Archive for February, 2008
Affiliate Marketing 101: Making Money With Pay Per Lead Programs
Not every affiliate program is sales related. There are also tons of merchants who will pay affiliates for qualified and legitimate leads. Pay per lead merchants are some of the best merchants to promote for a variety of reasons - the most important of which is that you can be compensated when your visitor completes an online lead form - the conversion rates are generally much higher because the visitors you refer don’t need to make a purchase to complete the action.. Some of the most popular pay per lead programs include merchants in the insurance, mortgage, and service businesses.
Of course, this comes with some caveats. Merchants will only pay affiliates for qualified AND legitimate leads. That means that the person you refer not only has to completely fill out the entire form with real data, the lead has to qualify for the Merchant’s service. For example, sending a Michigan-based mortgage provider a lead from Russia isn’t going to get you any cash. That said, it is still much easier to get visitors to fill out a form than to buy something online so, in most cases, pre-selling and converting large numbers of visitors is easier. Of course, because the people you refer aren’t buying anything, the payout for leads are often less than standard affiliate sales percentage, but not always. It’s common to see larger commission numbers in industries like insurance and mortgage loans where the lead means big money for the service provider - keep that in mind when hunting for these types of affiliate programs.
A good place to start looking for affiliate programs with the most lucrative pay-per-lead programs are at larger affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Linkshare, but be on the look out for affiliate programs run right off the merchant’s website. Those are the gems. Also try a quick google search for specific terms like “mortgage lead affiliate program”. You can bet that if there are good pay-per-lead programs on the larger networks that there’ll be a lot of affiliate competition around those programs, so taking the time to find programs that aren’t heavily publicized could pay large dividends in time, effort and income later on.
Thoughts On Planning, Branding And Building Base Content For A New Blog
Aaaah that new blog smell. There’s really nothing like it. Logging into Wordpress for the first time right after installation and publishing that first post can be exhilarating, especially if you’re planning on making money with your blog. Bloggers that have weathered the first few months of blogging will all tell you that building a blog’s readership from the ground up is hard work and that, unless you’re some kind of celebrity, traffic building takes time and patience. It’s easy to lose steam and motivation in the early stages without focus, the right expectations and a plan.
Although I only flipped the switch and released this blog to the search engines a few weeks ago (January 12th to be exact), I have a road map in my head of where it’s going over the next few months, and I thought that I’d take a moment to share my strategy and some thoughts with my readers, so you know what to expect over the coming months and why. Here are a few thoughts from me on planning, branding and building a new blog…
