The ultimate guide to promoting your referral links online

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The quick version: summary of this article:

• Be truthful: don't make stuff up just to get people to sign up
• Set up a separate online identity (eg. on Twitter, Blogger) for your heavy promoting exploits
• Be wary of spamming: try different outlets and find a balance
• Create blog posts analysing and discussing your preferred referral link websites
• Place banner adverts complete with referral links in blog sidebars
• Select social networking contacts who may be interested and drop them an email/link
• Post, repost and get friends to retweet your links on Twitter
• Comment on blogs that share similar subject matter
• Use well-designed forum and email signatures to grab attention
• Set up a dedicated referral link review website and post updates periodically
• Have patience! It may all seem slow at first, but things will pick up if you put in the hard work.

Some things you should know

There are literally hundreds of web outlets you can use to promote your referral links, so you could say this isn't the really difficult part: it's a lot harder to get people to actually sign up. Nevertheless, the more places you advertise, the more chance you have of catching the odd person with aspirations of becoming an online millionaire $0.0002 at a time.
The best way to promote your links is to be 100% truthful about it all - there aren't many worse feelings than knowing you've been scammed not by a corporate machine, but by a fellow human in which you placed your entire trust. If you alienate your 'customer', you're likely to scare them off. What's more, they're going to tell all their friends they've been done over and it's all bad publicity for you. It's best to let your potential referrals know exactly what they're letting themselves in for: relate your (positive) experiences with the individual websites in a way that befits a human rather than a robot.
The alternative, of course, is to go all out and throw ruthless marketing force behind the whole campaign, stopping at nothing to ensure as many referrals as possible. If you choose this path, I recommend setting up an online handle/identity completely separate to ones you might use on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace to try and distance your efforts from your regular social networking. That's not to say you shouldn't promote via these outlets, just be careful about how you go about it. Be wary of spamming and learn where the boundaries are with each individual site.
Somewhere in the middle there is a balance which can only be achieved through time and experience, but if you can find it you'll be well on your way to a higher referral count.

Where to post your referral links

The very best place to start is on your blog. If you don't already have a weblog, I recommend you create one, not just for the purpose of referral links (though of course you may well want to use it for that) but because in general blogging can be a lot of fun.
Don't just stick your links up and say 'click these for the monies!' because that will get you absolutely nowhere. Take a bit of time to frame and research your post just like any good blogger would. What are the pros and cons of the service you want people to sign up to? Show proof of your success with a PayPal screenshot, ensuring you censor sensitive details about yourself and your account - consider creating a watermark that covers the whole image. Be careful not to go overboard by boasting how you've been such a wonderful success whilst conveniently forgetting you have a readership to engage.
Remember, the post isn't just about promoting your links, it's about offering advice and relating to the readers your success so they might follow in your footsteps. Give them the evidence, make your case and let them make the ultimate decisions.
Create separate posts for each individual referral link you have, keep posting updates on payment, thoughts and milestones and of course your referral link. You'll be surprised how well these grab attention.
Make comparison posts that pit one referral link against the other in a kind of contest. Which is best in a head-to-head situation? Which would you recommend the most out of the four or five links you have? Again, take twenty minutes to collate screenshots and bring your post up to a reasonably professional standard.
Place banner advertisements in your blog sidebars. The code for these, complete with referral link, can often be found under a 'banners' section of your user control panel on each website you're promoting. Alternatively, if you're a bit of a Photoshop whizz, why not make your own nice, colourful banner ads that boast your successes in a succinct and eye-catching manner? It would certainly be a welcome change from all the generic advert designs out there on the web and really stand out from the rest. If you aren't hugely adept at image editing, why not ask a friend who is, and in the meantime slip them your referral link in the process? ;)
Go through your friends on social networking websites. It's a bit of a long shot, but have they ever posted stuff about earning online or anything vaguely related to referral marketing? They would be the perfect people to ask, seeing as they have past experience in the subject field, good or bad. If they failed in their attempts, convince them they didn't quite do the right things and point them to your blog posts on the matter to win them over.
Periodically post Facebook updates, MySpace blogs or Twitter tweets to your referral links and literature regarding them. Better yet, set up an automated feed at a site such as Twitterfeed so every time you post an update to your blog, it'll appear on your Twitter as well. If your content is informative and helpful, maybe someone will read the article and retweet it so you get double the exposure. You can grab the Twitter retweet Wordpress plugin or the Tweetmeme retweet button to help you in this regard.
Don't forget that often, the referral sites you are promoting will have their own Twitter and Facebook pages, which will make ideal first friends for your new, single-purpose account.
Find blogs that are promoting the same referral site(s) as you. Gauge their success by checking how many people have commented, and if it looks as though quite a lot of people pass through via Google and other outlets it's certainly worth adding your own honest and well thought-through comment as well. Don't forget the referral link, though!
If you're really going to get serious about referral links, set up your own dedicated website with news, views and reviews on the best and worst referral websites out there at the moment. This requires some knowledge of SEO and web design, but if you don't have the time and expertise for that a Blogger blog will do nicely. Take a look at PTC Investigations for one such site: I'll wager the creator makes a good slice extra income from all his hard work, and he probably enjoys it too.
If you feel so inclined, place a short link/banner in your forum and email signatures. Every time you enter into correspondence with someone, you'll effectively be promoting your link there. If you use email to chat to your friends, they may well start to become interested and actually request more information. If so, you can easily point them in the direction of your blog posts which, of course, are so well-written they can't fail. ;)
Most importantly of all, be patient. Know it's all very slow to start off, but if you go about things correctly, it's only a matter of time before some people start to click your links. Keep working hard at it and you'll eventually make some breakthroughs. The beauty of referral link sites is that success breeds further success, it's just a case of getting off the ground in the first place.