Issue 03
Nathan Gibson · about five minutes
Word of mouth is people telling people, without an ad. A person who already knows you sends a text or mentions it, and includes the link the next person should open. The message travels from that person to the next one.
What gets said
People pass on a thing they can repeat in one message. “I opened an account. The company paid me after I finished the steps they listed.” That fits in a text. A page of terms does not. If you cannot say the steps in a few lines, the next person cannot pass them on either.
Write the message the way you would say it out loud. Name the company’s requirement. Name who gets paid, and when. Leave out the extra pitch. The person reading it has to be able to forward those same lines without calling you to translate them.
The link has to record who sent it
A mention with no link sends the friend to search. Search often opens the company’s own page, and that page may have no record of you. If the company pays the person who sent the new customer, the friend has to use the tracked link the company gave you. A changed link can still open a site and still fail to record you.
A link to the offers page is a list of those invites. Share that when you want the person to pick one and read the steps. Once they have chosen, they still need the company’s own invite. The list is not a substitute for that invite.
Name the steps
“This pays” is not a message a person can act on. They need the steps. Open the account from the invite. Put money in the way the company asked. Turn on the card, stay on the plan, or spend the amount the offer names. If they stop after the click, the company has nothing to pay, and your friend has a reason not to mention you again.
Say the steps before they click. A person who knows the work can decide if they will do it. A person who finds the work after they have already started is the person who quits in the middle, and a half-finished signup pays nobody.
The work is the telling
You write the text. You answer the question. You send the link again when they ask where it went. That is the work. There is no ad budget doing it for you. There is also no payout until someone finishes. Telling ten people and checking for money the same hour is too early.
One clear mention to a person who wants the account is worth more than a blast to people who did not ask. Word of mouth travels when the first person had a good reason to pass it on. Give them that reason in the words you hand them.