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How this small business owner “hacked” UberEATS to benefit his business—and his wallet

A savvy small business owner has converted a website, some free advertising coupons, and $1.24, into over $1000 of free food from UberEATS—and some free publicity for his business. News.com.au reports Melbourne-based digital marketer Josh Berg established a scheme to take advantage of the UberEATS referral system, which rewards users with $10 in credit if […]
Dominic Powell
Dominic Powell

A savvy small business owner has converted a website, some free advertising coupons, and $1.24, into over $1000 of free food from UberEATS—and some free publicity for his business.

News.com.au reports Melbourne-based digital marketer Josh Berg established a scheme to take advantage of the UberEATS referral system, which rewards users with $10 in credit if their code is used by others to sign up to the app for the first time.

Read more: UberEATS has officially launched in Melbourne as the food delivery market becomes an all-out war

In a blog post on Hackernoon, Berg explained how he engineered the “hack” in order to get “free food delivery for life (sort of)”.

First, Berg registered a website and used a discount code to get the domain registration cost down from $13 to $1.24. This was the only time he spent money throughout this endeavour.

Then, he created a web page with his referral code placed front and centre, along with a brief explainer of the idea behind the website.

“I’m Josh from Melbourne, Australia. I really do love UBER Eats (seriously). But, I’m sick of paying for it and that delivery fee. So, I thought I’d do something about it,” the website reads.

After Berg set up the website, he took advantage of a deal for $75 dollars of free Google AdWords coupons in order to make his site show up in search results when people searched for “uber eats coupon” or “uber eats code”.

Then all he had to do was sit back and wait.

Berg says that along with a calculated 80,545% return on investment, he also managed to land some extra customers for his digital marketing agency Hedgehog Agency.

The blog post has already garnered Berg interest from potential clients, as he told news.com.au the story had “generated some outreach” from other brands wanting help with digital marketing.

And if any other business owners want to lock in $1000 worth of free burgers and sandwiches, Berg says he’s “happy to help”.

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