Introduction
In Referral marketing, Buying referrals is when you will really start to earn your deserved share of internet revenue. By now you must be familiar with the first step into this business it is absolutely vital to get to this point. If you don’t know please read this first, follow these rules and get a few freebie sites in your portfolio before you begin selling, trust me.
Get started
I recommend having at least three easy sites, that payout at $40-$60 a referral and two harder sites that payout at $80-$120 a referral, it is entirely possible to do one site and focus all your time on it. However when you start someone out doing one freebie site, and they finally green, they’ll most likely want to do another site for you. If you have a whole list of sites, the possibilities of repeat business are extraordinary. We’ll do some calculating later, now we need to jump into setting up in the freebie trading world.
First, it’s not easy money. In fact there are some difficult times and hardships especially when you begin to sell. The initial marketing technique for this business is by way of freebie trading communities. I recommend to take some time now to sign up on the free lunch room forums. The free lunch room is where you will gain most of your business. There is also another site, www.Anything4free.com it is similar to free lunch room but not as popular, I have no experience with it so I can’t really say if it’s profitable or not. These “freebie trading communities” are vital to your success, don’t just sign up to earn money, get involved! Get to know the community, make friends and really become part of the sites.
For more information I recommend reading my in depth analysis of freebie communities
For the rest of this article I will refer to the free lunch room forums and not anything 4 free, simply because they are extremely similar and most techniques here are compatible with both communities. I have nothing against anything4free.com or in any way do I think it’s a less effective method, it is just one I am not familiar with. So let’s begin to set up our freebie trading desktop of operations.
You will need:
Freelunchroom.com account
Central Email Adress
Instant messengers (Yahoo, Aim, MSN, I recommend them all)
Email alert (If you use yahoo mail, your yahoo instant messenger will alert you when you receive mail, as does Aol instant messenger, and probably MSN)
Paypal account, a verified account
Finally, you will need to be available to new members almost 100% of the time, the best way to do this, is to set your preferences in the freelunchroom forums to receive an email whenever your trade thread receives a response, or you get a private message. With your email alert, you’ll be able to respond promptly.
I recommend getting FLR Verified also, it cost $50.00 and it’s just a badge under your name in your posts, but with it you can buy stickies (very important to the serious referral marketer). I would also wait until your Trade Recond on FLR is at least 10 before you start paying for referrals. The new members need to be able to trust that you wont rip them off. So building your TR up to 10 is essential (Atleast 10) The more TR you have the more reliable you are. If you are having trouble building your TR to 10, contact me, I have plenty of trades we can do. Your basic work flow will go like this. You update your trade thread (More in the next section). Someone will respond to it, or private message you, you’ll receive and email when you get private messages and be able to respond almost immediately. The vast majority of those who surf the internet do not hold attention to anything for very long, so when you don’t respond immediately, they will go on to find someone who will. It is important to provide instant support and answer all their questions or you wont gain a lot of respect or business. Let’s skip on to the marketing.
Marketing
This is how you’ll gain the majority of your business, don’t worry, you need absolutely no previous knowledge about marketing, it’s really quite simple. There are a few techniques here that are vital to your success. At no point will I ever use pay per click services for this business, it’s simply a lost cause. For those of you familiar with pay per click and other advertising methods, you’ll find that the “make money from home” keywords are EXTREMELY competitive. Doing the math, and based on the fact that on first glance, this oppurtunity as a business is “too good to be true” or a scam, so those who see the ad that I would put up, are likely to dismiss it as fast as it reaches their eyes. Now that is out of the way. This is my tried and true methods of “advertising” and “marketing”
The best way to market yourself, hands down, is to start a trade thread in the free lunch room forums (read my previous post about the community forums to learn how to start one). You will spend a great amount of time tweaking and enhancing the appearance of your trade thread. There are little things you can do to make a big difference. Now, this is the best part, when you get verified with FLR you have the option to purchase stickies. They cost $75 for three days, they keep your trade thread at the top of the pay for referral forums, so your thread will get more exposure than everyone else. It ushers the vast majority of new members to your trade thread. You are expected to receive 30-50 greens from a sticky, so let’s do the math. Let’s say we gained 30 greens from a sticky, most likely you’ll start them on a beginner site, like freebiemonster.net that pays out at $40 a referral. Now, you have to split that $40 with your referral, so they get their fair share. You are making $20 a green, 20 multiplied by 30 equals $600! of pure profit, minus sticky cost so $525. It doesn’t stop there, you get repeat business, if your referrals had a pleasant time with you, they’ll complete another site for you! This number is lower than the initial greens but it is a nice addition to the lump of greens. So stickies is where you will really start to see your business take off. You need to be verified and that can take a few weeks to process, so don’t wait till the last minute to purchase your verification, thinking you’ll make the sticky order date. That is the most effective way I have found to market so far. However as you can probably tell, I’m working on something else as well.
You see, I’m using this website to hopefully obtain some referrals. This isn’t the sole purpose of this website, it’s actually a personal documentation of all my business experience, to help my fellow online entrepreneurs. I am not taking advantage of my readers by getting them to use my freebie sites and gaining my referral, after all I pay them. It is a vital step to complete freebie sites and successfully “green” on them. Might as well get paid for it and build your TR using the free lunch room trade manager. So don’t think I am all in it for the money, though I do wish to receive a healthy profit, my number one priority is to provide useful content as an entrepreneur, writer, and director. As far as marketing goes, Those are my best methods, I do admit I haven’t tried everything, and when I come up with something else, you’ll be the first to know! Let’s explore a little about how you should treat people when they agree to complete your freebie site for you.
