10 Customer Referral Program Ideas

By Christian Fea

Customer referral program ideas continue to evolve as business is done in different manners than it was when our parents were young. This is definitely a positive change for business owners in today's digital age. With an endless list of new ideas and channels to bring referrals in from, it can simply be a matter of finding the right program for your business. Sometimes it can be of huge benefit to combine several program ideas into one custom-tailored strategy for your company.

10 Creative Customer Referral Program Ideas

Coming up with your own customer referral program ideas is part of the creativity required to grow your business and brand. This is an area where the most creative ideas shine.

1. Give away a display type of item with your business's name or website URL clearly visible. Display items include calendars, picture frames and other similar items that are easily viewed by others in proximity to them.

2. Offer rebates on your highest priced products or services. Encourage the understanding of how volume discounts at the top-end are being passed down as savings to the consumer.

3. Create your own event from a more obscure holiday. Be prepared to not receive wide-reaching results in your first year of celebration, but repeated celebrations and planned events will begin to grow a pool of its own referrals.

4. Offer a free service relevant to your business occasionally. A car wash should offer a free wax, a child care center can offer a free week for every 20 paid. Get creative and find a way to benefit your consumers without taking too much from your own bottom line.

5. Have gift cards created with your business or company name and URL on them and hand them out at conferences or events. Networking with other businesses can often lead to more customer referral program ideas.

6. Go green. Create recyclable grocer bags or gift boxes that sport your brand logo to show you are environmentally friendly. As these items are reused or passed on, they are still passively advertising for you.

7. Have a commonly used item packaged with your brand logo on them. Whether you choose soap, sunscreen or even a car air freshener, giving these out to your preferred customers can help bring in referrals. Be sure to give your preferred customers more than one so they can pass them around to their friends as well.

8. Offer discounted products or services that consumers can use on their next visit. Create a coupon or receipt that is double-printed so that one copy can be given to a friend or family member to try at the discounted rate.

9. Celebrate a customer appreciation day where current customers receive benefits on the spot in the form of gifts or entertainments and prospective customers can receive discounts for making their first purchases, thereby becoming a current customer for next year's appreciation event.

10. Award consumers for sending you referrals, for catching typos or errors on your website, or anything that initiates improvement within your business.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture and Referral Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture and Referral relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability. Click here for more Referral Program Strategies to help you increase your profits.

Proxy Site and how it Works

by: Farrukh baig

A proxy site is a web page that enables you to surf your favorite web sites even if your access to such web sites might be blocked by some content filter, for instance Web Sense (site name) or Smart Filter. Using such proxy site will keep your visit to those sites hidden so the content filter will not know that it was unsuccessful in blocking that visit.

So how do these sites work? In this short article we will explain... Proxy sites allow you to browse blocked websites through proxy site bypassing the internet service provider. Proxy site do that by providing its user to key in the address of that website and be directed to the page in a window in that vary site. Now the advantage here is that this window is coded as the proxy site address and not the actual site address that the user is visiting. Also the information caught in the temporary internet files will appear as the related to the proxy site not the blocked web page.

So how these sites do are blocked in the first place. Web sites are blocked using a number of programs in particular the security software. These software works with the web browsers which let users to surf World Wide Web. Now days many web browsers are coming up with their own filters which keep the blocked content from appearing. In local area networks the system administrator can also block web sites on that network level. Ninja Proxy, Ninjaproxy and Vtunnel!!! Ninja Proxy is a free browser based anonymous proxy service.

So why should one run a free proxy site one guesses but if you look the financial aspects of such service. It’s because they are very simple to advertise and one can earn up to 10$ a day. But on the other hand the cost includes a server that would allow the proxy to run on them as using a shared host would not be able to hand the web traffic and go down in days. But still when you are managing web traffic through your proxy site the earning much more then any other ordinary web page.

The question come then what you need to run a proxy site. You would need a domain name, a virtual private server, proxy script like PHP proxy and last you would add an adsense (or your own name) and adbrite (or your own name) account. When you got the domain and virtual private server you need to download the script on to your virtual private server make the necessary configurations and upload the script. When you have register for an adsense (or your own name) and adbrite (or your own name) account then insert adsense in your index page and adrite on proxy pages. Do not insert adsense on the proxy pages because it’s against the terms of the use. And last Advertise more and more.

I’ve read several news articles about proxies and how they are being used by hackers all over the world, some employed by foreign governments, to get into millions of computer systems around the world. The goal is to create what they call a boot net which allows them to use all these computers to do all sorts of nefarious things from the safety of these millions of computers. All of this activity then points to the owners of the computers through their IP address and ISP.

Doing Business Based on Trust and How it Can Backfire

by: Peter Cheater

This article is intended as a general warning to anyone embarking on a business venture with someone who you believe you can trust, or who you have worked with for a long period of time.

The article is written following an arrangement with a man called Peter White who is the sole proprietor of a mortgage business named either Aston Mortgages and Ownbuild. What happened should warn others about some of the dangers of partnerships based on trust.

Peter was a longstanding former client of a business I worked in as a web marketing director for several years. I had no reason at the time to think that Peter was anything other than honest and straightforward, albeit he was always shall we say looking to squeeze down prices and obtain services at a reduced rate.

After the company I worked for, and that Aston Mortgage was a client of, went into administration we kept in touch. During the following year Peter came to me with a number of business propositions relating to websites. I rejected all but one, which seemed to have some potential. Because of my long term business relationship with Aston Mortgages I went ahead with this without a proper agreement – only an email from Peter stipulating the terms of the agreement. At the time I had no reason not to trust him but realise now this was foolish and despite the 50:50 split on all commissions promised in his email, Aston Mortgage did not honour the agreement.

As Mr White had very cleverly set Aston Mortgages up as the sole recipient of the commissions and had control of both the website password and the Google marketing campaign, after paying out on a few of these, I believe greed got the better of him. He changed the password to the website and the Google campaign and then has refused to pay over 6000 GBP owed under our arrangement.

In addition to warning others, having spent a lot of time and money on legal proceedings in the past I decided the best way to get repayment is to name and shame using the web as the most effective way.

The lesson for others is make sure you have a binding legal agreement with anyone you go into business with, even if you have known them for years. I would also caution anyone to avoid penny pinchers- I didn’t do this with the owner of Ownbuild and paid the price.