How to Earn Affiliate Commissions With PayPal's Mysterious Merchant Bonus Referral Program

It's hard to believe everybody doesn't have a PayPal account, but some people don't, and many with good reasons. Many people starting online businesses may have been buying stuff for years online without having a PayPal account. Since PayPal allows purchasing through it with a credit card but without an account login, many people will just do that when presented with PayPal as the only payment option. 

I can relate, because I am account-creation averse myself and for a time had a running dispute with PayPal that prevented me from using my account but did not prevent me from buying stuff with PayPal by paying without an account login. 

You can earn commissions when people sign-up for merchant accounts through your referral link. The commission has limits, but it's probably worth setting it up if you market, as I do, to people who want to start or grow online businesses. 

PayPal has a referral program that pays commissions but they make it really hard to find your link. 

I had a PayPal account with a referral link a while back, but I closed it and stopped using it and opened another. I had forgotten about the referrer program and I recently stumbled on an opportunity to earn from it so I thought, "well, I'll just get a referral link for my present account" 

First - I think you need to have a business or merchant account and it probably needs to be verified. Business accounts are free and verification is free, but you'll have to jump through a few hoops and getting it done may take a couple of days. 

Second - PayPal's instructions for getting the referral link, if you can locate the instructions at all, are wildly inaccurate. At their clearest they tell you you can find your referrer link at the bottom of ANY PayPal page. This is a lie, because as soon as you login to your PayPal account, you'll find the referrer menu item at the bottom disappears. This is a catch-22 because the only way PayPal could give you a referrer link is if you were logged-in. 

I suspect PayPal has made this hard to figure-out in order to discourage people from using it to earn commissions, or maybe it's just a symptom of the Peter Principle at work or something. 

Here's a work-around. I have not seen this described anywhere online. Every blog or resource I found was either out of date or just dumbly parroted what PayPal says in pages pertaining to the referrer program. 

Here is an workable method (as of August 2010) for getting your PayPal referral link: 

1.  Login to your PayPal verified business account. 
2. Type "referrals" (without quotes) into the search box at the top and press enter. 
3. This takes you to a search results page with one results for "Login - PayPal". Click that link and it takes you to a business account page that looks a little different from the usual page you're used to seeing. 
4. Repeat step 2. (really - you have to do it again) Type "referrals" (without quotes) into the search box at the top and press enter. 
5. This should take you to a search results page. All the search results are pretty useless for getting your link, but if you scroll to the bottom you will find a little menu item for "referrals" and if you click on that you'll be taken to a page that gives you a custom referrer link. 

How to Obtain Referrals on Paid Survey Sites

Remember one thing: There is no one "best" way to get referrals on GPT sites. There are many, many ways and almost all of them work on some level. I'm just going to share with you some of the ways that have worked best for me, and hopefully will work well for you. Here's a few methods that get the job done pretty well: 

1. Make a website or blog. This is probably the best way to get referrals. If you're able to make a good blog or website and advertise it well, you'll get more referrals than with any other method. Make sure to put good content on your website or blog, it needs to be something that people are really going to be interested in. 

2. Refer friends. If you have friends that you think will be willing to put in the effort that it takes to make money online, than by all means get them to join. Friends that you refer are the easiest to help as well, and remember - when your referrals do well, you do well. 

3. Make fliers and/or business cards. This isn't too tough, pick a GPT site, write a little bit about it, slap your referral link on there and make some copies. Once you have the fliers/business cards all you have to do is hand them out of put them up around your neighborhood. 

4. Be enthusiastic! When talking to someone about GPT sites, seem sincere and excited about them. Make the person you're talking to interested. This doesn't seem like much but it really makes a big difference. 

5. Post on a few forums. Being a part of communities is a great way to get either your website link or your referral link out there. Just make sure that the forum allows banners/links in signatures. 

6. Put your referral link in your email signature. If you're someone who sends out a lot of emails, this can get you a lot more referrals than you would think. You'd be surprised at how many people will click on that link. 

7. Get your site on some search engines (for people who have a website). Getting your website or blog on major search engines like Google is incredibly important. The page for submitting websites to Google is Here. But getting your page on Google is only half the battle, getting it on the first couple pages of Google will get you many more referrals. The best way to do this is through link backs (getting other websites to link to your site). There are many ways to do this. Link directories are one way - basically they'll put your link on their directory for free if you put their link on your web page. If you're going to use link directories you'll need to make a links page on your website. I've found that it's worth it to do so. Another way to get link backs is by using social bookmarking sites such as Twitter, Delicious, Digg, etc. Register on these sites and submit your link to them. There are many other ways to get link backs in the aforementioned guide. 

