The Making of SmartBribe [24-hour Product Challenge]

Bryan Harris —  Bryan Harris /

6 months ago I published this blog post.

It outlined a rad traffic and viral sharing strategy that the team over at Sumome was using.

The basic gist was this:

  1. They gave away free access to a course called Traffic1m
  2. To get it you had to give them you’re email
  3. Once you gave them your email they offered you free VIP access to the course (a slack group and resource guide)
  4. To get VIP access you needed to share the Traffic1m course on Twitter and email an invite to one friend
  5. ^^^ This generates a tight little viral loop where for every person that signs up several more people find out about it and get invited to the course as well.

Here is it in action:

Smoooooooth idea!

Only problem is there is no app out there that does this.

So, today we’re going to build it.

The goal =

  1. Build a functioning app we can use on Videofruit by the end of the day
  2. Bonus Points: Make it so that others can use it too
  3. Extra Bonus Points: Make it free to everyone

We started last night at 8pm and will finish out the app no later than 8pm CST tonight.

Stay tuned throughout the day for updates.

Update #1: 8:00am

Since the basic idea of the app has been floating around in my head for 6 months we already had some designs whipped for the front end of the app.

They follow pretty closely to the one used on Traffic1m.

Here are our mockups:

Screen #1: This is what you’d see immediately after optin in for the original giveaway (your ebook, video course etc)

Screen #2: This is what you’d see after tweeting it out

Screen #3: This is the screen you see after unlocking the bonuses

We also did a kickoff call with Harris and Jonathan (the devs) this morning.

We’ll do another at 12pm CST and 5pm CST today. So follow us on Blab to get notifications of those

 

Update #2: 12:00pm

Over the last 4 hours we’ve made significant progress.

Harris and Jonathan were able to get the entire app up and built.

Our 911 designer was able to splice out the PSD design files into a nice batch of HTML/CSS that the devs could use to skin the app and make it look pretty.

And I got the domain stuff setup, wrote a few emails and watched a handful of Bill Wurtz videos (I advise you doing the same)

A few pretty things you might like…

Here is the mockup of the landing page (sexy! right?):

 

Here is a recording of our 12:00pm update call with the devs:

We’ll check back in around 5pm CST. With out last update.

 

Update #3: 5:00pm

Alright, we are SUPER close to having this thing shipped.

The app itself is fully functional.

The landing page is setup and tested (and it’s one of the prettiest landing pages I’ve ever seen)

I’m filming a few tutorial videos as we speak and the devs are going through and making everything look pretty on the front facing piece of the app.

For example, here is a pic of the live app vs.the mockup.

We’re down to the little things. The polishy stuff that really makes a difference.

Anyhow, I fully anticipate releasing this thing by 6:30pm tonight (we have dinner with some friends at 7pm). So, stay tuned for instructions on how to start testing it then.

Thanks for following along on these crazy adventures.

Update #4: 6:30pm

It’s aliiiiiiiiive!

YAY!

It’s up and running folks!

Go to SmartBribe.com to try it out for free.

Also, as you signup you’ll see the app in action as we’ve used it in the signup process of the app itself. Which means the app is free for now, you’ll just need to tell a friend or two about it to sign up.

🙂

Obviously we built this in 24-hours so there are going to be the occasional bug and feature request.

If you have any to report, please do that here.

Also, if you test this out on your site, please leave a comment in this blog post to let me know.

I would love to see this in the wild and to feature some of you to the list tomorrow morning when we email everyone about it.

Y’all are awesome!

Chat soon…

…

PS: Any questions about the app or ideas on how we can make it better? Post them in the comment below. 

  • adamisawesome

    Was JUST finishing of when you mentioned this, last night

    Two questions:

    1) How does this differ from Upviral?

    2) Differ from Social locker (FB shares, tweets etc unlock the bonus)

    • Haven’t used Upviral but a quick cursory look:

      1. SmartBribe is much simpler to use
      2. SmartBribe specifically intended to be used AFTER opting into an existing lead magnet of any sort

      re: Social Locker – similar’ish. Just lots of bugs and complaints with them. UX/UI is much different.