Etiquette
The vast majority of those that will contact you about completing one of your sites are new members. New members trust you to guide them right, by way of advice and friendliness. Answer every question they have, and be extremely nice. Let them know exactly what is going on, and why you appreciate them so much. Don’t lie, ever. Never hide anything from them. Learn them a complete understanding to the inner workings of the business, link them to this blog! Be There Friend. The closer you become to your refs, the higher you will climb the ladder. You must know what to teach, to teach it also. If you don’t know the answer to a question, I would recommend you find it, Fast. If you are new to the business, maybe you shouldn’t be paying for referrals. Offer them bonuses for repeat business. Start them on easy sites, and explain why they are easy. Don’t sent them a link and tell them to go at it. Ask them if they need extra guidance, or help. Be there when they respond. By being readily available for whenever you receive a message, you gain their trust and dedication. This lets them know you are who they need to work with. Do whatever it takes to gain the trust and admiration of your new members. After all, they are taking a financial risk when dealing with someone they don’t trust. Follow these guidelines, and soon enough you’ll be completing your first trade!
Completing your trade
There are few things more rewarding, more exhilirating, and more memorable than completing your first trade. This is the very basic form of the business you are dealing with. This section is dedicated to the process of trading.
When I refer to a “trade” I mean someone completing a freebie site for someone else in return for either another freebie site completion or money. You’ll probably be trading for cold hard paypal cash, so that’s what I’m going to base this guide around. If you are buying referrals on the free lunch room forums, you probably are already familiar with the trade manager, if your not, you don’t need to be buying yet. It’s a real simple device, you state what you will receive, you state what they will receive and then extra notes. I recommend on everyone of your trades you put something like “seller agrees to refund if account is held or frozen” in the notes section. This protects you from losing money. The trade manager allows you to leave feedback once a trade is completed and that is how you develop your trade record (or TR). Every trade counts one toward your trade record. This is one of the most important features of the freelunchroom forums. It is very similar to ebay’s feedback system, it allows you to instantly see if you are dealing with a reliable trader or not. This should be your number one priority for a while, gaining positive TR.
In reality, your best bet to begin with is to offer some pretty generous portions of your profit. Instead of offering 50% of your referral profit, offer 75%. So instead of paying $20 for a $40 per referral cash out site, pay them $30. This will give you the needed edge gain a sufficient amount of TR to sell them at 50%. The hardest part is getting started. Just don’t give up, and be persistent. Soon enough you’ll be completing trades on a regular basis. Let’s talk payment now.
Paypal
99% of your payments will be through paypal (I say 99% because I know there is other ways to get paid, and to pay people, but they are no where near as convenient). So first, sign up for paypal, a premium or business account. Then get verified there, don’t worry it’s free, you just have to submit your bank account info and follow the instructions. It takes a few days however. You’ll find that many traders on the free lunch room forums require you to be paypal verified. By being verified, it makes it easier for your business associates to get their money back if you rip them off. It’s extremely simple to send and receive money with paypal, and you can transfer all back into your bank account, so it is REAL money. You’ll find paypal to be very useful for a multitude of websites and online shopping.
Not everyone Greens
There’s a good chance you probably already understand this, and I think it’s important to touch on. Not everyone that signs up will green. That is common, but what isn’t common is being nice about it. Most people think that if someone agrees to complete a referral for them, they are obligated, however they can do anything they want, just don’t pay up front. When people stop trying to green for you, don’t hold any grudges, just let it go, don’t leave bad feedback and don’t worry about it in your trade manager. I see a lot of hatred to those who say they’ll green and then stop for whatever reason. It’s simply not worth the trouble. People change their minds. The easiest way to decrease this number is start them on easy sites like freebiemonster.net. When greening is effortless, they’ll be back for more. Don’t try them on harder sites, or you’ll end up dissapointed as will they. This can be a sustainable business.
Sustainable business
I started doing this almost exactly a month ago, I have since earned a total of $360 of profit. That is a nice number, especially for a college freshmen like myself. The thing is, I haven’t even started yet. I’m only now starting to be able to devout my time to this. I plan to update this blog with case studies on when the best time to bump your trade thread and the effects of a sticky, so you’ll know the complete potential when I get around to that. Refer to my “spoils and riches” post for an updated section of my successes.
Time and Dedication
This is the most important factor to success in any industry. Be patient, and stay dedicated. I’d like to tell you my over night success story, but there wasn’t any. I toughed it out, and only now am I feeling like it’s paying off. I wouldn’t quit your job after reading this, I would give this a try on the side and see if it’s for you. It can pay off, things will be slow at first, just tough it out. Reserve some money for it, I recommend at least $100 for payouts. You can accumulate an easy $100 from other traders, by getting paid to complete referrals. So don’t let this discourage you. It isn’t easy, but no good things in life are. There are some breaks here and there, like free greens which we’ll discuss now.
Free Greens
Some new sites will host free green promotions to gain business. Most traders will jump on this chance just to avoid the inconvenience of completing offers. The best way to find out is to keep an eye on the free lunch room forums, they encourage freebie site owners to post their news. You’ll see all kinds of promotional offers from freebie sites, just read them and check the site out and make sure it’s legit. Many sites you can request a free green even if there isn’t an active promotion going on. Sometimes you’ll get it.
Closing
In closing, buying referrals is the platform that all traders want to reach. However it isn’t as easy as it looks. Just stick with it, be friendly and enjoy the essentially free money! If you like dealing with business and money management, you’ll definetly enjoy this business. You will read so many horror stories when researching or maybe by chance, just know that it can happen. It will happen as long as you are persistent.
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