Like I said, these are only a few ways of getting referrals. You don't need to use all of them either, just use the ones that you like. There really are infinite possibilities - use your imagination! I'm sure you can think of some more great ways to get referrals. 

Griffin Cooper

Affiliate Programs And Referral Programs Explained

Many online marketers actually don't know the difference between affiliate programs and referral programs. In fact, most will think that both of these are the same. However, they couldn't be any further from the truth. There is a huge difference between an affiliate program and a referral program. Knowing the key differences between these two can help a business owner decide on which program they should use for their offers in order to grow their business. 

The main difference between an affiliate program and a referral program is that an affiliate program is a where the referred leads come from someone the affiliate do not know and as for a referral program, the lead will come from someone they know personally (word of mouth to friends and family). 

By knowing the difference here you will know that there should be a difference in the structure and the compensation as well. 

Let us first look at the difference in structure of these two systems. 

Structure 

You see, for affiliate programs, your affiliates are mainly website owners or traffic brokers who have existing traffic that is interested in your offer. So these affiliates place a link on their website and direct traffic to your offer. If someone who uses their link to arrive on your offer and then buys the offer your affiliate gets paid. And this is usually done automatically because of the use of modern technology that tracks the cookies of the visitors. Even the crediting of the sale is also done automatically. 

A referral program's referrer however, is normally your own existing customers. Usually they are not webmasters or anyone who can bring in a lot of traffic. They are compensated if they would recommend your offer to someone they know personally. The main strategy here is to promote customer satisfaction via good quality and services so that your customers will start referring your offers around. The compensation is to encourage them to try harder to get you the lead. 

Compensation 

The compensation model is usually an agreed percentage based on the sales. It could differ greatly from the first 10 customer referred compared to the 1000th customer. The affiliates can be compensated with other bonus incentives as well or prize if they could reach a certain amount of sales per month. In order words, the compensation model for an affiliate program can be very complicated, but it is definitely very flexible as merchants usually would love to encourage their best affiliates to try harder to grow their business. 

The compensation model used in a referral program is quite simple when compared to the model used in an affiliate program. Usually is in in terms of cash or a bonus reward. No fancy tricks. Just a simple send me a customer and you get a discount on future purchases or some cash reward. 

Relationship with 'Referred' Customers 

The relationship of an affiliate with their referred customer is basically none. They do not know personally who their referred persons are, and they send traffic based on demographics. Hence the chance of conversion from a lead to a paying customer is much lower. 

In a referral program, the referred usually have a strong relationship with the person they refer it to. They will try their best to explain your product with enthusiasm. This usually results in a much higher conversion rate. The only problem is that referral programs usually do not bring in as much traffic as an affiliate could and affiliates can usually bring in much more profit than a referrer could. 

Agreements 

When it comes to making an agreement with affiliates, you will need to be more careful as it is a two way link where it benefits both parties. You need your affiliates to perform as much as your affiliates need you to convert the traffic that they send to you. Plus, the agreements need to meet the FTC rules when it comes to affiliate programs. 

However, with referral programs, everything is kept as simple as possible. As long as they refer a customer, they get compensated. There is no need for any special agreements. 

Which One Is Better? 

It is safe to say that both types of programs are going to be beneficial to growing your business. Affiliates will definitely be able to bring in more traffic and sales for you. However, a good referrer can easily increase your branding and reputation. Giving the chance, they would even make good comments about your offer on social sites or Facebook, which can potentially help you get even more exposure and sales. 

Hence as a business owner, it is best if you could set up both an affiliate program and a referral program to get the best out of both worlds. Just think about it, your affiliate will drive you the initial sales and capital required for more advertising and improving on your product's quality. And your referral strike force will be out there giving you the best kind of testimonials you could ever hope for. 

Lastly, you will realize that because referral programs generally convert better, affiliates are now using 'review and recommendation' tactics that are similar while mimicking a referrer's job which is to build some sort of trust and relationship with their traffic first and thus preselling your offer first. This is known to help a lot with affiliate conversions. 

Therefore, although most people will think that referral programs are not worth the time, you should know better by now that referral programs can help you build a better brand reputation. 

Max Kim