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One Woman's Story... Please try and read this all the way through. It contains some VALUABLE
insights and tips on recruiting referrals to your cause. Plus its also a darn good read!
How to turn a complete computer
novice...
...into an excellent
referral!
When I started using PTS programs it was not long before I released the revenue-generating
potential of recruiting other people to the programs. Immediately I began to scratch my
head to think of people who
may be interested in such programs. I tried to break it down a little... these people
would have to own a
computer, they'd need to be connected to the internet and for them to be able to use the
programs with
any effectiveness they'd also need to be reasonably computer literate.
Okay, so how many computer techies do I know...?
STOP right there!
This is the first mistake that I and probably you are making right now! Sure, the kind of
people that I
have described would probably be able to use these programs fairly well but there are
obstacles to be
faced with this character type:
If they are already technical, internet-ready people then their other technical
internet-ready friends
may already have told them about these wonderful programs that can pay you to surf! You
could
be too late.
Those familiar with the internet are probably already sick to death of banner advertising
and don't
want to be subjected to more of it. They have probably already been on the receiving end
of SPAM
messages telling them of the amazing get-rich-quick opportunities that the Internet
brings. Your
'Get Paid to Surf' idea is likely to be seen as an annoying scam rather than an honest,
lucrative
prospect.
Some technical people are always seeking ways in which to use their knowledge to exploit
what
they see to be the 'fat cats' of the Internet. These people may not use the programs very
effectively, they may get bored quickly and may even resort to cheating.
SIDEBAR
Cheating harms the Paid to Surf Industry because
advertisers will only pay the PTS companies
if their advertising is successful. When 5% of the member base racks up more points than
50%
of the entire member base just by using cheat programs, the value of the advertising
plummets which results in a dramatic loss of revenue for the company. As this revenue is
passed directly onto the member as a percentage, the rates paid to the member drop
accordingly and this directly affects how much or how little YOU earn. As an example,
GetPaid4 have steadily dropped from $0.70 per hour to $0.40 per hour. CashSurfers have
dropped from $0.25 per hour to $0.11 per hour. AllAdvantage, despite their 6 million
members,
have yet to make a profit... Get the point? Cheating really does harm the members and will
bring down the entire Paid to Surf industry. If you are cheating now, please stop and if
you
know people who are cheating please try to explain to them the damage it does.
So should I ignore these types of people then? NO!
I just want to point out that I am not trying to discourage you from recruiting the kinds
of people that fit
the above profile. On the contrary, you should always try to recruit anybody you know
(without
hassling or spamming them, more on this later). This article is about looking at the
people you currently
overlook. It's about recognizing the potential of those who you thought would not work for
you.
Would you like to read the story about my Gardener?
My gardener has inspired me to write this article. As I write the article, I'll relate the
story to you and
bring to light the knowledge I have gleaned from the experience.
Ready to read it? Good. Here goes...
I have no knowledge of, or interest in, maintaining gardens. That's why I hired a gardener
to look after
mine. I happen to work at home on my Internet based ventures so I am nearly always at home
when my
Gardener comes around. This was a conversation point. He asked me one day...
'So how come you're always at home? Don't you work?'
'Well yes, I do work but I work from home'
'Oh I see... So what do you do then?'
'I'm currently experimenting with some Internet based ventures...'
'Ohhhhhhh, the Internet eh? Wow, I bet you make a load of money from that then eh?'
As soon as I told him what my business was, he became in awe of me. Even my mother, who is
over 70
years old and cannot work her remote control, let alone a computer, knows all about the
Internet. She
turns on the TV and sees stories on the news about a new Internet millionaire. Most
people, even
those that know absolutely nothing about computers, have a picture in their head about the
computer
industry, and in particular, the internet revolution. Ordinary folk see computer folk as
'technical
whizzkids'. Well at least they do until you show them how easy it all is :)
So at this point my gardener had immediately conjured up a picture. He figured I must be
technical (that
much is correct), that I must be some amazing whizzkid (not true), and that I must be
earning a fortune
(also, not true). So I put him straight...
'No not at all. Well not yet at least.... I'm making a little
money but I think the Internet will bloom
in the near future so I'm hoping to get a head start and develop a venture that will
become more
lucrative later'.
'Oh yes, that sounds good. So what exactly do you do then?'
Now I've got him! In actual fact at this point it never occurred to me that my friendly
gardener
would become a very good referral and I can only write this now in hindsight. But what I
know now and I
didn't know then was that I had impressed him with his own image of what I do, and I had
intrigued
him into wanting to know more. He asked me what I do...I didn't offer the information.
