The referral program is rocking!
In less than 6 weeks we now have 2,500 Email subscribers. Thank you so much to Members who referred their friends to Free Newsletter Subscriptions using their very simple member link. Amazingly, even with the incentive of locking in the bonus 20% discount through next quarter for referring just ONE person, many people still have not referred anyone. Surely you have a friend or family member who would not be so put out by getting our morning reports that they would deny you your discount!
Surely you must have one friend who would appreciate our take on the markets or would like to know what target levels we're setting or would like to see what companies are getting active in Andrew's daily posts or enjoy articles from our "Phil's Favorites" section – especially now that we have the very, very cool Zero Hedge section along with the Insider Zone that now features reports from Channel Checkers. Our plan is working perfectly – we are building up subscribers and bringing on great new services but we have to keep it going so please – refer a friend this week!
The idea behind this program is very simple. We have historically seen about 1% of our Free Newsletter members convert each month, which is pretty good but that's because we don't go out shotgunning for subscribers. Generally, our subscribers pretty much come in organically through search engines or referrals from other web sites, where they've seen enough of our free stuff to want to become members. As you know, we rarely push for subscribers as 1% a month is a good amount so we figure the best thing to do is simply get more people reading our daily posts and that will, naturally, bring more people in.
That being the case, the best people to bring more people in are the people who are already in. We have instituted a program that rewards members for simply telling other people about our site. What we're doing is giving all members the ability to refer a friend to the PSW Report Membership for FREE, waiving the $49 monthly fee. PSW Reports gives people access to the daily posts the same day but not comments (although they can view comments that are 7-30 days old) as well as general alerts (usually my first alert of the day, where I set watch levels) but not special member posts like the Buy List or other plays we track or daily trade ideas or member alerts.
Your member name is their "coupon code" and waives the fee as well as allowing them to have a 20% discount on a Basic or Premium Memberships. Each PSW Report Member you refer (that remains active) will give you a 0.5% discount on your next renewal. So, very simply, 200 referrals = a free membership, no matter what level you are at. I have now made this even easier as you now have a box in your account profile where you can simply put in your friend's name and EMail and – DONE!
In addition, if anyone you refer signs up as a member, you will be credited 10% of the first $2,000 per month in revenues so, generally, 10 subscribers referred by you will make your own membership of a similar level free. Should you exceed $2,000 a month in referrals, you will get a bonus on additional sales of 20% of the revenues above $2,000 per month. Additionally, you will get a bonus of 30% of all the referral revenues earned by anyone you refer.
ANY MEMBER WHO HAS JUST ONE REFERRAL (FREE OR PAID) BY MAY 30TH WILL GET A 20% BONUS DISCOUNT THROUGH JULY 31ST! I PLAN TO OFFER THIS EACH QUARTER SO MAKE SURE YOU MAKE ONE FRIEND EVERY 90 DAYS…
So let's say you refer 100 people over the course of a year to PSW Reports. That would knock 70% off your own subscription price right away. If, by the end of a year, 12 of them became members (1% per month) at an average of $150 a month, that would be $1,800 and you would get another (at 20%) $360 montly credit. If you are a premium member, your $249 membership would have been cut to $74.70 (70% off) on your Report referrals and the additional $285 PER MONTH would be a net credit to you. We intend to pay overages quarterly but, as I said, we're experimenting right now so we'll see how it goes.
It may not seem like much but it's a very powerful thing because of the bonus referrals. Let's say the 12 people you refer who become members also refer 100 people each and have similar conversions to paying members under them – that would mean that each of them would get $261 a month as well and 12 x $261 is $3,132 and you get a 30% override on that for an additional $940 a month. See – it gets interesting!
If however, someone were to be more aggressive and found not only 10 people a month to refer us to but also found 1 person a month to actually be a member, at the end of year 1 they'd have 24 members at (guessing) $150 average, which is $3,600 a month so 20% of that = $720 a month of direct commissions and if those 144 referrals generate just $49 a month each on average from their own referrals (the cost of a PSW Report Membership), that would be $7,056 a month and your 30% bonus would be $2,116.80/month plus the $720 direct = $32,840.60 a year. Not a bad outcome for finding 10 people a month to refer us to! Our 1% per month conversion is pretty steady so there's no reason to think it won't improve your count the next year as well (you would still have 88% left who haven't subscribed), even if you stop adding new referrals of your own. Of course, for any member you bring in who generates commissions like this – you will earn almost $10,000 per year as your 30% bonus override!
We've worked very hard to get the newsletter and alert system up and running, in part because I've been speaking to these other services who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers for these things and they tell me it's just a matter of marketing. Their system of marketing is to advertise all over the place and just hope some of the memberships stick. We have a more direct relationship with our members and I'd rather try to keep things "in the family" as I figure who better to promote PSW than our own members?
So we're going to test this program for Q2 and see how it goes as I don't think I need to hook up with one of the major services just to build the business and, if the amount of potential business is out there that these guys say there is, then I'd rather give the people who are already here the first crack at the referral revenues, rather than giving it all to strangers.
In summary, it's a simple system:
- As a member you can go to your account login screen where you'll see the "Refer a Friend" box.
- This is also the screen that let's you and your friends manage EMail and Alert preferences.
- This is also the screen that tracks all your referrals and commission bonuses.
- This is also the screen that tracks your own discounts earned against current rates.
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This is also the screen that lets members upgrade from one type of membership to another.
- If you have a friend who wishes to sign up for Basic or Premium Membership straight away – your login name is their coupon code.
That's it! Hardly worth the bullet points as everything is right on one page for you! There is just one more thing – you can send the link http://www.philstockworld.com/subscribe/ to any non-member (if you don't want to just sign them up for a newsletter yourself) and that will give them basic information about the site as well as a chance to see me in action following the link to my Livestock broadcast. It's useful as I explain the buy/write strategy in the first 10 minutes.
You can also send someone a link that automatically makes you the referrer by using the following URL:
http://www.philstockworld.com/membership/signup.php?coupon_or_referrer= AND, after the = sign append your PSW login name. If you have a blog and wish to make that a link in, that is fine with us. The deal is we waive the $49 monthly fee on PSW Reports if they use your name or we give a 20% discount off Basic or Premium memberships. Those rates are going up soon but, through 4/15, any current members can lock in the old rates and 20% discounts by taking any of the long-term subscriptions.
This is definitely a work in progress and I'll try to clarify the post based on what questions we get but let's see how it goes as it's a really fun Web 2.0 experiment in viral marketing vs. the bulk Emailing and Affiliate Marketing programs the big boys rely on.
Thanks for all your efforts,
– Phil
