Grace Period for Group Blogger Referrals Ends February 9th

If you are part of any group blogs you are going to want to read this post very carefully as it may save you and your friends a good deal of money.

First, there has been some confusion on the issue of referrals so let me be clear: a key part of being a member is that all members have the ability to refer other bloggers for membership.

HOW TO REFER ANOTHER BLOGGER FOR MBA MEMBERS

1) Do not send an email to Bob Cox!

2) Login to the MBA site using your user id and password. Look down the right rail until you see a block of text that reads "Refer a Member Candidate/Click here to make a referral".

3) Click that link to reach the "referral page"

4) Enter the email address for the blogger you wish to refer.

That's it.

What happens next is that an email is sent to that blogger containing a unique link they use to access the MBA site. We have found that due to spam filters, about 10% of referred bloggers reported not receiving the email so the referral page was redesigned to not only email the link to the referred blogger but to display the link to the referring member. The referring member now has the option to rely on the email or copy/paste the coded URL into an email or chat or simply read the URL over the phone to the referred blogger. This should eliminate the "I never got the email" issue.

AND NOW FOR THE PART ABOUT SAVING MONEY

Per previous emails and posts, all members were required to refer any of their "group bloggers" by January 15th in order to avoid paying the $15.00 application fee. A "group bloggers" for this purpose mean those bloggers who currently post to a blog owned by or connect to an exisiting member (on a technical basis this means that any blogger referred under this policy will be listing a blog in THEIR application form that is already in the member database and associated with an existing member; if the membership committee does not see such a blog listed the application will be rejected).

We have decided to DISABLE the application fee feature until the end of the week to give members once last chance to refer their group bloggers. Then from February 9th to 12th the referral feature will be disabled altogether and then ENABLED with the PayPal Application Fee required starting on February 12th

So, to be clear, all referred bloggers will be required to pay a $15.00 application fee regardless of whether they are part of an existing members blog or not starting on February 12th.

This does not impact the new $25.00 membership dues for current members. That feature remains active and those members who have not yet paid their dues are urged to do so now (you will see a PayPal logo in the right rail when you login to the MBA site; click that to pay).