Through a
casual conversation he became so interested in the idea of someone making 'little
millions' working from
home in their pyjamas (I'll tell you about that in a minute!) that it grabbed his
attention!
SIDEBAR
I am not one of these people who bounce out of bed
early in the morning. I
drag myself from my slumber around half an hour after the alarm goes off, I
don my fluffy rabbit slippers and head for the kettle. Still in my pyjamas
and slippers, I switch on my PC and start browsing through my email and
checking stats on my PTS programs. Sometimes I get carried away and find
myself still undressed in the afternoon! It just so happened that my
gardener would come around unannounced and for at least the first two
months he always managed to turn up when I was still in my pyjamas so it
became a little 'private joke'!
The beauty of PTS is that there are no drawbacks of any kind, it is purely beneficial to
all involved.
This should make it easy to sell as an idea. If you are a traditional sales person, your
job is made difficult
by the fact that you have to convince your prospect to part with their hard earned cash. Not so with
PTS. If you are trying to sell the idea of a money making opportunity there is
also, usually, some start up
fees involved. Not so with PTS.
So at this point my gardener was interested in how exactly I went about making money from
the internet
just by working at home. Because of his pre-conceived idea in his own head about me being
some
technical whizzkid, I had a huge opportunity to make him feel that this was something he
could do
himself. So, how did I explain my little venture to him...
'This will sound really silly..... there are these companies
that pay you to use the internet...'
[no response, just a totally blank expression]
'Well sort of....um... let me put it another way...they pay you to view advertising...'
'Eh?' [still adorning the totally blank look]
'Well the internet poses a tremendous opportunity for advertisers because you can click to
their
website immediately, unlike with a TV advert'
'Oh I see...' [I don't think he really did see, but he was trying]
'Advertisements appear all over the internet. In the form of little pictures or just some
wording
enticing you to visit some website or other. The problem is that many people just ignore
those pictures,
or banners as they are called so somebody came up with the idea of actually paying users
to display a
small bar on their screen which sole purpose is to display these little ads'.
'You mean that these companies actually pay you money to view their adverts?' [expression
has
now changed to utter disbelief!]
To cut a long story short...
At first sight the idea of a company paying you to view their advertising sounds ludicrous
and for many
people it is something that just does not seem believable. So I spent some time explaining
to my gardener
the concept of the adbar companies being the 'middle man' whose role was to target
advertisers banners
to the users who would be most interested in seeing them.
But we are missing the point here. I'm sure you already know about the PTS industry and
you have
your own way of explaining it to your potential referrals. The first really important
point to come from this
experience is that because my gardener is not a technical man and has no knowledge of
computers, he
had some predetermined idea in his head that you need to be some amazing internet-guru to
make any
money from it. This preconception made him interested in what I was saying. This gave me
the
opportunity to actually talk to him and spend time going over the concept of PTS.
As a side note, he did not even have a computer at this point so I was not actually trying
to sell him on
the idea as such. When you are trying to sell the idea of PTS from a website or an email
did you know
that you typically have under 15 seconds to grab your readers
attention and keep it? Internet users
will be very trigger happy when it comes to the back button or the delete key! When you
are given the
opportunity to talk to somebody in person take this as an incredible blessing; one to be
grabbed with
both hands!
Furthermore, with PTS you can talk about it without 'selling' it because there is nothing
to physically sell.
There is no money to be exchanged. Of course there will always be people who are not
interested. These
people do not matter. It is important to realize that some people will never be interested
and it would
be a mistake to pursue it with them. But because you are talking about how you make money
on the
internet you are talking about yourself and therefore if your listener is clearly not
interested in trying it
for himself you need never venture any further with it. Forget those who are not
interested and move
on to those who are.
He's interested, he's impressed, but he feels it won't work for
him...
Remember that I am talking about my gardener here. This article is about turning a
computer novice
into an excellent referral. This scenario is not likely to present itself when dealing
with a internet
veteran.
At this stage my gardener is interested in what I do all day at home in my pyjamas. Now
that I've had
the opportunity to explain to him what I do, he's also fairly impressed with the idea. But
because he's
never even switched on a computer he is still of the opinion that one needs specialist
computer and
internet knowledge to use PTS programs and therefore he feels that it won't work for him.
This state of mind is actually a golden opportunity to sell the PTS idea to him! Over the
next few weeks
my gardener continued to do my garden and we'd have conversations about computers in
general. He tells
me of his ideas to get his gardening business on the internet and of his fears and lack of
confidence in
doing so. He asks me if I am able to create websites, and then one day he comes up with a
proposition
for me.
