The QR Code gamble.

Quote from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End:

"Aye, but that's a gamble of luck now, ain't it?"

I wrote about tracking of QR Codes lately, but what I also do is tracking of my blog and homepage using Google Analytics. It is always nice to know how well I'm being visited, and where the traffic originates from.
So when I got a sudden boost in visitors lately I needed to check how this traffic originated.

Since I started with the Customized QR Codes, I've been making a lot of example QR Codes. By using my website, blog and social media these codes have been send into the dark corners of the internet. The intent of releasing these codes was to generate attention towards my work, my site and my blog.

The sudden increase originated from the following website:

http://www.qriket.com 

Qriket is a application for the iOS platform. With this app it is possible to make money when scanning QR Codes, any QR Code. A QR Code scanned starts a 'slot machine' with the chance to win money instantly. If  you didn't win, there is always the magic wand (10 are awarded to your account every day, and bonus wand can be won as well) to still make money with 50/50 chance. Followed by a double of nothing game to increase your profit.


It seems that each scanned code generates a token for a single play. But there is more, adding friends to your account gives you the possibility of rescanning the codes they scanned, generating a game token for yourself. You don't see the actual QR Code that has been scanned, but just revisit the information in the original QR Code. About 10% of the screen shows the information generated by scanning the QR Code, with a possibility to display this full screen.

Fun to do? Well, yes, if you are into gambling and gaming Apps.. Beneficial for the QR Code that is scanned, and the information that is in this QR Code? Well, no, the bounce rate of the traffic from Qriket was close to 100 percent, indicating that my website and blog was not actually visited. The rescan function generates even more traffic by people who never actually seen the QR Code or the article, advert, etc. that displayed this code.

At least for Qriket and some of their players this setup has been beneficial, they already awarded more that $1.000.000 in price money since their launch in July 2012. The information Qriket is accumulating with this service must be worth its bits and bytes in gold.