Here are a few simple ways to get the referrals for free:

1. Family and Friends.

Don't be shy or embarassed about asking your family or friends. As with anything else in life they will probably be more than happy to help.

2. Video Sharing Websites.

This is a great way to get referalls. The amount of referalls you get will depend on how good your video is and what keywords are used for it but even the worst videos i've used have managed to generate referalls out of nothing. If you create a half decent video and add some good keywords or maybe even some popular music then the sky is the limit. Remember to use more than one video sharing website to spread the word more.

3. Blogging.

This method may sound strange but is one of the effective ways to earn free referrals . Generally a blog is used to express oneself about certain things and people. But you can get free referrals by doing some research work about the program you want referrals for and post detailed information about the program and be efficient, the blog must look like a blog and must not look like its made for getting referrals for free. Try not to place too many ads and have patience.

4. Signatures.

Your signature used in your emails, forum posts and comments on websites is another great way to pick up referrals. Make sure it's not just a link but a few words that draw the reader in like "Free No Fees Auctions". Don't just put a referral link as they most probably wont have a clue what you're on about. Make accounts on the most popular forums on the internet but make sure the main content of your post is valid or you will just be spamming.

5. Flyers and Business Cards.

Either make them yourself or pay a small price if you want a more professional finish. Put flyers up at bus stops, notice boards, street corners and anywhere else that there's alot of passing potential referrals. Make sure not go overboard and put flyers on every street light you see and check local laws first if needed. Business cards can be left in shops, phone boxes, or even posted through letterboxes along with leaflets.

Alot of what is stated above sounds simple but you would be suprised how many times it's overlooked. Getting referrals need not be as complicated or expensive as it seems. If you haven't tried any of the methods above then I urge you to at least try and you may well be suprised by the results.

I wish you all the best in your quest for those elusive referrals.

The Big Idea

You are in a high-level business meeting. You are not the most powerful person in the room, possibly far from it. A person senior to you has just made a proposal or suggested a solution that you know is wrong. What should you do?

•    Do not

o    Show negative emotion
o    Shuffle in your seat
o    Make a face
o    Grown, smile or laugh
o    Move back for the table
o    And never say you disagree

Remember, You are a Team Player and always make sure that is the impression you give. In business as in everything else “perception is reality”. Never forget it. Your position is that you are acutely interested in and value everyone’s opinion and suggestions.

•    How do you disagree and present your idea?

o    Sit up straight
o    Briefly face the last speaker and gesture to him or her
o    Say, name of person has a very good point, suggestion or whatever
o    Now look around the table at everyone as you say clearly
o    I would like to expand on name of person suggestion if I may
o    Couch you idea as an extension of what was said with little reference to what was actually said before

•    The business/social advantage of this tactic is:

o    You have not created a confrontational situation
o    Your opposition is not direct and probably not even observed
o    You have not pointed out fault
o    You have not caused him or her to loose face in the group
o    You have associated him or her with your great idea
o    This person will actually support your position going forward in the meeting
o    If your idea is also dumb it will not be attributed directly to you

Read it, learn it and remember it. Before long you will be the senior person in the room!

Related Links: The Big Presentation  Facing East For Business - Japan   The Business Dinner

Why not start a business playing with dogs? You would offer to come to a potential customer's home and provide play and exercise for their lonely canine. The customer would have the choice of choosing a fast paced walk, a 30 minute ball playing session, or other activity that provides exercise and stimulation. This service would give your customer peace of mind while providing the dog with the one on one interaction and attention he needs.

Of course, you could also combine this service with pet sitting for your clients which would give you an additional source of revenue. Other add-on services that could be implemented at a later time include scooping dog poop and at home dog grooming services.

To market your unique dog business, you could place your marketing materials in some local veterinary offices and kennels. Other targeted marketing ideas include setting up a booth at a local pet show, advertising on bulletin boards and local dog parks, and marketing your services at local pet stores. A skillfully designed business card with a photo of a happy dog as well as a clever tag line will help to brand your dog business. Of course, word-of-mouth will be your most valuable form of marketing for your business. Be sure to get testimonials from your satisfied clients to give your business credibility.

Your overhead should be minimal since you don't need to operate a fixed site and can use your home as headquarters for your unique business. As your customer base picks up, you can consider hiring a few trustworthy employees who have a good rapport with dogs to work for your company.

