Chapter Eight
Using Referral Programs to Earn Even More On Autopilot
As some may already know, referral programs are an excellent way to make more money without having to work too hard. Each time you refer someone to a website, whether they have to pay or join for free, you are helping that site both in membership and income. In return they will give you a credit for your much needed help and it usually comes in the form of money. Many people online make a living just at only using referral or affiliate programs, since it can be a great source of passive income.
Survey panels uses different types of referral methods, to help you get referrals to signed up. They are email invitations, links and banners. You can use an email invitation to send out to friends and family or whoever is interest of joining up. Links are very versatile and can be used in blogs, websites, forums, social media or anything else where you want someone to click. And banners are the usual static or flashing signs you see on websites, which advertises whatever you want people to click on.
Now just to be clear for those who are unaware, whenever a site pays you for any person you sign up, it doesn't mean that money will be taken from the person you referred but instead paid from the website to you. Your referrals will never see missing money from their accounts, on the behalf of you signing them up. Many sites will credit you this money in various ways, such as a percentage or one time payment. An awesome thing is that survey panels are usually the easiest to recruit referrals, since mostly all of them are free to join.
This is a total win win for all parties involved. The examples below gives you an idea of how it works.
You:
You are the person who will send the referrals to the survey panel and earn yourself a credit (sign up bonus or percentage of whatever referral makes).
Referral:
The referral signs up for free and begins making money with surveys and his or her own referrals.
Survey Panel:
You are sending the survey panel fresh new members for the advertisers to survey. Advertisers pay the panels more for fresh leads. This extra payment makes it to us as a referral credit and so survey panels will earn money every time we make money!
All of this money is actually trickled down from corporation advertisers, who places surveys on the panel. These advertisers have very deep pockets and spend billions of dollars on market research each year. This is how much your valuable opinion counts to them, in using it to better their products for you, and to knock out stiff competition. Paying you to take a survey is one thing but giving more to bring others in on board for free is very generous indeed!
Different Types of Referral Payments
You will notice that every survey panel pays a different referral payment. They are either paid as a one time payment or a percentage of everything the referral makes. Some panels even feature a 2nd tier system, where you can get paid from people who've signed up under the very first person you referred. If you want to make money for the long term, it is very important to know in the beginning of which panels offer the best referral programs to sign up under.
I explain in detail below the two different types of referral payments you will receive and how much you can possibly make.
One Time Payment
Scenario 1:
Ex. You will receive a $5 credit for every referral you send us who completes at least one survey.
$5 (credit) x 50 referrals a week = $250 or $ 1,000 monthly
$5 (credit) x 100 referrals a week = $500 or $2,000 monthly
$5 (credit) x 150 referrals a week = $750 or $3,000 monthly
$5 (credit) x 200 referrals a week = $1,000 or $4,000 monthly
Now this is just one realistic example from the survey panel, Vindale Research. Getting these amounts of people to sign up above may seem over exaggerated but its really possible as I will explain in a minute.
Percentages
Scenario 2:
Ex. In this 2nd tier program, you will receive 20% of whatever your referral gets and another 10% of whatever their referrals gets, as long as they're active members on the panel.
20% (credit) x $10 (1st referral's balance) = $2
10% (credit) x $10 (2nd referral's balance) = $1
$3 (total) for all referrals
50 (referrals) x $3 (total) = $150 (as long as member is active)
100 (referrals) x $3 (total) = $300 (as long as member is active)
150 (referrals) x $3 (total) = $450 (as long as member is active)
200 (referrals) x $3 (total) = $600 (as long as member is active)
As you can see that signing up to a survey panel who pays in percentages allows you to earn continuously, as long as the referral is still being active on the panel. This form of payment is sort of more stable and passive, and will less likely make you work as hard to earn money. The thought of receiving payments again and again without needing to sign up more referrals is a wonderful situation financially. To get the best results, you should try both one time payments and percentages referral programs together, as you'll see your income explode!
Its no secret that if you use this concept, it will eventually take you from $250 a month doing surveys, to $250 a day at best earning with referrals. But you maybe asking, "How do I even get a referral to sign up, let alone hundreds of them...?"
So How Do I Get a Referral or Referrals?
Many people have struggle with this same question, including me for some time, but it has to be very planned out before you begin. To go from making $500 a month taking surveys to $5,000 is very possible, but only if this traffic is coming from thousands of referrals. I will give you a list of both free and paid online/offline methods, to help you get referrals. Just remain patient and never force or bribe anyone to sign up, as this will only make you look like a "Scammer Spammer" lol.
Online Free Traffic:
1. Send a survey email invitation to friends and family, who you believe would be interested. I would first show them some proof that it's working for me, since most people are usually skeptic to new things they haven't tried yet.
