Yahoo and Zillow are combining forces to make Zillow the exclusive sales partner to existing home sales advertisers on Yahoo. This partnership will form the largest real estate ad network for existing home advertisers. According to ClickZ,  Zillow which currently offers enhanced listings and profile pages for agents, will also be included on Yahoo Real Estate placements. Zillow’s for-sale listings, showcase ads, and featured listings will also be fed to Yahoo’s site. Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow currently rank second and third among top real estate sites, Realtor.com tops the rankings.

The two companies have worked together since 2006, and partnered separately with a large percentage of the same newspaper site publishers.. Bringing their resources together to become one bigger better force will logically be a positive move.

Times must be tough if one of the world’s largest retailers is planning on offering small business loans. MSNBC is reporting that Wal-Mart is teaming up with a lender to offer small business loans to some of our nation’s businesses. So, is the motive behind something like this to promote businesses to spend money at their stores? If that is in fact the case, is that really a bad idea?
The retail giant is reporting that in a recent survey, they conducted with their business clients, a large percentage of them were rejected for business loans. Therefore, in a effort to capitalize on these “unhelped” businesses, Wal-Mart teamed up with Superior Financial Group to offer these businesses a small business loan.
Good idea or not? If our “traditional” banks are not lending to consumers and businesses, is it really a conflict of interest to have a retail giant want to jump in and help? There seems to be no strings attached for these businesses and being required to only shop at Wal-Mart stores, however they are offering a discount on the Sam’s Club membership. Sounds like a good idea to me……

Arizona’s new law has drawn so much national attention recently that even the Justice Department has stepped in to file a lawsuit against the state. The new law, requiring immigrants to carry alien registration at all times and allowing authorities to question their residency status with reasonable suspicion that they are not in the country legally, is being seriously questioned.
The Justice Department is suing the states new law in violation of the supremacy clause in the Constitution. Along with many others who are fighting against the law, the Justice Department believes the law is too strict. Although it is federal law to illegally be in the country, the department believes this specific law takes it too far and causes further unnecessary problems with racial profiling. With the hispanic culture expanding throughout the country, it isn’t easy to to chose those who may or may not be living here legally, making it easier for even those who have legal papers to be harassed.
It seems that Arizona is in the news all over the place…. payday loan law going in effect this month, and now also the excitement surrounding the immigration law. Leadpile is located in AZ, so we all will be keeping an eye on all this EXCITING news!!!!

Are you avoiding paying off debt? Paying the minimums could hurt you.. Something as simple as removing a couple of monthly “splurges” such as limiting trips to starbucks could give you additional funds to put towards your debt and make a dent in amounts owed and keep things under control.

Debt to income ratio is helpful to look at when evaluating your finances. Bankrate.com recommends that people’s debt not be more than 20% of take home pay – including your car payment. They recommend that housing expenses not be more than 30% of your monthly income.

Now that every credit card bill comes with a breakdown on how long it will take the consumer to wipe out a debt making only the monthly payments it is a reality check for many people. If the minimum payment is all that is being made, the debt can keep increasing and it can take very long extended periods of time, even decades to pay off the total amount.

Some consumers benefit from credit counseling sessions, these can help identify the biggest areas of concern and help create a debt management plan often times having the creditors agree to lower interest or payments. Two last resort options for consumers in debt can be debt settlement or bankruptcy.

Many companies use social media to generate more clients (consumers), however b2b companies are seeing that there might be some benefits with social media. Tweeting and posting status updates is a way of life with most consumers these days, however actual businesses online and “tweeting” is not necessarily as popular. Some are looking at maybe incorporating social media as a way to generate potential leads for their business. That being getting more consumers to their business or even trying to attract other businesses to their services. Companies like Dell target consumers, but now are looking at using social media to attract other businesses to utilize their products and services. This is something that many would not consider in previous years, however many are seeing that there could be some opportunity with social media. DMNews is reporting that places such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can also be a source for business to generate leads. So I guess if you are a business looking for more clients you might want to look at setting up accounts with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn soon, rather than later!

Leadpile is working with some b2b lead types and believes that there are ways that businesses can also look to the internet as a source of leads.

Lets continue the debt discussion since it’s such a large part of peoples lives nowadays.

Ever feel as if there is no end in sight to all those piled up bills? Here are 2 plans that may help you get your finances back on track.

1. Snowball Plan: The snowball plan developed by Dave Ramsey focuses on ranking your accounts by balance amount, smallest to largest. Consumers are encouraged to pay the smallest debt first while continuing to pay the minimum amount on the other accounts. By doing so consumers enjoy the satisfaction of when debt drops off, thus they are more likely to make continuous payments.