With the ability to add-on additional dog related services, there's no limit to how successful your dog play time business can become. It's the perfect business for a dog lover who enjoys a stimulating and varied routine on a daily basis. Why not give this business idea a try?

One way to address this problem is to start an organic house cleaning business that uses all natural cleaning products. With the growing number of natural cleaning products on the market these days, it shouldn't be difficult to find the organic cleaning products you need to service your house cleaning business accounts. If you're not satisfied with what's available, there are simple recipes for making your own using such common ingredients as vinegar and baking soda. Do these natural cleaning chemicals really work? In most cases they're quite effective and have more natural scent which most people favor.

To find workers to clean the homes, hire groups of college students who are concerned with the environment. You may want to have them dress in 100% organic cotton uniforms and give them inspiring titles such as “organic cleaning consultants”. Give your business a memorable name such as “Green Clean” and brand it with an environmentally friendly logo which is prominently displayed on all of your literature.

To market your business, design a brochure which emphasizes the potential dangers of household cleaning products. Your market will primarily be white collar, younger, working men and women who have a strong interest in health and the environment. To reach this demographic group, place your brochure in doctor's offices, in hospitals, allergy clinics, natural food grocery stores, libraries, vitamin shops, and other areas where your target audience spends time.

You can also give talks to civic groups on the danger of household chemicals and the organic alternatives available. Another effective marketing technique is to write articles about the advantages of using an organic cleaning service and publish them online and in various local print publications. Don't forget about the potential for getting free publicity for your unique business.

With the right marketing, your organic house cleaning business can be a big success. Why not give this unique house cleaning business idea a try?

This fun business doesn't require a large space or a huge overhead. You can start with a modestly sized room for photography that has a variety of canine photography props as well as easy to access entrance to bring pets in and out. You also need a waiting room for customers and pets that is large enough to house a checkout desk. A smaller room can house your camera equipment and other paraphernalia. If you have a large pet store in town, you may be able to rent space for your pet photography studio inside their store. This would have the advantage of supplying you with a steady supply of customers.

Don't underestimate the importance of choosing a catchy name for your pet photography business. The name of your pet photography business can help you to build your brand. Give it a clever name such as "Picture Perfect Pets" or something unique that will allow for easy branding. (Be sure to do a trademark search to make sure the name isn't already trademarked.).

You can produce eye catching photo business cards and brochures using pictures of cute pets. Market your new photography studio through co- marketing arrangements with veterinarian offices, dog boarding kennels, pet grooming studios, and pet stores. You could also team up with a pet sitter and mutually market each other's services.

You'll also want to market your pet business online via a website and through high traffic, local online classified ads. To attract targeted traffic to your website, publish articles on how to take great photos of your pet and submit them to article directories. You can also participate in online pet forums using your signature line as a marketing tool.

Well designed marketing brochures and flyers will help to bring in business from pet owners in your local area. You can appeal to the emotions of pet owners by reminding them how short the lives of our pets really are and how important it is to create long lasting memories such as pet portraits. Another clever way to market your pet business is to offer classes on pet scrap booking where people can learn how to preserve and display their pet photos.

Would a pet photography business do well in your area? A bit of local research should tell you whether this pet business would be successful. It may be your answer to a successful pet related business.

If you choose to start this business, you would have the exciting task of providing high quality haircuts to children between the ages of one and twelve. Haircuts would be given in an environment designed specifically for children. The child would be surrounded by child themed posters and decor and music children can relate to would play in the background.

How about offering children's movies on a screen in the waiting room? The waiting room would be designed with children in mind and would include comfortable bean bag chairs along with a variety of toys and children's books within easy access. Hairdressers running behind? Not a problem! The children would have plenty of fun distractions to keep them occupied. When the children get impatient, the receptionist could serve a quick round of lemonade and cookies to keep the young guests entertained while they wait. The staff would be hired both on their haircutting abilities as well as their ability to relate to children. An appreciation and understanding of the the younger set would be a necessary job requirement. The staff would know how to talk to the children and encourage them to cooperate during their haircut. At the completion of the haircut, each child would receive a lollipop or a small toy as a gift from the staff.

A fun, add-on service to consider would be child photography. Who wouldn't want to have a cute photo of their child and her new haircut? You could also offer a line of children's jewelry at the checkout counter as an impulse purchase. In place of the usual adult oriented shampoos and conditioners, you could carry a "no tears" line just for children. The high end market for shampoo and conditioners is relatively undeserved and would likely be quite popular. You could also develop and private label your own line of children's shampoos and conditioners to carry in the store.

