It’s surprising how technology has changed things so rapidly in just a short time. For example, you can now earn money by referring links.
Gone are the days when you had to advertise your products in paper, magazines, radio, or tv. Now you can be just as effective as a business offering an incentive to affiliates to market for you.
Amazon was one of the first to recognize this in 1996. They started an associate program to reward people for selling books online.
This was done by giving their associates a referral link coded with a unique id number. You can make extra money by promoting your link.
Flash forward to today. Virtually nothing can be promoted, giving you the chance to earn money by marketing your affiliate website or link as it is sometimes referred to.
Here is what makes this mode of advertising very appealing. All you have to do is use your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, or email in a bid to reach out to as many people as you can.
It’s also a cheap way of reaching out to as many people as possible. Plus, it is free for the business until a sale is made.
The Process You’ll Take To Start Referral Links
First of all, I want to get away from affiliate marketing sales and get you thinking about just referring people to a program. This is a way to use your referral link to make you some money.
You’ll have to register an account with the company trying to advertise its product or services. After this, you’ll be assigned a unique URL by the respective organization.
The best thing about this link is that it helps you find your friends, whereby you send it to them to try to make them sign up. This referral link is shared through text, email, and online on some websites, blogs, or social media accounts.
Once someone signs up, you’ll get cash from the respective company or, in other cases, earn some points which you can redeem and get a gift.
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Ways to make money through referral links include:
1. Blinker
It’s a mobile phone application that allows people to sell or buy cars. You’ll first download it, then install it on your mobile phone.
After installation, launch the application whereby you’ll invite friends to your account. Eventually, you’ll share the link via text as well as email.
Every time one of your friends sells or buys a car through this application, you’ll earn a reward which usually is about $100.
2. Cardpool
This is a website intended for people who want to sell or buy unwanted gifts. You’ll get a referral link once you’ve signed up.
You can share your link with your friends by sending them an email or text and via Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
They offer a reward of $5 for every referral you make. What’s nice about this site is that even your friend gets a discount of $5 for his first order after signing up with this website.
3. Dosh
Dosh is a smartphone app that refunds you every time you shop at any stores that use this application. Also, you’ll find that every time you refer someone to sign up with their credit card, you’re awarded $5.
You cash out for your money once it reaches $25. Also, the customer earns $5 for the credit card he registers.
4. Drop
This mobile phone application rewards you every time you shop with them by giving you Drop points. Every time you refer a friend to this application, whereby they sign up using the link you sent them, using email or some text, you’re given Drop points.
You then redeem these points in either Starbucks or iTunes and get some gifts from these sites’ partners with Drop. You earn 1000 points on average for every person you refer to this application.
Related Video: 10 Websites That Pay You Good Money to Refer Friends
5. FusionCash
It refers to an online earning site where you’re paid for surveys, and games, as well as by referring friends to this site. Every time a friend signs up through your referral link, you earn $5.
You’re paid on the 20th of every month when you cash out. The money usually takes three days to reach your account.
Another good thing is that it offers some decent money for surveys. It’s found in the United States.
6. Groupon
An e-commerce platform that connects merchants with subscribers by offering travel and buying and selling of goods and services. You’ll earn $10 Groupon Bucks every time you refer a friend to this site, and sign up. These Groupon Bucks can be redeemed, so they make you a gift.
7. InboxDollars
This site pays you every time you watch videos, take surveys, and refer your friends to this site. The member’s dashboard at the top shows you where the survey icon is and gives you topics you can choose from and the offer you get for undertaking such a topic.
You cannot cash out until the amount reaches $30 for the referrals you make of your friends. If you are active, this is not hard to go with all the different ways to earn money here.
8. Instacart
It’s a service offered on the website and through smartphone applications where you can buy groceries online, and they’ll be delivered to you at your home. Once you’ve downloaded and signed up, you’ll be given a referral link that you’ll use to link up with friends through texts and emails.
Once someone buys groceries using your link, you’ll earn $10. At the same time, the person shopping gets a discount of $10 on the delivery, so you are helping them as well.