'If you could help me buy a computer without getting ripped off, set it up and get a
website up and
running for me, I'll do your gardening free of charge for as long as you live in this
house'.
Wow! what an offer? How could I refuse? It just so happened that he's a rather expensive
gardener and
compared to the cost of my time required to get his computer set up for him, this was a
very generous
offer for me. So I grabbed it with both hands. Now this was a stroke of luck for me and I
don't expect
that you'll be in the same position but its quite likely that you do have some computer /
internet expertise
that you could offer to your acquaintances.
If I need something fixed around the house or I need my car fixed I
am lost. The first thing I do is call my
brothers for help. I am the kind of person who would get conned into spending hundreds of
pounds to get
a spark plug changed on my car. By Brothers and my Gardener are the type of people who
would get
conned into spending �2000 on a PC that they really didn't need.
The computer novice needs and values your help. In helping them they then look up to you
in the
same way as my gardener did to me. Furthermore you can then build up their confidence with
their
computer and with the internet. You can show them how they can make money all by
themselves!
You've suddenly changed your track from being a 'seller of an idea' to being the 'giver of
opportunity'.
They will thank you for showing them how to do this! Once you've explained a little about
the referral
system they will want to use those bars to help you out as a thank you for getting them
going with it!
Isn't this better than battling with someone who just thinks you're trying to sell them
some
scam?
SIDEBAR
With the increasing number of Paid to Surf programs,
don't lose your edge
by throwing your new found prodigy at a website full of programs! They'll
get lost and give up in a flash! They are already sold on the idea - DON'T
PUSH IT! Think about their needs and pick one or perhaps two programs
that would work for them. As I am in the UK I tend to go with AllAdvantage
and PaysU because they send checks in Sterling (UK currency). Find out if
they are going to be mainly web users of if they are likely to spend a lot of
time online but not necessarily on the web. Find out the kind of hours they
are going to be surfing. Both my brothers only really use the web and they'll
use it for hours at a time, and they'd soon break the 25 hour barrier for
AllAdvantage so I set them up on Spedia instead which allows unlimited
hours. If you can, set the bars up for them yourself on their PC. This allows
you to pre-login for them so they don't have to remember their passwords.
Then after they have been using the bars for a while and gotten a little
more used to the idea, you can show them how to track their stats and
perhaps direct them towards your super-friendly website!
Yes! But it doesn't stop there!
So now you have your new referral. He has one or two bars installed and he's using them.
Good! But
don't leave it there. Give him a chance to get used to the bars and make sure you are
always around to
provide any help he may need. But don't forget what makes PTS great....
the referral system!
I am in the early stages with my gardener. I have helped him buy a PC, I've set it up for
him, and installed
a couple of bars. But he's still very new at this so I'll leave him to it for a little
while to feel his way
around. But it would be a shame if I had put in all this time for just one referral. Sure,
I'm now getting my
gardening done for free but I am writing this article for you and you probably don't have
a gardener that's
going to do your garden for free!
So you want to really make the most out of your new found referral. You want to transform
him into an
excellent referral. We've all seen those referral calculators on every PTS website. We
know quickly our
referral base could explode if only we could all get just five direct referrals! This is
one huge problem
isn't it? Personally I'm getting quite good at getting my own direct referrals. And I've
also made one or
two contacts along the way who are also pretty good at getting their own referrals but
your average
John Doe gets exactly zero.
There is only one solution.... TEACH!
You yourself only have direct contact with your direct referrals. Now if you're recruiting
from a website
then you don't even have that! You have no idea who your visitors are, you have no means
of
contacting them and no have no idea of their personality. By all means do whatever you can
to
encourage good referral practices from your website, but you can only go so far. The
difference between
those people and your new found computer novice, is that you have the power of
communication!
If you have recruited someone like a friend, family member (or gardener!) then it is
somebody you know!
Somebody you talk to! The referral system can only really work if it is replicated down
the line.
As another side note, just like there are always people who will not
be interested in PTS in general, there
will also be those who are not interested in recruiting. Perhaps they are shy and simply
don't like to talk
to anyone. Perhaps they feel they don't know anyone - do they have a gardener? :-) If you
have
successfully managed to refer someone to one or more programs but they really don't want
to start
recruiting themselves then there's not a whole lot you can do about it so don't annoy them
by pursuing it.
As I have said before, forget those who are not interested and move on to those who are.
