrease over time, as other competing services appear, and file sizes get larger.
All in all, I say he's got a bad deal here. It wasn't "free money" as many are reading.
>That voucher code is one use, per person, per life (they do send extra vouchers out every year or two though). He could have used it for his own project, which may have led to a greater financial reward.
Couple points:
1. It is just a free coupon, it is not a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. AdWords coupon != money, it is not like you can get $50 in cash if you dont use it. Coupon was free so it is definitely not the same as paying $50 for 3GB of cloud storage.
2. He may have used id a year later for some project, that just may have led to more money. Or, he may have had an unused coupon sitting there collecting dust. I had a coupon for $100 and could not find any use for it, so I used it to bump up my free Dropbox storage. If I ever need to advertise on AdWords, I will just pay for it.
3. When starting a potentially profitable venture the fact that you don't have a $50 coupon will hardly matter. I mean, why worry now that maybe, just maybe, when a pet project becomes the next Tumblr/Twitter/whathaveyou one could use a free AdWords coupon? It is not like anyone will abandon their plans to go big b/c they can't get $50 worth of ads for free.
I totally agree. The deal wasn't that great, and it's certainly more advantageous for the user if they are in the US/Canada and thus get much more free advertising. But I'm happy since I found it to be an interesting experiment, and I got some space out of it.
"he's effectively "paid" ~$50 for 3GB of cloud space, for life. Which, on a shared server, would come to cents a year."
Except he doesn't have to manage that server, he doesn't have to implement the really cool synch between machines, and depending on the person the Dropbox space is probably more stable and secure. It will also be there longer than his interest in maintaining his own server will last. And the extra space on Dropbox is contiguous with the existing space on Dropbox.
It's more than mere extra space. Still may not be worth it, depending, but it's not just space.
I'm totally ignorant of how Dropbox in particular would feel, just talking about the generalization of this to online marketing. If anybody read it and thought "Hey sweet, all I need to do is bid on a product name and collect affiliate commissions!" hopefully they have one data point more now.
I like your thinking there actually - there are direct ads competing with Dropbox on the keyword, for instance ads for Box.net. At the end of the day, I'm paying probably above the market rate (since my ad was getting put to the top) and I'm gaining them a customer that might have gone to a competitor.