There are a variety of ways to market this unique business. Post fliers and give out business cards at local schools, day care centers, toy stores, pediatrician offices, and other locations where children congregate. Be sure to offer gift certificates and a reward card which offers a free haircut with the purchase of a set number of cuts.. You could also offer a discount to local schools in your area and give discounts for referrals of new clients.

Location of your new children's hair business would be important. It would be ideal to be located in a high traffic strip mall area in close proximity to a school or day care center. You could consider doing a co-marketing promotion with a nearby day care center to the mutual benefit of both businesses.

Does this fun business sound like a good fit for your entrepreneurial skills? In the right location, this unique business should have excellent money making potential.

The problem with the standard gift basket is that it often contains ingredients that are loaded with sugar and carbohydrates. This is not good news for the millions of people who are diabetic. With the rate of new diabetics rising every day, why not offer a sugar free gift basket service for diabetics and other who want less sugar in their diet? There are lots of interesting sugar free desserts and snacks available that would make nice additions to a gift basket. The diabetics of the world would be most appreciative of your service.

If you do an internet search for "sugar free candy wholesale" or sugar free cookies wholesale", you'll find tons of sources for sugar free desserts that would be appropriate for your gift baskets. Extend your search into sugar free desserts, sugar free cakes, and other potential gift basket items. Some of the sugar free candies are even sold in bulk, so you can package them yourself in attractive cellophane packaging with a beautiful ribbon attached. This will not only create an attractive look for your gift basket, but will be less expensive than buying sugar free items already packaged.

You can market your new niche gift basket business by mailing a flyer or brochure to hospital gift shops, doctor's offices, diabetic supply stores, pharmacies, and grocery stores. The corporate world is also a good market for gift baskets since it's a fast and easy way for employers to give gifts. With the increasing emphasis on health and the concern about obesity and diabetes in the work place, you can target your gift baskets as the "healthy alternative". Don't forget about marketing your business to dentist's offices. They know the importance of sugar free desserts in preventing tooth decay. By establishing strong relationships with the medical community, you'll create a hungry market for your sugar free gift baskets.

You'll also want to harness the power of online marketing to promote your gift basket business. There is a huge population of diabetics in search of sugar free dessert alternatives who would be interested in using your service for gift giving to their diabetic friends. They understand the frustrations of looking for sugar free dessert gifts that are attractively packaged. To market your website, you could participant in diabetic and healthy eating forums using the signature line for your business. You could also build traffic to your website by writing articles on diabetes and eating healthy as a diabetic.

There are a variety of books available on how to start a gift basket business. These books can help you to understand the basics of starting a gift basket business and writing a gift basket business plan. You can then proceed with finding wholesale sources for your business and setting up shop. To keep your overhead down, you may want to start your gift basket business at home, initially, and expand out of the home as you build up more cash flow.

Now that you know how to start a gift basket business for diabetics, you're well on your way to being a success in the exciting world of gift baskets.

If you enjoy food and cooking, you can make money online by converting people's unhealthy recipes into healthy ones they can eat without guilt. The solution is to start an online recipe makeover business. Your customer would send you her favorite recipe via an email attachment and you would make the ingredient adjustments needed to make the recipe healthier and lower in calories. For this service, you would charge a small fee.

There's more good news. This is not the only way you could profit from your online recipe business. When you send the converted recipe back to your client, send a link to your website that stocks a variety of healthy cookbooks and cooking supplies to help get add on sales. You would also ask your customer's permission to be placed on your email list for future healthy cooking tips. This would allow you to market your new business to your customer in the future. You don't even need to stock cookbooks or cooking supplies since you can promote cooking affiliate programs that sell these products.

There are recipe software programs available that can help you make the conversions by giving you in depth nutritional information for each ingredient in your recipe. This will make the recipe conversion process quick and easy.

You could advertise your online business by publishing a healthy recipe newsletter that discusses all aspects of healthy cooking and by submitting articles on healthy cooking and eating to article directories and ezines.

If done properly, you should be able to make a nice income from not only from the recipe conversions but also from sales of your healthy cooking affiliate programs. You could later consider publishing your healthy cooking expertise in the form of an ebook. This unique business idea offers all kinds of possibilities. If you love cooking, why not give it a try?