9. Receipt Pal
Here is a smartphone application that gifts you every time you upload your receipts on the application. This application uses your tickets to research the market to help various stores promote their products in a better way.
So, every time you refer someone through your referral link, you’ll be awarded 250 points that you can use to buy gifts. Every four receipts you submit are awarded 100 points.
You can later convert your points into cash. The best thing is it accepts receipts from any store.
Bonus Idea #1 – Use Affiliate Marketing Referral Links
Network marketing is a business model where most of the focus is on referring new members, also called sponsoring. Affiliate marketing is not that way except if you’re in a program known as 2-tier affiliate marketing.
In affiliate marketing, you get paid to promote a specific function. This could be getting someone to click on a link, fill out a lead form, or buy a product.
With 2-tier affiliate marketing, you continue to do your promotion. Still, you also recruit affiliates and earn money when they complete specific actions. 2 tier affiliate programs are a little hard to find, but they are out there online.
One advantage over network marketing is that you’re not working to build your group. You’re just using your affiliate referral link to recruit new members, so you only have one level.
Of course, network marketing is also referred to as multi-level marketing because you build a downline. The different levels can go on and on depending on the program.
Affiliate Marketing Sales
We generally think of making sales to make money when we think of affiliate marketing. There certainly is a skill to this.
The industry has advanced so much over the years. Now, most successful people don’t even view themselves as salespeople.
What you’re doing is working at referring to the link the affiliate merchant gives you. You can think of this as earning money with referral links.
Let me give you an example of how I do it.
Bonus Idea #2 – Blogging The Wealthy Affiliate Referral Links
I have a blog you are on that offers make-money tips. I focus on adding content in the form of articles such as this one that somebody would find interesting to read.
At the end of the article, I have a referral link in the form of a banner that takes you to a page where you can join Wealthy Affiliate for free. Why would you want to do that?
This is the premier affiliate marketing training program on the Internet today. I don’t even worry about making sales.
I focus on adding content to my blog and then letting people click on my referral links by joining Wealthy Affiliate for free.
It Is A Numbers Game
According to Wealthy Affiliate, numbers have proven that one out of 10 free members will upgrade to the premium level, which costs $49 a month. I earn $23.50 on every one of those sales.
I’m not worried about selling. I’m just working on promoting my referral link through blogging and producing fresh content on making money online in many different ways for my audience.
I have 400 plus blog posts on one of my blogs. I’m constantly going back and upgrading content to rank it on Google and Bing. This happens all the time, and when it ranks for keyword searches, somebody will automatically click on the link to my blog post.
This again starts the process for somebody to read the article, and at the end naturally leads to my landing page, which is a referral link for Wealthy Affiliate.
Final thoughts
Signing up for different platforms that offer referral links is essential since it helps you earn money with your referring links. It also enables you to inform your friends about the other products on the market today that they may not have heard of.
If you’re looking to make some extra money, you can certainly do that with what I call the circle of influence. These are your friends and you can send them your referral links.
Social media certainly helped expand our circle of influence because although we may not know people personally, we have many friends and followers on our primary social media accounts. You can develop your contacts with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and then send referral links out periodically and quickly to them.
You can also leave your referral link on your email as a signature file so that anytime you send out an email to anyone; your referral link is in your signature file at the end. this has proven to be very effective cause you are not selling in that respect, and most people would be curious about the link at the end of your emails.
Affiliate marketing is the industry standard for making money with referral links. I love affiliate marketing because I think this is an excellent way for anybody can make money today with the right approach.
The affiliate merchant for the program you join will give you landing pages and sales pages to promote. I suggest creating your pre-sell pages.
As I mentioned, I like the blogging aspect of a website for an online business. A blog is easy to set up and use as a website.
You do not need any technical knowledge to do this. Now everything is a point-and-click, and in a minute, you have started a blog. Trust me, if I can do this, so can you.
So how do you get started?
Check this out! You have the opportunity to start for free, take the risk away and have complete knowledge of what this blogging business is all about before you make any investment.