2. Negative Emotion: The negative emotion plan urges people to pay bills that generate a negative emotion. For example, Shareef Defrai from Huston used his credit card to rent a car for a friend. No big deal until his friend decided to skip town with the car, now Shareef has $16,000 in debt for a car he doesn’t even have possession of. By paying off these types of accounts first the relief of paying off the debt can be life changing.

Both methods have their pros and cons, do any of you have a special way you pay down your debt?

Credit card companies have one less way to take additional money from you! New rules put in place this week restrict the credit card companies from charging penalty fees of more than $25 for consumers paying their bill late. Additional new restrictions are “Inactivity” fees (when the consumer does not use the account to make new purchases) have been banned as well as multiple penalty fees on single late payments.

These new enforced restrictions are good news for people trying to keep up with credit cards! Paying less in fees, means that more money can be put towards the balance on the card hopefully bringing the payoff closer in sight.

People using private offices for car seizures are having continuous problems with their employees repossessing their cars in highly inappropiate manners. About 1.9 million repossessions took place in 2009, but some small businesses are becoming overly aggressive when it comes to collecting payments.

Car Repossessions have become quite the issue lately. In San Jose, California, a woman’s car was repossessed due to late payments while her 2 year old son was still in the vehicle. The police were called immediately, and half an hour later the boy was found at the car repossession office. According to reports, this has become a more common accurance. Other cases included incidents like fights, arrests, and use of weapons.

When dealing with auto loans, one needs to be very careful about who they work with. Leadpile works closely with our affiliates to avoid these types of situations, and we would certainly not engage in these kinds of unprofessional behaviors.

You would have to be in a hole if you did not hear the catastrophic disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico. Two months ago an oil rig had an explosion that has since caused the worst oil spill ever! The company in the middle of this disaster is BP Global. BP is the third largest energy company, however it seems that this disaster has not prompted BP to turn to one of the biggest potential allies it could have: social networking sites. Why is that? With the number of people these social networking sites can reach, why would you not incorporate some sort of PR campaign through the internet?

Unfortunately, what seems to have happened is those on sites such as Twitter and Facebook have created BP bashing posts that have ultimately hurt BP even more that what this disaster has caused them financially. The question is should companies that are going through large “reputation killers” look to social media as a way to help their image? It seems that the public does think so because many appear to be upset that this company has not even made an effort to recover their image.
BP… might want to look to Facebook to help you put a happy “face” back on our nation’s
faces!

Paying off your debt can be one of the most rewarding and experiences and bring a feeling of relief. Often times if you have multiple sources of debt, there is one that bothers you more than the others do even if the payoff amount or interest not as high.

According to CreditCards.com not all debts carry the same psychological weight on people. Debt amounts that are linked with negative events such as divorce, fraud or medical can often times bring stress to a person. Even as this might bring emotional relief, it can be financially more beneficial to pay off the higher interest rate first.

Emotional attachment to debt does not always equal importance of repayment order. Looking at all of your debt amounts and weighing the cost of the interest and long term effects on your credit is a smart way to determine what should be priority in paying down first.

Debt settlement and debt consolidation are both options for consumers looking for debt relief options. Through Internet generation and live transfers LeadPile helps consumers in need of help find companies that are able to offer assistance in consolidating or lowering debt.

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Leadpile is excited to announce some great new offers we have for the Leadpile publishers to drive traffic to. If you are someone who has SEO, PPC or email traffic, we want to talk to you about some great new offers.

Bankruptcy:
Great new offer that we are looking for some direct traffic to.
bankruptcyprograms.com is the great new offer we have a text link or even banners available to generate the leads. This offer is consumers that are looking for more information about potentially filing bankruptcy.

Online education:
Another great new offer we are looking for traffic on. This offer is consumers that are looking at going back to school.
Educationplans.com is the offer we currently have available to our publishers through iframe form, banners or direct traffic to the offer.

Pre paid credit cards:
Consumers are always looking for a way to help them re-establish their credit. Leadpile has two great new credit card offers we are looking to generate leads for.

Account Now-
Great pre paid Visa for consumers looking to start establishing their credit again.

Greendot-
Great pre paid offer for consumers looking for a pre paid credit card.

If these offers are something you are interested in working with us on, please contact us to discuss further!

Have some money burning a hole in your pocket and looking to make an investment? Trading your nickels and dimes for gold might an investment worth checking into. The precious metal had jumped in price 15% since February this year and doubled since 2007. Gold prices have historically shown to drop in economic times of crisis as it did after the Great Inflation in the 1970’s.

There are options when buying gold – owning the physical metal in bars or coins, however getting the gold delivered to you may be pricey and if you are buying large amounts you will need someplace to store this. Buying stock in gold mining companies may be an easier option, however this does not always trade at the same value as gold.

Another option for investment in a period of financial worry can be firearms.

Interested in becoming a publisher or advertiser of Cash For Gold leads with LeadPile? Reach out to a LeadPile team member!

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