Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with referral

Is it appropriate to ask for a finder's fee? If so, how much?

melissasaurus — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:29:20 -0800

Is it appropriate to ask for a finder's fee? If so, how much? I have a friend who does web design. A contact of mine, a consultant, has a client who needs to revamp their website. Consultant asked if I knew anyone who could do the work. I plan to recommend web designer friend.

If I make the referral, is it appropriate to ask for a finder's or referral fee? If so, what are the particulars of doing this: How much is "standard"? Who pays it - designer? consultant? both? Should I ask for a flat fee or a percentage? Should it apply to any further contracts that may result, or just the one instance?

Any advice, especially from those who have paid or received such fees in the past, would be greatly appreciated.

How to request/get a referral to another doctor?

tristeza — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:26:28 -0800

How does getting a medical referral/requesting a medical referral REALLY work and how do you ask for one effectively? My mom recently got a preliminary cancer diagnosis (from a CT scan for an unrelated injury) at a medical center in Maine where she's staying for the summer. She was told that a likely first step is to remove the kidney with the mass, sooner rather than later. She's only been seen by her GP at this point.

My family wants her to be seen in Boston at a comprehensive cancer center like Dana Farber right away, before the ball really gets going in Maine. Oh, and she's a senior with MediCare.

She has a urology appt tomorrow morning as her first follow-up since the "we found a mass" news, and I want her to get a referral to Dana Farber, but I realize I'm not 100% sure how this works.

Can she simply say to the urologist, "please refer me to DF" without having a name of a specific doc? If she does, will the doc just go ahead and call DF and find someone to see my mom?

Or does the doc just say "OK" and call DF to tell them we're going to call them to make all arrangements??

Thanks for any help, we're all completely clueless about this process and I want her to have a good "script" when she goes in tomorrow.

Referral tracking / Refer a friend for contest entry

letitrain — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:55:58 -0800

Refer a friend / referral tracking system? I'm running a contest and would like to try a referral system where an entrant can refer five friends and receive extra chances to win. Is there anything simple and web-based out there that can accomplish this?

Someone I love needs a lawyer.

bricoleur — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:38:41 -0800

How would you go about finding the best criminal defense attorney in your state?

How do I choose a scoliosis specialist?

desjardins — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:24:21 -0800

How do I go about choosing an orthopedist to monitor my adult scoliosis? Any personal recommendations in the Chicago area? I was born with severe scoliosis and am now 33. I haven't had an orthopedist since I was a child and he's since retired. I haven't been good about seeking regular medical care either since I take fairly good care of myself (don't smoke, eat right) and don't have any chronic conditions. Well, yesterday I went to the ER with severe neck pain and X-rays showed I have a degenerative condition in my cervical vertebrae. (Although the Dr. thought my pain was muscular; this was just an aside.) The ER doctor told me to make an appointment with an orthopedist but only gave me a general reference, not to one who specializes in scoliosis. I did some research online and came up with a list of specialists in Chicago. How the heck do I whittle this down? I live WAYYY out in the 'burbs, so none of them are near me.

Doctor Referral

josher71 — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:50:04 -0800

What is the logic in insurance companies requiring referrals from a primary care physician when you go to a specialist?

Please tell me about your employee referral program (if you have one).

mockjovial — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:52:04 -0800

Please tell me about your employee referral program (if you have one). Hi - I have been tasked with putting together an employee referral program for a 3 billion dollar global food ingredient company. (MMMMM corn syrup.)
I'd like to get a sense of what is in place at your organization to reward employees for referring candidates who are hired.

Any details you can share would be much appreciated. Thanks!

What do they call the feature on amazon.com when they say, "People who bought this book also bought...these other books"?

ostranenie — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:56:51 -0800

What do they call the feature on amazon.com when they say, "People who bought this book also bought...these other books"? What's the technical term for the "people who bought this also bought..." on amazon.com and various other sales websites?

Standalone shopping cart with Amazon-like referral system?

Wild_Eep — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:18:36 -0800

Anyone know a shopping cart with an Amazon.com-like referral system? I'm building a website with an online store for a publishing company and they'd like to be able to offer some sort of referral compensation (a small percentage of a referred sale) to people who refer buying customers.

