An airdrop – one more way to promote your project

This year, the ICO market hasn’t been as dynamic as in 2017; however, new projects promising its investors everything under the sun (a little bit later, though) continue to crop up with impressive regularity. Yes, confidence in ICOs is declining unlike the competition among those who still want to jump on this bandwagon.

What should ICO-marketing specialists do? The answer is simple — come up with new ways and models to promote their products and projects, for example, an airdrop.

An airdrop — is, in fact, a free give away of the project’s tokens or cryptocurrency. However, we all know too well that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so users will anyway have to make a certain effort to get the coveted tokens.

What are airdrops aimed at?

To promote the project and form a community. There are quite a few people eager to get profits without investing any real money and this means that free tokens give outs are an excellent way to secure a speedy growth of the project awareness. The downside is that as soon as users get the coveted tokens free of charge they are very likely to leave the project as speedily as they joined it. However, there will be those truly interested in the project’s idea; they will stay on and form an initial base of loyal users.
To develop a network. If we are talking about creating a new cryptocurrency with its unique network, then the network is unlikely to have a full—fledged decentralised system at the initial stage due to an insufficient number of users. And new people airdrops attract will resolve this issue for they simply increase the nodes number and expand the network.
To create a customer base. Airdrops often involve submission of one’s personal data (a nominal questionnaire featuring one’s full name and e-mail address) to the project. This enables marketing exerts to assess its target aufience, design the right sales strategy and eventually use the information for the company’s quality growth.

How are Airdrops run?

There are two Airdrop implementation options – an automatic and an encouragement one. The former one involves distribution of a limited number of tokens to the users who have already bought certain amounts. Under the latter scenario, tokens are distributed among the users who help promote and expand the project and do their best to grow its membership.

It is essential to fulfill a number of pre-set conditions in order to get coins this way. The conditions may greatly vary – from just a registration on the web-site and a repost to filling in a fairly big questionnaire.

Airdrop and Bounty

What is then the difference between the encouragement airdrop and a bounty campaign? To say the least, bounty campaigns involve broader participation and are more time-consuming. Some specialised skills (for example, in translation - to adapt the project’s White Paper for a wider audience) often come in handy.

Additionally, the timelines for getting bounty payments are significantly longer – from 2 to 4 weeks. And sometimes one can get only certain percentages after the project has completed all stages of fund raising, while in airdrop you get coins practically right after you have performed certain actions. And finally, bounty campaign payments are just much bigger, 10 to 20-fold on the average.

Overall, participation in an airdrop entails much less effort than in a bounty, it takes less time and there is not need to invest your own money. Yes, the earnings will be modest, if the project is a success we are talking about $50- to $100, but it is not that bad after all, given the total time, money and nerves that have gone into it.

Airdrop is not a golden bullet, of course, or an ideal way to make money without making an effort. The model has its disadvantages which make many users view airdrops with mistrust.

Its drawbacks are the following:

Entry threshold. No, it is not high, but there is one – aggressive advertising of an upcoming airdrop temps users with quick profits, however, if you are a novice in social networks, you do not have a popular account and a thousand friends, then, you are likely to be an outsider on this feast of life. .Since an airdrop aims to advertise the project, getting tokens for its promotion in social networks continues to be one of the most popular ways to achieve the goal.
Zero guarantees. A token holder can get profits only if the project takes off and becomes a success, otherwise there will be no earnings. However, since the user invests nothing, he or she cannot go into the negative. On the other hand, there are no guarantees on profits, and in addition, on crediting of tokens – companies often delay payouts or change the rules of the game as they go.
Illusion of making money. I order to get an impressive amount of money from airdrops; a person will have to spend a lot of time participating in at least a hundred such projects. But even in such a case the amount received is unlikely to compensate for the time the user spent on studying and fulfilling all requisite conditions.
Scams. Airdrops are a popular phenomenon, so they attract not only honest users but scammers as well. Swindlers use fishing, send out malicious files and other such things that enable them to steal and use confidential and sensitive personal information for their own ends. You should also keep in mind that Airdrop participation is free. If you are asked to transfer money somewhere, there is a 100% probability that you are dealing with scammers.

Every individual takes his own decision whether or not to participate in airdrops, but it is essential to take it after considering all pros and cons.

If you decide to give it a try, you can get information about upcoming token distributions in several ways:

On crypto forums, BitcoinTalk, for example, that often dedicates full sections to airdop ads.
On airdropalert.com and other similar accelerators.
On information crypto platforms, something like a crypto event calendar.
In thematic groups, projects’ pages in social networks as well as Telegram channels.

One thing is obvious, however - one has to be incredibly patient to successfully participate in airdrops and generate at least insignificant, but stable profits.

First of all - to do quality monitoring of all sources, identify truly promising projects and fulfill all requisite conditions. And secondly, to keep in check the desire to dump the coins before they post a truly significant growth. Yes, users should have truly analytical brains, because one can get the maximum out of the airdrop system only if one can identify top projects and the best time to sell tokens.

As far as the crypto projects are concerned, everything is much simpler with them. Be honest, do not cheat people who want to get profits and eventually you will get what you want. Specifically – additional and virtually free advertising that will help you to promote your project.