Referral Programs vs Affiliate Programs

Let’s discuss the differences between referral programs and affiliate programs. Learn how to use these programs to get free stuff like free mobile service.

Resources

Mint Mobile

Key Points

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Use referral programs to get free stuff.
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Learn how to get free mobile phone service.
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Transcription provided as is by Otter

Hey, this is Arthur from ArthurCundy.com. Welcome. Today we’re going to talk about referral programs and affiliate programs. Are they the same? Are they different? Let’s get into it.

Alright, so referral programs versus affiliate programs. Now, here’s how I look at it, based on what I’ve seen out in the marketplace today. This is how they’re similar and this is how they’re different.

So from what I can tell referral programs are for the average consumer. The average customer, the regular person who maybe doesn’t have a following, is not good at marketing and doesn’t have any experience or anything like that.

A lot of times companies will have both, they’ll have the referral program separate from the affiliate program. So what is the referral program? This is how sometimes it’ll work.

The referral program usually they’ll give you a little bit of money. They’ll say hey, refer a customer who will give you $20, or $15 or they’ll give you a discount on your product or service or will give you more of the service.

So for example, like Dropbox, when, when they were first getting started, they had this referral program where if you refer a friend, you got extra space in your account. And you know, you refer five friends you get, you know, that amount of space five times, right. So they grew very quickly because everyone wanted more space in their service. So if you have a great service and a great product, you know, you could have a referral program where you give, give, give someone you know, a little bit of extra or a little discount On their product or service for referring other people and bringing more people in.

So, and in the affiliate program is usually more robust, you’ll get more money, you’ll get more discounts and incentives, more benefits, more training, more support. And it’s usually just a, you know, a more enhanced version of the referral program. And usually, they’ll have two separate pages on the website where they fully explain what you get for each for each scenario, and so you can read through it I recommend to read through, you know, all the information. Sometimes it’s on the same page, but just read through everything and to fully understand what they’re offering and which one is the best for you.

So if you’re just starting out and you just want to get your feet wet, you just want to dabble in referring customers here and there. You can take part in the referral program, just to see how it is see what you’re you know, if you have a little audience or a little following, you can see, okay, you know is, is my audience receptive to this type of product or service, you can, you know, refer a few people see how it goes. And then you can move on to the affiliate program where, you know, they may have more stricter guidelines.

And so usually on the website, you’ll see referral program or they’ll have refer a friend or tell a friend or something like that. And the affiliate program we will usually say affiliate program or affiliates, or it’ll say partner program or something along those lines. So in usually it’s on the website, and it’s on the footer. So for an example, let’s take a look at Mint Mobile.

All right, here we are on Mint Mobile’s website. So you can see here 15 bucks a month. It’s a great phone service that I have. And they have both a referral program and an affiliate program.

So if you scroll down here on the website, all the way at the bottom, you’ll see they have two links here, refer a friend and become a partner.

So if you click on refer a friend here, you’ll see get a free year of service when you refer five friends. So you just refer five people and you get a free year of ...