Leadpile’s Blog

Privacy groups believe that there needs to be legislation in place to protect consumers on the internet. Many are concerned that data collection of consumer’s internet experiences are not fair to the consumers, unless they opt in to allow this behavioral targeting to happen. The FTC was petitioned back in 2007, however now it is at the point of Congress and potentially enacting a new law(s).
Many retailers believe their use of behavioral targeting has allowed them to have an increase in sales. According to one retailer, “Personalizing a Web site [via behavioral targeting] helps an individual with an intent to find what they are looking for and helps the site owner deliver more content that is relevant to the individual, said Pete Olson, VP of product management at Amadesa.” The new potential legislation is looking at having the consumer “allow” such tracking of their internet behavior. Yahoo has argued that a consumer’s privacy should be respected in order to build trust with their consumers. Yahoo is doing it’s own regulatory data collecting by only keeping consumer’s data for 90 days. However, not all businesses are wanting to implement their own “rules”, therefore legislation seems to be the only way to protect consumer’s rights.
Leadpile will keep an eye on what happens with this potential legislation.

Everyone focuses so much on Mother’s Day, however we can’t forget about all our dads out there!
DID YOU KNOW???????? Father’s Day is believed to have been first celebrated in 1908 in West Virgina, however was not put into law till 1966. It was created in an effort to complement Mother’s Day. Presently, Fathers Day is celebrated in 52 countries.
So, if you haven’t run out and gotten your father that favorite father’s day gift, you have only a few more days.

A great father’s day joke:
Who is the Winner?
The father of five children had won a toy at a raffle.
He called his kids together to ask which one should have the present.
“Who is the most obedient?” he asked.
“Who never talks back to mother? and
“Who does everything mother says?”
Five small voices replied in unison. “Okay daddy! You get the toy.”

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL!

Day in and day out I have great conversations about what a publisher thinks they should do to become an effective affiliate in the Leadpile Marketplace. Like other networks, there are certain things that any affiliate should do to become an effective affiliate marketer. The Examiner points out some good points on becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

1. Create a website
*Don’t just throw a website together and not put any thought into it. Add some creativeness and content to the website, so others can enjoy their experience too.
2. Create a website about something you enjoy
*Design your website around something you enjoy and will want to work on. If you are excited about the website then that will come through to the visitors, and they will enjoy their experience too.
3. Take the website seriously
*Unfortunately, just having a website is not enough. The website has to flow well. Putting the right type of design and content on the site will ultimately make the site attractive and EFFECTIVE.
4. Build links
*Once you have a completed website, you want to try and get ranked in the search engines. Having other sites link to your site will ultimately help with this search engine ranking, but you have to have something on your site to make others want to link to you. Once you have others linking to your site, you now have 2 ways for people to get to your site- search engine AND other sites that have linked to you. Having traffic to your site is ultimately the goal because that potentially = more $$.
5. Develop affiliate partnerships
*Monetizing your website with offers and banners is a great way to make money with your completed website. Using companies like Leadpile allows you to capture leads from your site, and then earn revenue from those leads selling. The other way is working directly with traditional affiliate networks like CJ. Do your research and find offers that will flow with the website you have created AND make you money. Once this project is working well, look at doing it all over again with additional websites to maybe run other sorts of offers. Find your niche and what you are good at doing effectively. Is it financial offers, product offers, work from home offers, or a combination of them all?
6. Track statistics of your website
*To help you determine what is working well for you on these sites, then you might want to implement some sort of tracking system. Monitoring your statistics will allow you to make necessary changes with your campaigns. Utilize various sources of traffic and see what works with the particular site. Some networks will control how you drive traffic to the site, so you will always want to find that out. Finds networks that even have their own tracking available for you so you can have that as an additional source of information. You can never have too much information to be successful in the affiliate world!
Become a Leadpile Super Affiliate………

Some say they see a light at the end of the tunnel regarding our nation’s economy getting better. However, this process does not seem to be going fast enough for some who are still struggling with keeping their jobs and their homes. “Making Home Affordable” initiative rolled out by the Obama administration in February had great intent, however the ability to have some of these mortgage reworked is not seeming to be very easy for homeowners. NPR.org points out, “”Through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can avoid foreclosure,” the president promised. Obama said there would be a special plan for people with mortgages owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and that homeowners had to be putting more than 31 percent of their gross income toward their monthly mortgage payment to qualify.” Getting help from lenders does not appear to be going very smoothly for some, yet what is there to do to get the much needed help? It seems constant calling and getting to the right person at your lenders office could help. Unfortunately, this article points out that some lenders will have you “get in line” to get help, unless you get some sort of media attention or help from congress. That doesn’t seem to fair to the average Joe who would not know what action steps to take to get this extra “press” coverage on their story. Isn’t there an easier process that our nation’s consumers can follow to get this much deserved help that the administration rolled out?

“Two thirds of businesses are unaware they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, or .net when Internet domains are liberalized next year,” according to internetnews.com. This is something huge for companies that want to control more of their brand in the online space. ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees domain names and is going to start taking applications for new top-level domains early next year. This means that potentially larger companies could have even more of an online presence, and maybe even more credibility and brand recognition. So, do companies know about this change that is coming the first part of next year? Leadpile now knows, and certainly will take note. Will this affect the lead generation business?

In recent news, Ohio is facing some potential stricter payday loan regulations. New restrictions such as giving consumers at least three months to pay back loans of $1,000 or less, forbidding lenders from getting around the 28 percent interest cap by imposing phony fees, requiring payday lenders to follow some of the federal fair debt collection rules in place for third-party debt collectors, and possibly imposing fines for violations of the law(s). This new bill is being referred to as “HB 209″, however it seems not all legislators are looking to support it.