If you need help on how to get started with affiliate marketing, check out my #1 recommendation on building a successful business online. You can get access to hundreds of training videos, 24/7 support, professional consultations, private access to training guides, tools, personal private assistance, my personal help, and much more.
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Most people make a great deal of money just by referrals. I don’t really fancy the business that much because of my past experience with some websites but stumbling on this article, I really can give it another shot because these offers are actually true based on my research.
I just want to chip in a bit, most people don’t make research on anything they are engaging online, this affected me and I lose a lot of money because of this ignorance, its really proper to be fully aware of what you’re going into before you start pasting your details. Anyways, this is a nice and informative article, full time of useful content. I like it.
Hey Jones, unlike you, referrals have done for my business and a few businesses that I am not pursuing, I still have income coming in because of those referrals. So that how powerful referrals are to your business.
Most of the time we tend to ignore our business and that is one of the main reason people fail in their business, and we all are a victim to that in some sort of fashion. So important that we stay focus and consistent if we need to see the right results. Happy that this post was informative for you.
Hello there, thanks for sharing this nice information. There are lots of people who are good at talking people into doing business with them but don’t get paid for referrals. I see this as a really cool means of making some money for yourself. I’ll love to try Drop as there are lots of people who would want to shop online and by that referrals will be easy. Although I’m currently a member of WA and it’s been good referring people. Best regards.
Hey Dane, many of us use referrals in our everyday lives and not aware of it. We all go and watch a good movie or go to a great restaurant and refer people to the movie and the restaurant. What if we made a commission on those referrals? We buy products quite often on Amazon or in major stores and often ask from our friends or families where did we purchase those items. So referrals have been part of us for a long time which we will always be apart of.
Sharing what is working for you is a good form of helping others, and being a part of Wealthy Affiliate is a good way you can refer others in building a business online for them as well. And as they have success, it would be quite rewarding and satisfying to you, great decision on your part. Thank you for the feedback.
A really useful and straightforward list of sites that pay referral bonuses when people sign up using a link you provide. Interesting that Groupon is on the list, a site I’ve used for years without knowing they offer a referral bonus. Really useful and practical information, thank you very much indeed for sharing this.
Being a member here at Wealthy Affiliate has taught me a lot of referral program and how to become an affiliate and the process of sharing your links without selling to earn an income with affiliate and referral programs from companies like Groupon and many others that offer that service. Thank you for the feedback and happy that you got value here in this article.
I am very pleased to have stumbled across your site and read this post here today, I have been looking for ways to make some extra money for quite a while now and though I have tried a few different methods with varying degrees of success I have never even heard of let alone tried some of the ideas you have listed here, these ideas seem amazing and I will most certainly be giving them a try, thank you for sharing.
Hey Russ, one of my mentors says, “when the record book on you is complete, let it show your losses and your wins, never let your record book show that you did not try.” I have been scammed in the past by a few businesses, but I never decided to stop looking, and I am happy that I did not, cause I would have not found Wealthy Affiliate and these referral programs.
Please give them a try, and if you need help on the best approach to get great results, please feel free to contact me, I would happy to lend a hand by showing you what approach I am taking.
Very good tips you have put together here. I have heard about some programs that is really helpful when it comes to rewards for referrals. I think that the receipt pal is a good one but I doubt they pay well for their referrals. I’d be easy for people to get receipts and upload them on the app. I will try some of them out. Thank you for sharing this money making list.
Hey John, although these tips may not provide a full-time income, keep in mind that these are things that we do on a daily basis, so why not take advantage on the benefits of these shopping gifts. And the referral program is another way to earn more and is a simple way to go about this by simply writing an article and letting people know. Good move on your part wanting to try some of these out. Let me know if you need a hand.
All the best!
Hello David, this is great and I’m delighted to have come across this post. Earning money online by referral link is surely a great means to rake in more money to add up income. Thanks so much for this and I’d surely make judicious use of the options you have listed in this post. I like the offer of Dosh the most. Thanks
Tracy, glad that you get some value here, and yes, making money with referral links is indeed a great approach that does not show that you are selling. Dosh program is a great one, one of the favorites that worked for me. if you need a hand in getting started, please let me know, would love to let you onto some of my ninja secrets.
