Referral Link

A referral link is a link that is used by a referrer to promote products or services of a particular website.

When someone becomes a participant of an affiliate program, the link is generated so that the affiliate can share it with others.

Then, when new visitors follow the link, go to the promoted website and start using its services, the referrer gets a reward for attracting new users.

Referral link functions

Referral links are designed to attract new users to the site.

Many services to reduce advertising costs use a referral system in order to attract an additional audience at the expense of already registered users.

For each attracted referral, the participant receives a certain reward, the amount of which can vary from 1 to 50%.

In some services and affiliate programs, deductions can be up to 70%.

At the moment, the referral system is one of the most popular and effective strategies for attracting additional customers.

The larger the audience on the site, the faster the number of new members grows due to the affiliate program.

How referral link works

Each referral link is unique as it contains a referrer’s identifier to track how visitors come to the site.

Thus, it is possible to measure the effectiveness of a link or what percentage of traffic it brings.

Referral traffic can be defined as the total number of clicks to a specific website from referral links.

In other words, it is the number of people who visit the site via external links.

Typically, the higher the traffic, the more views and therefore the higher the likelihood of attracting leads.

Let’s look at an example. You own an online shop and ask you friends X, Y and Z who have their own websites to post referral links to it. Some time has passed and you get accurate reporting of transitions:

Total: 110 applications

Users who placed the order came with:

• X – 20
• Z – 10 transitions
• Other sources – 65 referrals

Thus, you know exactly how many people each site has brought.

Therefore, instead of giving money for useless advertising, you can pay only for the number of potential customers who find the website via referral links.

How referral links look

All referral links look something like this:

https: // site / domain / register /? refid = 312

312 is the personal number of the referrer, that is, the one who posted the link.

Such a link doesn’t look very attractive, right? It creates two problems at once:

1) Users are suspicious of links to unknown resources.

2) For reasons unknown to science, some are annoyed by referral links. More precisely, the fact that people make money on it.

It’s better not to post a link in this form, but disguise it, for example, under a banner or a picture. You can apply different methods.

How to disguise a link

The referral link can be disguised using different services. Even if the user hovers over the link, he will see the shortened address of the specialized service. Here are some popular camouflage sites:

• goo.gl
• tinyurl.com
• bit.ly
• u.to

It is enough to paste the URL that you want to mask and confirm this action. All links are valid forever, so you can place them on different resources.

Where to place a referral link

A referral link can be placed on almost any site on the Internet. The more options are used, the better. They can be placed:

• on a personal website, such as a blog or portal. Usually posted in feature articles;
• in social networks – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, messengers with posts. Placed both on personal pages and in groups;
• on video services with video recording, such as YouTube. With the proper level of content, there is an increased interest of users;
• on thematic forums with a signature line, where the user can leave a link to sites;
• in the comments on thematic sites (crowd marketing), provided that links to third-party resources are allowed;
• in referral search services – some websites for quickly finding an interested audience;
• using contextual advertising in Yandex.Direct, Google AdWords.