But if this is a
person who you have personally coached into this whole PTS thing then they should be open
to your
suggestions anyway so hopefully they will give recruiting a try.
Now lets talk about money! Most programs don't pay any more than $0.50 per hour and if
you're running
just one or even two bars at a time it adds up rather slowly. Sure you can tell your
referrals to run six
bars but we don't all have 21" monitors and 256Mb ram! Give it a few weeks and keep
in contact with
your referrals. Ask them how it is going. You'll probably find that after a couple of
weeks or so they'll
realise that they're really not getting all that much money.
Now is your make or break moment! Don't blow it!
At this point a lot of people give up. It sometimes drives me mad to see how 100 direct
referrals on
AllAdvantage clock up an average of only 2 hours per month each. It's not because they are
only using
the bar for two hours, it's because most of them simply stopped using the bar a long time
ago.
SIDEBAR
AllAdvantage was my first experience with PTS and I
joined back in October 99. I was sucked
in by the referral system and as I had a busy website with a huge 1500+ mailing list and
my
mind boggled at the thousands of $$$ I thought I was going to be making. I foolishly
passed
on these same over-hyped expectations onto my subscribers and got a lot of signups. Now,
several months later, most of these signups have stopped using the bar and I realize that
the
referral system rarely works in the perfect pyramid and that most people really don't make
thousands. Now that I've come back down to earth I ensure that I am always honest about
how little money is likely
to be made and I never mislead people. Now I find that the referrals I get for new
companies are generally more
active than the ones I used to get.
This is both a danger time and another opportunity time. The danger is that your new
referral has
been surfing for what seems like over a week and hasn't even got $10 in their account yet.
This is the
time to start explaining the referral system to them in more detail. You can also use this
moment to
encourage them to run perhaps one or two more bars at the same time (PC hardware
permitting). If they
truly want to make money and are willing to put in a little effort then they will listen
to you.
Demonstrate how they can find people to refer just like I am showing you right now. Heck,
show them
this article even!
Time = Money
But in this case time does not cost money, it makes money! You know how the referral
system works
yet ask yourself this question...
'Do you spend more time recruiting direct referrals for
yourself or more time helping those
referrals get their own referrals'?
Answer honestly. So which is it? I bet it's former right? Let's take a typical program
like AllAdvantage.
They pay $0.10 for a direct referral and only $0.05 for an indirect referral. You get
twice as much money
for a direct referral than for an indirect so on the surface it seems to make more sense
to get directs. But
of course you're forgetting your very special advantage.... you've read this article! You
are armed with
the knowledge and ability to get not just a direct referral, but someone who will look up
to you, have
faith in you and learn from what you say!
Now do you feel confident that you could get 30 direct referrals? No? Do you feel
confident that you
could get 2 direct referrals who you could teach and pass on this knowledge to? No again?
Then I need to
rewrite this article :-)
Getting two referrals who would learn from you, and in turn recruit and teach their own
two members
means that there is a much better chance of getting that pyramid downline beneath you. The
60
indirect referrals that it would generate at levels 2-5 would be worth the same (in
monetary value) as the
30 direct referrals that you don't feel you have the confidence to get.
On the other hand, if you do feel confident enough to get 30 direct referrals then you are
obviously
blessed with a gift - whether it be the gift of the gab or simply a gateway to an untapped
market, use
this gift to turn those ordinary referrals into people who replicate the pattern for you.
Do that with 30
people and you will make thousands!
This is why time = money.
To effectively recruit a member, teach him about PTS and teach him to become a teacher
himself (how
many times can I write that word in one sentence?) is not an easy or quick task. It takes
time. It takes
patience. But as you can see, that time investment is really worth it!
Back to my Gardener
Going back to my gardener then, the subject of this article is turning a computer novice
into an
excellent referral. In order to get a referral that will in turn generate his own
referrals and teach them to
continue this trend, you need to do a lot of teaching. This is why computer novices are
ideal candidates.
You first gain their respect by helping them with their computer and with the internet.
You develop that
respect into an admiration for your skills. The more you help them with their computing
needs the more
they will trust what you say. You can then develop a relationship with them and work with
them all
the time to be continually building that referral base.
I am in the early stages with my gardener. I've only just setup his bars for him. I don't
actually know
whether or not he'll become a good referral but here are some things I do know - he
respects me, he
trusts me, he believes in my abilities, he is grateful to me for my help. I think he's
going to buy
me a pint.... :-)
That's it, Thank you for reading and good luck! Please email me on [email protected]
with
any comments, criticism, suggestions or just general stuff!
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