      • adamisawesome

        Awesome! Love that you’re doing these tools man.

        Excited to become a slingshot user, when it’s launched too 🙂

        P.S Would LOVE FB shares to be part of this in the future 🙂

        • Dominik All-in Harman

          I’d love Facebook share option as well. Twitter in my country is virtually non-existent

        • Ya, solid feature request. In future version it’d be nice to let yall pick what the two shares are. I’ll put it on the list!

          • Derrick Horvath

            Email and/or FB share would probably have more value than a Twitter share but the app is looking solid.

  • how do we sign up for beta?

    • What Nate said. Count me in.

    • We’ll announce all that tonight/tomorrow.

      • Awesome. Count me in, too.

      • Cool, would love to check it out.

        • Ryan McRae

          Id love to be in the beta.

      • Dominik All-in Harman

        Im in as well, sounds gr8

      • Killer. Count me in.

    • What he said. I tried UpViral, wasn’t helpful for me.

  • I am so excited that you are making this! I tried doing this for my http://linkbuildingclass.com/ and it was a real pain to set up. Would be awesome to have a plug & play!

  • I have two question, Bryan:

    1. Will it be a SaaS app or an app that I will have to install on my own server?

    2. What programming stack are you using?

    Anyways, I will surely give the app a try. 🙂

    • 1. saas’ish yea. create the bribe @ smartbribe.com. we give you a javascript thingy. you paste it on your thank you page. WE TAKE CARE OF THE REST!

      2. Rails

  • This is freaking awesome! I’ve been wanting to do this FOR.EV.ER but can’t find anything that will do it! I checked all the giveaway apps like Gleam, Amazly, Rafflecopter, even KingSumo and none of them can do it. I sort of hacked my way to doing it with my last giveaway but it was a HUGE pain in the butt (think manually entering hundreds of names), and I decided it wasn’t worth it.

    I’m SO thankful for you doing this – seriously!

  • Awesome project Bryan. Love how your just “Figuring it out” on all fronts this year. Go man go.

  • Daniel Stephens

    Sweet! But smartbribe.com is currently parked. Looking forward to when it’s live!

    • we own it :). setting up the DNS records now.

  • Will people be able to download the first bonus until they invite others to access the VIP Area?

    Just an opinion. I’d like to know how it works.

  • tweet AND email sounds like too many tasks for some people to do/share. Maybe tweet OR email?

    • meh

    • This is something I also think.

      The advantage is you become viral at twitter, but you have to accomplish one more task to get an email.

      At least I’ve seen people in my niche, and they are too lazy to register their emails (or their friend’s emails).

      What if change the order? Access the bonuses by inviting someone else, and access to the VIP Area with just one Tweet click?

    • This. Sorry Bryan, but I actually think this is too much to ask of people.

      It just seems wrong.

      Is it a potentially brilliant way to collect leads and traffic? For sure. Amazing job.

      Do I want to FORCE people to go through hoops to get something useful from me? I do not, and will not.

      I want people to share my content because it’s fucking amazing :/ Not railing, but just a few thoughts.

  • Bob Harper

    This looks awesome! I will use it as soon as it comes out!

  • I’ve been using https://listeruption.com/ for a long time for this. This is the complete funnel though from landing page to delivering the “bribes”. Looks really cool though for a nice simple option.

    • That looks cool. Yea, this will be a lot easier to use.

  • bobcrawford

    Sounds awesome, count me in!

  • Ha, I’ve been waiting for a tool that could do this! Thanks for creating it 🙂

  • Eyram Sotome

    Dude… You just finished Slingshot (which I’m a proud supporter :] ) and now this? THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!!! (>.<)

    I'm in!!! Also, I didn't forget about Warmupushup. Got the domain, just need to set a few things before going live 🙂

    • Slingshot is defintely a much BIGGER project with lots of long term potential. SmartBribe is a lighter weight dude. Should be fun to play with both.

  • Luca Verrigni

    Yes. I would like to have even the email template to send to friend!!

  • This is great! Can’t wait to see that Beta!

  • Dominik All-in Harman

    Great job, Bryan!

