This is a post that I’ve brought out of the archives of ngwoosh.com (March 6, 2009) from when I kept up with this type of thing there. I’ve also edited out a lot of outdated information.
SwagBucks, SimpleGPT, ICS, CashPirate… whatever site you may be a member of, they all have one thing in common: referrals.
I’ve noticed a lot of people coming to my blog lately having searched for tips on getting referrals. I’ve also had a lot of people ask me about this in conversations. I’m not amazing; I don’t have a thousand referrals to each site I’m on, but I can tell you some great ways to get referrals and then the rest is up to you.
Start with people you know: Family, friends, neighbors, etc. — Just make sure that the people you’re referring don’t live in your household, as most sites allow for one member per household. Reading the site’s TOS is up to you.
Sometimes you’ll see offers for business cards, whether free or paid. You could do this and put together referral cards to hand out to people he knew. Get paid for an offer and get referrals from it. That’s a win!
You may also see offers for free/cheap t-shirts on GPT sites. You could use this to do something witty. “Ask me how I got this shirt!”
When talking to people, don’t shove it down their throat: Remember, you’re not selling cars, you’re just referring people. If somebody isn’t interested, shut up. Casually talk about it and see where the conversation goes.
Social Networking: Most people are members of social networking sites, or sites with a lot of interaction to them. Forums, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. – Don’t spam your friends or the people you’re interacting with, but drop some info about these sites into your profile, or signature, and maybe make a comment here and there about how much you earned. Follow the rules no matter where you are, because if you spam or post your referral link where you aren’t supposed to (some forums have rules against referral links, for example) then you discredit yourself and the site that you’re linking to. Spamming will likely get you banned from the site you’re advertising as well.
If you’re active on YouTube and you make videos, or you’re interested in doing so, make sure to put a video together about the site(s) you’re interested in getting referrals for. People will view it, and people will join! Include your referral link in the video description.
Start a blog: There are several places to start a free blog, though wordpress.com does not allow blogs regarding these types of sites, so I recommend Blogger for free blogs. You can also look into getting a webhost and domain and starting a “self hosted” WordPress (or your CMS of choice) blog.
Start your blog about the site you’re trying to refer people to, or all of the sites you like and go from there. If you already have a blog, post about your sites!
Show proof! If you got paid by one of these sites you’re trying to refer people to, people like to know about it. I’m more likely to try a site that somebody can prove they’ve been paid by, and others are too.
Be creative! There are tons of ways to get referrals, and many ways that aren’t mentioned here. Maybe this will be useful to somebody, or maybe this will just sit in the archives.
