You Can Earn Commissions From PayPal's Weird Merchant Referal Program - Here's How

Paypal has an affiliate program but it can be tricky to figure out
how to sign-up for it.

Here's how:

It's hard to believe everybody doesn't have a PayPal account, but some
people don't, and many with good reasons. Many people starting online
businesses may have been buying stuff for years online without having a
PayPal account. Since PayPal allows purchasing through it with a credit
card but without an account login, many people will just do that when
presented with PayPal as the only payment option.

You can earn commissions when people sign-up for merchant accounts
through your referral link. The commission has limits, but it's probably
worth setting it up if you market, as I do, to people who want to start
or grow online businesses.

I had a PayPal account with a referral link a while back, but I closed
it and stopped using it and opened another... I had forgotten about the
referrer program and I recently stumbled on an opportunity to earn from
it so I thought, "well, I'll just get a referral link for my present
account"

First - I think you need to have a business or merchant account and it
probably needs to be verified. Business accounts are free and
verification is free, but you'll have to jump through a few hoops and
getting it done may take a couple of days.

Second - Paypal's instructions for getting the referral link, if you can
locate the instructions at all, are wildly inaccurate. At their clearest
they tell you you can find your referrer link at the bottom of ANY
Paypal page. This is a lie, because as soon as you login to your PayPal
account, you'll find the referrer menu item at the bottom disappears.
This is a catch-22 because the only way PayPal could give you a referrer
link is if you were logged-in.

I suspect PayPal has made this hard to figure-out in order to discourage
people from using it to earn commissions, or maybe it's just a symptom
of the Peter Principle at work or something.

Here's a work-around. I have not seen this described anywhere online.
Every blog or resource I found was either out of date or just dumbly
parroted what PayPal says in pages pertaining to the referrer program.

Here is a workable method (as of August 2010) for getting your PayPal
referral link:

* Step 1. Login to your Paypal verified business account.

* Step 2. Type "referrals" (without quotes) into the search box at the
top and press enter.

* Step 3. Completing step 2 takes you to a search results page with one
results for "Login - Paypal". Click that link and it takes you to a
business account page that looks a little different from the usual page
you're used to seeing.

* Step 4. Repeat step 2 (really - you have to do it again) Type
"referrals" (without quotes) into the search box at the top and press
enter.

* Step 5. This should take you to a search results page. All the search
results are pretty useless for getting your link, but if you scroll to
the bottom you will find a little menu item for "referrals" and if you
click on that you'll be taken to a page that gives you a custom referrer
link.

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