    Two suggestions:

    1.What about not including “I hate bonuses” option at all? That way I am either pushed to share, or, if I rly do not want to, simply close the page.

    2. Also, as I have non-english speaking audience, I’d love to have all front-end language customizeable. This is really big for me.

    Looking forward!

    • 1. interesting idea.
      2. Yup, all that is changeable

  • Tom

    Epic

  • Daniel Stephens

    Is there any way to put at least one download / bribe item on screen for tweeting? Possibly just with a toggle on item #1.

    Is it possible to change “click to tweet” to “click to share” and set a default to Facebook or LinkedIn? More of my audience is on Facebook than Twitter, but either one could work.

    http://www.danieltstephens.com/smartbribetest/ – not a “real” bribe yet, just playing with the app. Using a PDF of a blog post. The progress bar doesn’t seem to be working.

    • Sarah Nenni-Daher

      Just tested yours Great! job 🙂

  • Seriously, Bryan. Can you and your team leave a little awesome for the rest of us? You’re blowing my mind with these 24 hour product dev projects. And heaps of gratitude for giving so much back to the entrepreneurial community by sharing your process live – and many of your tools for free. You and your team are ammmmazing.

  • And this is gonna be free?! Awe-sum-ness!

  • This is totally awesome. I’ve been looking at a hodge-podge of plugins, but having it all in one place would be incredible.

  • Mary Fernandez

    This is the most insane, crazy, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I LOVE IT.

  • Looks awesome! First Slingshot and now this? Hat’s off, Bryan!

  • Stephen Mayall

    Great stuff love your doing this live no questions can I be a beta testa?

  • @bharris007:disqus as always you rock it out of the park with your vigor, your integrity and your creativity. I’m in and plan to implement with my 10K Subs work. Well done. And thanks. Happy Easter. Enjoy.

  • bobcrawford

    Loving this! Question for you though… I use double opt-in for my lists. Should I put the Smartbribe right after they submit their info (which is where I tell them to check their email), or should I hold off and put the Smartbribe after they click the confirmation email?

    • I would use it on the confirmation page in that scenario.

      • bobcrawford

        Awesome, thanks!

  • Hey Bryan, I’ve seen this problem with a lot of click to share tools. They have no way of really tracking if the individual shared the page before releasing the freebie. I was hoping smartbribe will address that but it didn’t. As soon as I clicked the click to tweet, it opened a new tab. I had not shared the tweet yet but it counted it within the app as a share. Same thing applied to the email. It opened a new blank tab, I haven’t sent a mail yet, but I got complete access. Extra bonus unlocked.

    This was in the address bar “mailto:enter_email@domain.com?subject=I%20think%20you%27ll%20like%20this&body=Yo!%20%20Check%20out%20SmartBribe!%20%20An%20easy%20way%20to%20get%20more%20traffic!!%20http://www.smartbribe.comThanks!” the page was blank.

    How can that glitch be addressed.
    I still went ahead to tweet though, but with a glitch like that you can grant access to people who didn’t finish the process.
    Thank you so much for this tool and for making internet making fun.

    • Hey Illoh. We had 400 people enter their email into Smartbribe.com yday and 365 of them shared.

      Takeaway: 100% iron clad lockdown = not important.

      Also, the only way to guarantee someone shares is to setup a referral link type of deal that tracks when someone opts in through your unique link. That has several side affects:

      1. People don’t get immediate access, they have to wait til people signup through their link
      2. It’s a pain in the button the user side. Ours is 10x easier.

      I’m not opposed to having an option like that but it’s definitely a more complicated system and doesn’t produce a massive uptick in benefit. As with anything, you have to 80/20 the cost and time investment verses the return. In this case it didn’t pass.

  • January Tan {#Passionpreneur}

    Hi Bryan,

    This is awesome! So, Ive tried it out and here’s my feedback.

    (1) Option to change color for all the headlines, to match my website’s branding.
    (2) The final email loses all my formatting line breaks.
    (3) This is a really really great idea. My tribe is mostly on facebook though, and not so much on twitter. Hope you can add facebook shares soon.

    I’m excited to see this fully fleshed out. Kudos!