All the best!
I think that affiliate marketing is the best idea you have up here. Something that I think j should try out myself. Seeing that you also use a link to make money is good on your website. I believe that referrals are a good way to make money but most people see it as a disturbance to them. Well, I’ll try out your tips and be back with my feedback. Thanks!
Henderson, thank you for the feedback and is a wise choice to try them out. Affiliate Marketing is the one I would recommend because that is the one that is working for me. And I have help others in that arena and I can do the same for you as well.
Understanding Affiliate marketing is the best place to start, this is the reason I recommend Wealthy Affiliate. Is a great community that is behind you as you go through your training band develop your business. I will be there to lead you along the way as well. See you inside.
This is a good recommendation to earn money with referral links. I love to have some additional cash, so I will try several platforms you’ve recommended above. Is there a country restriction? I remember once that I’m not eligible to register due to my location outside the US 🙁 Thank you for the information.
There are some country restrictions with some of the programs, but there are some that are not restricted to outside the US. The videos below will further clarify what you can join and what is not available. Hope they help.
https://youtu.be/PCEdaamr0Sw
https://youtu.be/xY8Z4cxbBQs
https://youtu.be/McKjbh-riek
Cheers!
Who isn’t always on the lookout for ways to make extra money, well maybe a few, I am though. Your list was excellent as I have only come across two of them. Groupon and Receipt Pal. I’ve used Groupon before but only as a user and I’ve looked at Receipt Pal but never got round to actually signing up. Must make amends.
I think you’ve raised some really good points. Having a constant stream of referral opportunities available to put out there, can never be a bad thing. Let’s face it, it’s not exactly ‘money for nothing’ but it’s pretty close. Your idea of using the email signature facility is spot on and I shall be working on that forthwith.
Just to show how valid your suggestions are, recently I had a message come through on Facebook. There were a few words from the ‘friend’ and then a link. Out of curiosity, I followed the link. I liked what I found and signed up, it was free and I like free. Since then, I have managed to get my wife and two sons involved and although it’s not going to be an immediate money-spinner, it does have the potential for the future.
All it took was one message. The power of communication. As a footnote, many are cynical about plenty of the ‘opportunities’ that are put in front of them. I like to use a well-honed approach I heard years ago. Basically, I let them know of a new ‘venture’ as a courtesy, so that in years to come when it has paid off, they have no reason to moan at me for not giving them the chance to become involved.
I believe that the numbers are growing daily when it comes to making money online by creating a website because today it is much easier. because of WordPress and a platform as Wealthy Affiliate, all the technology is not required, and one can get started within minutes after a couple of short step by step videos in WA training.
Sharing information on the internet is being done on a daily basis and if you could do so and leave a signature file as a referral link for someone who may just need some more information is a good way to make extra money. We just need to sign up ton the relevant programs and link them within our discussions.
Your experience with your friend link is spot on what I am trying to get across to people, and the good thing about this is that you are not telling them to click on the link, people just have a curious nature to links. and the click rate is so high when placed at strategic locations on the internet.
Your approach is the right one by letting your followers and friends know of opportunities so that when you build in that opportunity they would not say that you did not expose it to them. I follow along on that same strategy in a big way. this is the reason I mention Wealthy Affiliate constantly cause I would be able to work with them and expose them to a great community that eager to see them succeed as they did me.
Thank you for the comment and insight hereon this post.
I’ve tried several programs listed above now, and I can say that it is quite redundant tasks to do. Although my original intention is to make some additional cash, it will be boring after several days. I personally curious about affiliate marketing that you’ve mentioned above, so I’ll take my money and buy a beginner course to learn about the basics. Thank you
Affiliate Marketing was my best choice as well, and it worth the investment. When you do decide please let me know, would love to lend a hand and show you what is working for me and others in my community. Will talk to you soon.
All the best.