People also value magazines for their photos. Magazines depicting rare photos of particular celebrities, leaders, criminals or other persons of interest, particularly if those photos are not common, can be in high demand. If you know how to market them, old magazines can be a gold mine.

Would you like to get started making money with old magazines? Here's how:

1. Look for magazines with cover photos of popular celebrities. If the celebrity generates interest or is controversial in some capacity, this makes the magazine even more marketable. Surprisingly enough, it's often the lesser known celebrities that garner the bids on eBay since there are fewer magazine covers featuring their photos. If in doubt regarding the marketability of a particular magazine, you can do an eBay search using the celebrity name and see how quickly items relating to that particular celebrity sell. Again, eBay is the best place to sell magazines with celebrity cover photos. If there's an inside photo spread of the celebrity, be sure to mention this in your description.
2. Look for older issues of popular magazines, particularly the first few issues produced. Those issues tend to be less common since fewer were produced. They're also in greater demand because fewer people have them since the magazine wasn't as well known at the time of initial publication. Of particular interest are early issues of niche publications on specific hobbies or collectibles, especially if the magazine is out of print. Some of these issues can bring very high prices on eBay.
3. Flip through your magazines and find articles containing information on how to do a hobby related project. This should be information that's not easily found elsewhere. You can sell the article along with the complete magazine on one of the auctions sites such as eBay. It's important that you list the article under the appropriate eBay category for best results. If you're selling an article on building a ceramics kiln, list it under crafts followed by one of the ceramics categories. Don't list it under the magazine category as this is too general. Other articles that can be sold using this technique are rare articles on particular types of collectibles which can be found in such magazines as Antiques Magazine.
4. Another way to profit from older magazines is to look for old ads for watches, cars, beer, coca cola and other items people deem worth of collecting. Carefully, remove the ads from the magazine and sell them to collectors who can frame and display them as art. You can sell just the ad or you can frame the ad yourself and sell it as a completed work.
5. If a magazine has a cover created by a famous person, the magazine can be sold on the merit of its cover. For example, a magazine with a Norman Rockwell or Maxwell Parrish cover may be in great demand with collectors.
6. If you have large groups of a particular publication, for example a years worth of Martha Stewart Living magazine, you can sell the magazines as a set. Often, magazines that won't sell well individually can be sold in groups of three of more issues.
7. If all else fails or if you don't have time to put your magazines up on auction, you can display them at your next yard sale and sell them for 25 cents each. You'll be surprised at how quickly those quarters can add up.

The beauty of this unique business is you can often get the magazines for free since people want to reduce the clutter in their home. One strategy is to attend a yard sale as its ending and offering to cart away all of the magazines that didn't sell. Most people will gladly take you up on your offer. Pretty soon you'll have a ton of inventory and a nice profit.

To hold your classes, find a space in a church or school you can rent out on an as needed basis for classes. This will help to keep your overhead low. You can target kids in the age range from 10-14 years of age and offer a second, more advanced class for teenagers. Concentrate on teaching your students the importance of saving the money they earn from their allowance and various odd jobs, as well as how to budget their earnings and keep good financial records. You could also touch upon ways of earning extra money during summer vacation as well as the principles of making money grow by investing. The earlier kids are taught the principles of sound money management, the more likely they'll grow up to be financially independent.

There are a variety of ways you can market your new business. One way is through referrals from local schools in your area. You could also offer to hold your classes on the school premises. Post flyers on bulletin boards in local libraries and grocery stores to bring attention to your unique kids business. Your local libraries also may be willing to help you promote your new business as well as offer you a space for teaching in one of their conference rooms. You might also consider co-marketing your business with one of the local banks who could set up starter savings accounts for new graduates of your business school.

When you design your flyer, stress to parents the benefits your classes can offer their kids. Emphasize that kids need to learn the art of money management early so they won't grow up to be one of many Americans mired in financial debt. Plus, they'll be less likely to mooch off mom and dad when they get older!

Be sure to use the power of the internet to promote your new business by having an informational website listing the topics to be covered in your classes along with complete registration information. Advertise your classes through local online classifieds and through your local online yellow page directory. You might also offer a class discount to anyone who signs up with a friend.

If your plan your new business properly, this unique business idea should do well since you're targeting a niche that's been long under served by the public schools. As a result, kids often grow into adults with massive credit card debt. You can help to alleviate this problem by teaching kids financial responsibility while they're still young. Give this kid business idea a try and help to build the kids of today into the financially responsible adults of tomorrow.