    • 1. Absolutely
      2. I see that, funky. I’ll check into it.
      3. Absolutely

  • This is awesome, sign up now! I love to see all your progress making it and launch it. Thank you guys so much!

  • Hey there, after the step of sharing to my email friends the screen just go blank. I url I can see emailto: but it does not open gmail for me. Using win7 and chrome if that helps 🙂

    • Ah weird, we’ll dig into that. IN the meantime check your onboarding email for a link to signup and circumvent that.

  • PJ

    Trying to bring up http://www.smartbribe.com… getting this message:

    Application Error

    An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

    If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

    • Yea, traffic crashed it. We’re working on it. Waiting for the devs to wakeup so they can resurrect things 🙂

  • Bryan, the landing page looks good. But signup gives an application error. Count me in when it’s fully up!

  • There is an error in the page 🙁

    • Yea, it’s down at the moment. Hope to be back up soon. Too much traffic 🙂

  • Brilliant

  • Sacia Ashe

    Thank you so much! i’ve been looking for something like this. AWESOME!

  • Tried it twice but not working for me (PC, Firefox). Opted in, Tweeted then nada, spinning wheel in my browser for a while. Closed browser, repeated optin and Tweet, same thing.

    • Refresh (incognito) and try again. We were updating a few things.

    • Funky! Haven’t been able to duplicate. I’ll send over to the devs to investigate. Thanks D!

      • Still same. I’ll try again in a bit or in Chrome or something. Quite possibly just something on my end.

        • Tried in Chrome and it worked flawless.Love it. Super simple and smooth UI.

        • If you diagnose, let me know. W’ell do same

        • Try it in your old browser now, I think we found the issue.

  • Lori

    Hi Bryan,
    I noticed with this and the sumome one, it just opens a new tab for the tweet and email, yet if you click back to your landing page, you get the free pdf, and you can just close the tabs.

    I know that isn’t very nice thing to do, but I was just wondering to myself as a developer ‘is this loop really so easy to get out of’?

    I have seen software, maybe it was rafflecopter that kept a better reign on it and didn’t allow ‘abandoned shares’?

    • Testing in first 24 hours = 90% of folks share.

      • Mary Fernandez

        It will be interesting to see if that trend continues, or if people get wise to it and stop sharing.

  • I don’t think it is working. I shared on twitter (https://twitter.com/RebillEm/status/713752805635436544) and nothing happened. Can’t move forward?

    • Give it another go becky, I think we finally hunted down the bug the was sporadically causing this.

  • Mary Fernandez

    I am so happy that this is up!! One glitch though on mobile: when I click to tweet, it takes me to my Twitter app and I tweet it, but then it doesn’t take me back to your site so I don’t get to the next step. If I manually switch back to my browser to your website, it acts like I still haven’t tweeted anything.

    • Thanks for reporting this, we got it high on our list to fix.

  • bobcrawford

    Installed and tested it… loving the concept, but just one problem. The original freebie that they signed up for gets lost along the way. Going through my double opt-in process they first sign up, then I tell them to check their email, the confirmation link in the email they get takes them to the Smart Bribe landing page and after they tweet and email they end up on the download page for the new bonuses. I still need a way to deliver the original freebie. Maybe you could include a space on the final page for a link to the original thing they opted in for? Please?

    • Good idea. A few options…

      1. Include the original item as an ‘item’ in the app. That way they get it on final page
      2. Send a separate email on that
      3. Use single optin

    • Mary Fernandez

      This is a great point, I think a nice feature would be if the link to the original bribe was automatically displayed on the final page, so that way it doesn’t have to be added as an “extra bonus”. For now though, making it an extra bonus works.

  • Haven’t seen if anyone else posted this on this thread, but is there a way to send the gifts once people have tweeted / emailed and not after clicking the buttons to trigger those actions?

  • I just came across something that I think is similar to smartbribe. Check it out to get ideas how to improve your tool paywithatweet.com

  • Robin

    Hey Bryan, love smartbribe, tried it on a small blog…
    Are you still working on this? Would love to implement it with my company (400k visitors a month). Do you think Smartbribe can handle it?