Referral Business
OK, so you've registered with the Marketing companies, invited all your friends and relatives, is that all there is.
No, now your ready to go into competition with us and start your own referral business.
Competition
You might be wondering why we would suggest to you to go into direct competition with us. Well, this site is all about making You money, and if we didn't give you the advice and tools to start your own referral business, we'd be overlooking the most important potential for you to make money.
Beside, the reality is most people will be happy to earn a few dollars just taking surveys. Secondly, it's a really big market. Very few Australians actually take online surveys, or even know about them. If we have 0.2% of Australians registered through our site,then we're very happy for you to have the other 99.8% Australians.
A Domain and a Host
You are going to need a Domain and a Host (A person that stores your web pages for view on the internet), to be able to start.
Don't try using your internet providers free web space, or a blog, or free hosting. You will not get listed in major search engines if your web address is www.someipname.com/members/homepages/~somemembername/mysurvey.html. If you are going to get a .com.au name, then you need to register a business name first. If you are going for a .com or .net, you can register any time.
You should look for a cheap hosting package at first, and preferably one that allows you to grow, and gives you a free domain name. We recommend, and use, Hostmonster.com.
Before you register, you will need to see if your domain is available. Have a look through
Domainsearch.com for domains that are available.
A Web Page
There are heaps of sites on the net that will build a page for you. However, they do tend to be expensive.
Alternately, when you start out, you can download free web page editors and build your own.
Web Page Editors
coffeecup.com Provides free Editors, templates and other cool stuff.
Download.com has heaps of free/trial/cheap Web Building Software.
Web Template Designs
OSWD.org has some great templates, free.
Some web hosts, including Hostmonster, have site builders that will allow you to use their site builder and templates to build your own web page. These are usually fairly easy to use and a quick way to set up a new web site.
Survey Links
Your Marketing Companies(Survey Sites) Members area will have details on the links you need to include for referals.Just log into your accounts and look for Referrals, or Affiliates. You will need to have a working web page to join some of the affiliate programs.
Search Friendly
One of the most important things to a web site is to be seen.
This means making your site search-engine friendly, and getting your site higher in the search engine listing.
There are lots of sites that will sell you Search Engine tools (SEO) but when you are starting out, it's probably best just to spend some time working on getting your site search friendly.
Here are a few tips.
Read Google's webmaster site
Google has a wealth of information on improving search engine positioning, and general web design.
Make sure your page has titles and Meta tags
The jury is out whether meta tags still have value, but they don't hurt. The following sites have great free tools for improving search results and seeing how your page will appear on a search engine.
searchenginewatch.com Has a lot of information about search engines.
submitexpress.com Some great free tools for search optimization.
scrubtheweb.com Simple Meta Tag Builder.
You should also, do a search on Google, Yahoo, Alta-vista. Check out what titles and key words the top sites are using to give you some help.
Make sure your page has a site Map and a Contact page
Google provides a lot of information about this.
Make sure your page has a robot.txt file
see http://robotstxt.org/
and www.javascriptkit.com
.
Share the space
OK, so you've made a web page, got it search friendly, and launched your page. Now, I recommend you have a look at some advertising on your page. Some people might not want what you are selling, so you might as well offer them somewhere else to go, and get paid for it.
Google Adsense, and Yahoo Overture are some of the biggest names. But if you search for Affiliates or Pay-per-click programs on Google or Yahoo, there are heaps of web-master reviews on the best one for your site.
Advertise
Some how, out of the 200 million pages on the internet, people have to find you.
Getting a good position on search engines is a start, but you need to think of other ways
Most hosting packages will include a site submission service. Use it !
You can also buy visitors using a Pay Per Click service, like Google Adwords. There are heaps of alternatives at searchenginewatch.com
These may cost a bit, but they can bring in the visitors
Check search engines for other sites that can advise you on advertising your site, and improving the number of visitors you get.
Avoid any site that uses Spam, never use it yourself.
There are also traditional methods of advertising. Local Papers, magazines, mail drops.
That's All
It will take a lot of work to set up your referral business, and I wish you the best of success. A lot of it depends on you deciding if you want to do it, and taking the time to research the best way for you to do it. What I have provided here is the tip of the iceberg, but if you do launch your own web page, please drop me a line and let me know about it.