I turned $1.24 into $1000 of UberEATS credit

I love delivery food. When UberEATS launched in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia they were offering free delivery. It was fantastic.

But, one day the inevitable happened and the utopia of friction-less food delivery had vanished — Uber introduced delivery fees of $5.

So, I wanted to see if I could get myself free delivery again. But this time I wasn’t going to take it for granted, I was going to earn it. That’s why I created www.iloveubereats.com — my ticket to free delivery for life (kind of).

The idea is simple. I created a URL where I shared my unique referral code. I then claimed some free advertising credit and ran some ads to my site directed at those looking to use Uber EATS for the first time (the only way my referral code works).

So, here’s how I did it

1. Register a domain.

Through the use of Honey I scored a significant discount, marking it down from $13 to a $1.24 domain registration fee. Which, is all the money I spent on this project. If Honey doesn’t find you the right discount, you can also try Piggy.

2. Create a website.

If you can straight out make a website — then good for you. That’s all you need to do. I opted to use a website builder called Instapage (they have a 14 day free trial). You could also use Wix, which is a bit cheaper after its 14 day trial. I then wrote a little story and placed my unique UberEATS code front and centre for anyone to use.

Oh, and of course, you need a testimonial:

Yes, I wrote my own testimonial.

3. Register with Google AdWords for a starter-pack of $75 of free advertising coupons.

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. This is for Australia only — other countries have different free credit values.

Note: You can do the same thing on other platforms (e.g. Bing), I just got lazy and full.

4. Set up online search ads running in Australia for specific keywords.

Whenever someone searches “uber eats coupon” or “uber eats code” or something similar there’s a little ad running on the side. It looks something like this (it’s the [Ad] you see at the top of the search results).

I probably could have refined and tested my copy, but side projects be side projects for a reason.

When you hit the link you get taken to www.iloveubereats.com and you find my unique referral code.

So, how effective was it?

Well, super effective. It cost me about 66 cents of free advertising money to acquire each ‘customer’ or $10 voucher. However, I didn’t actually pay that money as it was free ad credit. All I paid was $1.24 for my domain. That means I had a 80,545% return on investment. If we pretend that I actually paid for the ads, I would’ve still had a healthy 1,415% return on investment. Even if these ads were paid I’d still be killing it. Speaking of which, I’ll be periodically turning the ads back on every time I need a bit more dough for delivery.

My site was viewed 373 times. I had over 4000 impressions of my ads with a click through rate of 9.29%.

The whole thing took me less time to do than to write this article. That is about 3 hours of work.

Behold my glorious remaining credit.

What am I doing with all my credit?

Well, each code only lasts for 3 months. So, just like any Melburnian would do, I’ve scheduled a soy flat white to arrive at my door every morning at 7.30am for the next three months. That would’ve been nice, hey? In reality I’ve just been stuffing my face with as many sandwiches and burgers as possible.

And there you have it. I’ve never eaten so much delivery food in my life.

If you want coupon codes for anywhere on the web check out Piggy or Honey.

If you want to build a website just like mine check out Instapage. You can also use other website builders like Wix.

If you’re thinking, “who is this guy?” — Well, I run a marketing agency in Melbourne, Australia. I’d love for you to check it out at Hedgehog Agency.

If you’re thinking, “But, what about Deliveroo?” Don’t worry, I Love Deliveroo is alive and kicking.

If you’re Uber and you’re thinking, “should we take away all his credit?” — Please, no, I really want it. You now have 100 new UberEATS customers, enjoy them!

If you’re sitting there and thinking, “Can I do the same thing? But, I can’t be bothered setting it all up.” Shoot me an email at bergjosh(at)gmail.com — happy to help.

Any questions? I’d love to chat in the comments. :)