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Sometimes it seems like the only way props actually do marketing is to shout about how many discount codes they have over and over again.
But as a friend of mine likes to say, sometimes in life you’ve just got to play the hits. If something is working and people like it, keep going with it.
Another version of this is free giveaways. For example, X has become a big hotspot for traders that like prop. Or at least it has become a spot for props trying to get traders. Whether it’s hot or not is another question.
Anyway, Instant Funding is a prop firm and its Founder and CEO Lewis Mansbridge has been spamming X over the last week by saying that Instant Funding is giving away unlimited free $5,000 one-stage challenge accounts, until they hit 5,000 people who get to the funded stage.
The first thing to note is that you could presumably just fake this whole thing. No one has any way of verifying how many people signed up, passed, or anything else. I’m not saying they are doing that or that they should, just that they could.
But let’s assume it’s real, which I think it is. Firstly, the proportion of people who pass is about the 14% to 18% mark. The proportion of people who get a payout is 4% to 7%.
If you take the first number, this means that Instant Funding will presumably have to get an absolute ton of people to sign up in order for this to work. Let’s say it’s the low ball number of 14%.
To get 5,000 people to pass the challenge, you would need to get 35,714 people to sign up. This is more than Plus500 gets in new clients per quarter, although they’re obviously not giving anything away for free. If it was 18% then the number would be the lower 27,777 – still a lot.
Let’s assume that they do this. It would be super impressive. From what I see – and I am happy to be corrected – Instant Funding is spending no money on this campaign. It’s all organic and word of mouth.
This is it. No limits. Only opportunities.
— Instant Funding (@InstantFunding_) July 15, 2025
We’re giving away unlimited free $5K One-Phase challenges. Just head to our main page, click on the giveaway banner, sign up with Google, read the rules, install your loyalty card, and claim your challenge! 🔥
And that is just the… pic.twitter.com/Yt022OyF0a
But then we have the obvious ‘problem’ – you have 5,000 people that signed up and some of them are going to be profitable.
Again, the numbers I’ve heard are 4% to 7%. The average payout is approximately 4% of the account value.
However, in this instance, you have to remember that the number of people who ‘passed’ is that 5,000 figure.
So if you assume that…
- 14% of people pass a challenge
- 7% of people get a payout
…that would mean half of the 5,000 people who get to the funded stage with Instant Funding are going to get a payout – or 2,500 people.
If the average payout for those people is 4% of their account value then they get $200 per account (0.04 x $5,000).
So the total potential payouts is equal to $200 x 2,500 = $500,000
To paraphrase Tommy Nookah from the Mighty Boosh, $500k is a lot of money but is it really a lot of money?
Instant Funding is probably one of the biggest firms in the sector and they could easily have that kind of marketing spend to play with.
The other thing you have to keep in mind is that they only pay if the marketing works. It’s like IG’s recent marketing for its high interest ISA. There is no marketing outlay, you only have to spend if you get sign ups.
To top that off, you have to remember that Instant Funding was set up in 2020 – it is (in relative terms) one of the older players in the sector.
Over a five-year period you can easily capture data on what works and what does not. And so if you run enough free giveaways, you can see what the positive results of those giveaways are. Those will be people signing up to your platform, giving you their email, and knowing what your brand is.
In this instance, the emails will probably be key. You will get a huge number of email sign ups that you can then spam endlessly with more marketing for Instant Funding. Some of those people will end up buying challenges.
Ultimately it’s a move that looks nonsensical from the outside – why give away so much free money?
But in the end, like almost everything else in life, it’s all just marketing. You get branding, you get leads and – hopefully – you get money.
