Referral Key: Are you taking on new clients?

Today I got an email asking me:

Are you taking on new clients?

Well, hell yea I am!

Hi Johanna,

If you're taking on new clients, I'd like to include you in my private referral network to send you business leads through Referral Key.

Please accept my invitation below. Thanks!

Best,
NN
Company Name
City
+358...

View invitation from NN

"The new, fast growing networking website is using the power of communication to help small businesses build powerful referral networks online." - Boston Business Journal

If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Referral Key, please click Unsubscribe.

This looked so much about a spam message I almost skipped it. But as there was a name of a person I appreciate I looked further and did a Google search about Referral Key.

Some social media specialists join every new SM service but I am not one of them. I like to sit back and wait to see if the service will survive after the first hype period.

So I learnt to know that in this service I can get leads if I pay for them and I can get paid if I help others get leads. Not sure if I want to do it - at least via a service like this. I rather help a friend (in Finland we have this thing called Friendtrepreneurs) give a favor from a favor. If someone I don´t know well enough offers me 10$ for a lead I do not bother.

I think these lead contracts work best when they are agreed between two partners. So if you´d like me to give you leads for your social media platform or service, contact me and introduce your product for me. If I like it I start recommending it to my customers and everytime you get a new customer through me I´ll get a fair reward. And the other way around, whenever you recommend me for a training, a workshop or a content creation project in social media, you will get a reward from me. None of us would do this only for money as there´s our own reputation on the table - we only recommend things we believe in.

So for now I stay away from Referral Key and trust my contacts to recommend me even without a dedicated service like this. And we still have LinkedIn for recommendations...