A referral program is a way to increase sales of an e-commerce site by sharing a fraction of profits with users who send you more buyers.
Each registered user gets their own "referral link" to share with their friends. When someone clicks that link, the referrer ID is stored in a cookie on the referred person browser, and when they make their first purchase (and the deal is tipped), the referrer gets their bonus paid.
Some deals on a daily-deal site have a really low cost to get as many people as possible to buy coupons. It is even possible to run a free "deal", that is a deal with zero cost. When the deal price is zero, the Getsocio engine will not even ask for credit card and just will give a coupon to any user who clicks "Buy" button.
Running a free deal could be a great way to promote a new business. Sure it has drawbacks, as people will clearly see that it is an advertisement rather than a real deal, and will be more cautious.
Should your daily-deal site customers be allowed to purchase coupons (or goods) as a gift for their friends?
Most of times "Buy as gift" option is a good way to increase sales. Certain kinds of deals (like massage) people more often purchase as gift, rather them for themselves. On the other hand, for some deals, like corporate services, "gifts" does not make sense
In Getsocio the "By for a friend" feature is now optional. You may enable/disable it on the "User experience" box of the "Settings" page in Admin section.
We have added XML API to the system, so the deals can be easily shown on 3rd party affiliate sites. The API is available at /api/deals.xml location.
Also we finally added RSS feed, so now site subscribers can follow daily deals via their favorite news-feed reader.