SmallBusinessNewz

The more people that know your business exists, the more people will visit it.  The more people that visit your business, the more people will buy something.  And yeah, there's a connection between purchases and profit.  But you should keep some things in mind when angling for referrals.

Degrees of separation matter.  Convince someone to grab random people on the street, and the odds aren't great that they'll have any use for your product (or you).  Yet if a satisfied customer uses his own judgment about making recommendations, he might become worth a lot more than any sort of official business network.  For this reason, consider including a few business cards with extra-big orders.

Then, in terms of business networks, think about their purpose.  Ivan Misner favors organizations like BNI.  He writes, "The strong-contact group focuses primarily on generating referrals for its members and is structured so that there's time for passing information and referrals in each meeting, and members are personally accountable for generating referrals for other members of the group."

Interactions with a local chamber of commerce may help, too, though, and at this level, we return to the issue of size with "bigger is better" as the guiding principle.

Good luck getting other people to raise your profile.