Amazon has this kind of system. You sign up with amazon, and embed your secret ID number in an amazon url for an item. If people click on the link and buy the item, you get a small percentage of that sale. When your total of referral payments gets above some arbitrary amount (like $20, for instance), you can have a check cut to you, or get a gift certificate for the store.

I'm currently interested in using ZenCart, but I don't know if they have this type of thing available, or if there's a plug-in.

Perhaps there are other meta-websites that would allow me to add this kind of service on top of an existing shopping-cart site?

Is there some obvious solution that I'm oblivious to?

Getting it free

beammeup4 — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 01:52:08 -0800

Looking for alternative methods for getting referrals for a "free ____ " program. So I signed up for a MacBook Pro website that requires 20 referrals, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting them. (I know since Ask MeFi isn't an advertising site, I'll leave it at that and if you want to be awesome and help me out, email me)

Anyway, I saw sites on the internet that sell "guaranteed signups" for a certain amount of money. While I realize and accept that if I buy signups, it's not guaranteed that any of them will actually complete an offer and "go green", anyone have any experience with this type of thing?

Does anyone have any success stories or advice on how to most effectively get people to sign up and complete an offer, besides asking family, paying 1 person $25 to sign up and complete an offer, and (il)legally spam your referral link everywhere?

Looking for an LA based lawyer and accountant

willnot — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:24:18 -0800

Can anybody provide a referral to a lawyer and/or an accountant with experience advising small businesses (internet based) in the start-up phase? I'm located in Los Angeles in the South Bay area. I'm starting a service company with a major web-based component. I'd like to talk to an accountant to figure out how to get all my accounting ducks in a row, and I'd like to talk to an attorney to figure out what type of company structure would be best for me, and to develop a waiver, explore the possibility of an eventual trademark application, and whatever other legal requirements I need to address, but don't know that I need to address.

Can anybody provide any referrals? Also, more generally, what types of questions should I ask when selecting either of those types of people?

I asked this question once before, but the timing was bad, and it scrolled off the page before very many people in my time zone had a chance to see it/answer it. To address the one answer I got in there, I have spoken with a SCORE counselor who was helpful, but who directed me to seek out additional legal and accounting advice.

Thanks.

Looking for an LA based lawyer and accountant

willnot — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:55:21 -0800

Can you provide a referral to a lawyer and/or an accountant with experience advising small businesses (internet based) in the start-up phase? I'm located in Los Angeles in the South Bay area. I'm starting a service company with a major web-based component. I'd like to talk to an accountant to figure out how to get all my accounting ducks in a row, and I'd like to talk to an attorney to figure out what type of company structure would be best for me, and to develop a waiver, explore the possibility of an eventual trademark application, and whatever other legal requirements I need to address, but don't know that I need to address.

Can anybody provide any referrals? Also, more generally, what types of questions should I ask when selecting either of those types of people?

Thanks.

Partner referral tracking application?

yerfatma — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:41:45 -0800

Name that application: a client is looking to move their partner referral tracking online and I would like to avoid hand-coding a solution for various reasons. But I'm having trouble finding suitable "boxed" solutions as most Google results are for "referral tracking" of the spamish kind. Detailed description inside. This application would be accept leads from partners (where a "partner" can be anyone online, but there are multiple levels of partners) through an online form. The client assigns the lead to a sales guy, chases it down, updates the status. If the status is a new account, the referrer gets compensated. Because the compensation could exceed US$600 annually, the system also needs to accept W9 info (which is why I'd really like to see an ASP solution if at all possible) and generate 1099s at the end of the year.

Additionally, the tool should allow all partners to login and view the status of their referrals, compensation history, etc.

comparison engine for books

Alt F4 — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:26:06 -0800

I'd like to build (or have built for me) a comparison engine like FetchBook or BookkooB. Basically, a comparison engine that compares prices of books, and then if the user clicks over to buy the book from one of the affiliates, the program would append my account code, getting me a kickback on the referral.

I have no idea how to do this, or what it would cost to pay someone to do it. What would be the best way to figure this out? Are there any open source comparison engine scripts? If I had to pay someone to build something like this, what should I expect to pay? (I can do all the frontend work, just not the backend.)

Is anyone keeping an updated list of "referral spam"-vertized websites?

jca — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 01:43:58 -0800

Is anyone keeping an updated list of "referral spam"-vertized websites? My referrer logs are being overrun - it's hard to keep up with all the new spammer sites that seem to pop up.