2. Join a related group on social media and advertise your offer (not to spam) Finding a “Work at Home” or any other online income niche is a great place to begin.
3. Create a blog with related topic (Blogger or Wordpress) You can give a review on your choice of surveys to take, and produce a lot of traffic to your blog from social media groups, like Facebook and Twitter.
4. Write posts in related forums with your signature (not to spam), like the hugely popular online marketing board, “Warrior Forum.” You can advertise in the Warrior Forum which has nearly 800,000 members, and many sections for promotion.
5. Use Craigslist.com & Whynotad.com or any other online classified ad site. Post related ads on the topic with your referral links. Just read the rules before doing this.
6. Use sites like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon to create links back to your blog or website.
7. Write a free ebook or report and place your links inside for people to click. Then upload them to high traffic free ebooks sites like free-ebooks.net & feedbooks.com
8. Create a youtube video and place your referral link in the description. You can make a video of yourself reviewing a survey, and then showing on camera a screenshot of your real earnings. This should get interested people at least curious enough to click on your referral link in the description.
9. Write an article and with it, place your referral or redirect link on the page. Then submit it to Ezines.com or any other article site.
10. Search for keywords using SEO in Google Keyword Planner, that are both relevant and active enough monthly, so you can rank your blog or website. This will take some time but the results will definitely pay off later on.
Online Paid Traffic:
1. Use PPC (pay per click) advertising to receive highly targeted visitors using sites like: GoogleAdwords.com, Bidvertiser.com, Advertising.com, Yes you will spend money but the results will be instant, as in a couple of hours after ordering the traffic. If you're on a tighter budget and want to get a higher volume of traffic, then you can use Maxvisits.com or Adf.ly.com
2. Use PPV (pay per view) traffic, such as on Youtube to place your ads on many other videos. Thousands of people across Youtube will see your ad right before the video begins and have a decision to wait or click "skip" once the 5 seconds are up. The key here is to quickly put the most attention grabbing thing in the beginning of your video ad, so that people can see it before clicking the skip button, after the 5 seconds is up.
3. Take more control by using a website, such as Wordpress. You can get very low hosting deals from GoDaddy.com BlueHost.com and Hostgator.com. If you choose Hostgator.com for hosting, you may use the coupon code "PAIDSURVEY" in checkout to receive $9.94 off any hosting package.
4. Create a solo ad campaign and advertise with Safe-swaps.com or Adcheiver.com. For a fee, you can place your ad in front of other people's related topic of email lists and receive highly targeted visitors.
Offline Traffic
1. Create flyers and post in public high traffic areas, such as community centers, college & high school campuses, convenient stores and libraries. You can also place QR codes on your flyers for mobile users to quickly recruit them, by just scanning the code with their smartphones. Just remember to get proper permission before placing flyers in any private location.
2. Create a bumper sticker from the related topic, with your referral link on it and place it on the back of your vehicle. You may want to buy a domain name and redirect it to your referral link, since the referral link will be very long and clumsy looking. You can easily create bumper stickers in www.zazzle.com.
3. Print up some small pamphlets and place them in public areas such as, college & high school campuses, convenient stores and libraries etc. This works great if you have more for them to read, as you can section off information into every side of a folded pamphlet.
4. Place ads in your local & national newspaper directories. The largest newspaper advertisement directory in the U.S. is www.nationwideadvertising.com. Here you can place your ad into 21,000 newspapers across America and they have a circulation of 100 million weekly. Ads are priced by the amount of people you choose to advertise to. Putting your ad in front of 100 million eyeballs weekly around America will definitely get you some responses!
5. Hold a seminar in your town or city, dealing with on the topic of online income with surveys. This can be inside a community center, hotel meeting room, school, church, library or any other private/public facility. You could even hire a camera guy to record it, and then upload it on youtube for extra exposure. This could get you plenty referrals in person and online at the same time. Also you can make some money up front by charging attendants a small fee to attend the seminar!
6. Get on public access television and discuss making money with online surveys. You can place your url on the screen or have viewers call in for contact. Public access television can make you a mini star in your local community, as being on television is the top visual exposure you can receive. If you live in a major city, your number of referrals will likely climb the minute after the show goes off. Not to mention the number of re-runs that will air afterwards!
7. Create an ad, and feature it on the radio. This can either be during commercial breaks or being a guest on a talk radio segment. The radio is still a huge market and there's plenty topics on making money online. Just like television, if you live in a major city or even a small city, you can gain plenty referrals during or after the show has ended. Online radio stations are another great avenue to choose as well. Being online you have the luxury to reach foreign countries all at once time, just by broadcasting from your bedroom.