Let’s see how this new potential legislation pans out. Leadpile will be watching.

Financial issues in the auto industry is not NEW news, however Chrysler looking at bankruptcy is news all of us are going to want to pay attention to.

It seems Chrysler headed back into court yesterday to try and sever partnerships it has with Chrysler dealerships nationwide. According to Time.com, “Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler maintains that it needs to reduce its dealer base by about 25 percent to a leaner network of about 2,400 dealers in order to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a stronger company.” The unfortunate thing seems to be that these dealerships can’t understand this decision, and truly feel it is going to dramatically affect them. Many of the Chrysler dealerships also had not shown support for Chrysler to sell a majority of it’s assets to the Fiat Group, because this decision would also potentially close all their dealerships. Either way it sounds like a loose-loose situation for the dealerships, and all they are wanting to do is remain open to sell cars. Leadpile really is interested in how this all pans out, not only because we do lead generation in the auto finance industry, but as consumers we are potentially witnessing a mjor corporation file bankruptcy. This potential collapse of this many dealerships ultimately affects numerous industries, not just the auto industry. My question is, if all these dealerships shut down, where will all the inventory/cars be moved to? Would this mean potentially the “slashing” of prices on the Chrysler cars? Stay tuned!

In today’s era of social networking and free email address accounts, I find this very surprising that China has chosen to ban both Hotmail and Twitter. SearchEngineWatch.com points out a good point that a third of our world’s population lives in China, therefore will this ban affect active users on both Twitter and Hotmail? It’s kinda hard to believe that something like Twitter and Hotmail can be that bad that a government would eliminate it and just throw one’s freedom of speech out the window. I guess China is maybe a little behind the times with allowing people to control their own lives, so I guess this is not totally surprising to me. I wonder how those that live in China feel about this government intervention with their lives? If you live in China, I hope you get Twitter back soon!

Hitwise always comes out with it’s top searched terms for the month, and I know this sort of information can always help the Leadpile publishers with generating traffic. Getting as targeted traffic as you can will always help with the conversions of clicks to converted leads. For example, people selling items to generate income is a very important term consumers are searching for on the internet. Here are some examples of what consumers are searching for when trying to “sell” something.

Previous months Top 10 Search Terms by Category (April 2009) (%)
Automotive Manufacturers

Search Term/Search Volume

Honda 1.50
Toyota 1.37
Ford 1.37
Harley Davidson 1.04
Oreilly auto parts 0.98
Nissan 0.87
Dodge 0.69
Chevrolet 0.67
Kia 0.67
Honda motorcycles 0.66

If you are wanting to generate auto finance leads with Leadpile, these might be some terms to utilize when setting up your PPC campaign or trying to be indexed in the search engines (SEO). Keywords should be relevant to the products or services represented on your website being optimized. Keywords, should include single- and multiple-word phrases.

Net Communities and Chat

Search Term/Search Volume

Myspace 5.00
Facebook 4.28
Youtube 1.83
Myspace.com 1.61
Facebook login 1.23
Facebook.com 0.90
www.myspace.com 0.61
My space 0.56
You tube 0.40
Twitter 0.36

In many potential ways, social networking sites are a part of lead generation. Utilizing sites like Hitwise, helps with knowing more information about the consumer and where they are looking on the internet. Do your research, and know more about the consumer you are trying to attract to the website.

Effective June 3rd, Microsoft’s Live Search will be replaced by Bing.

Microsoft describes Bing as the new “decision engine”. Being that Google dominates about 3/4 of the search engine world, Microsoft is hoping to get a bigger piece of the pie with Bing. Bing will emphasize categorization and depth in search results in an attempt to compete with Google for market share in addition to ad dollars. Looking at Bing it looks a lot like Google, but when searching it tends to bring up a little more in depth information. Will the Leadpile publishers and affiliate marketers utilize this new search engine to generate traffic/leads?

NEXT: Wisconsin please step to the plate. It appears WI is the next state to have lawmakers trying to pass a bill that would cap the interest rate on payday loans. Todaystmj news is reporting that Wisconsin’s new proposal would cap interest rates at 36 percent annually. Similar to other states and potential laws being passed, there is opposition to this potential law and it will all have to pan out in court. Leadpile will keep an eye on this.

In years past, online media was not an option. Years ago you did radio, television, mail or things like billboard advertising. However, in recent years performance advertising has been something most companies are venturing into to promote their product(s). Lead generation is a performance type of advertising, however not all are embracing it because of various objections they have to it.

1. No money to do lead generation
2. Lead generation does not work
3. They do not know how to set up CPL campaigns
4. They do not have any creatives to do a lead generation campaign
5. They don’t have any incentives to offer the consumer on a CPL campaign
6. They don’t really care about leads
7. They don’t have the time to work on a lead generation campaign

These are all commons excuses companies will make instead of moving forward with a lead generation campaign. Mediapost.com points out all these excuses companies have on why they are not getting into lead generation.
These are all legitimate objections to lead generation, however companies like Leadpile are open arms to speak with anyone that has any questions or concerns about doing lead generation. Where else can you get a targeted consumer that is opting in for a specific product or service? Lead generation allows companies to focus less on generating clients and more on handling the targeted ones that they are working with in their lead generation campaigns. As a company trying to generate business, would I want to send out a 1000 mailings or purchase leads of 50 people who opted in for my service? Hands down lead generation produces a higher ROI if you are utilizing your lead generation campaign effectively. Ask a lot of questions of the lead generation company you are potentially working with, so you know the process from A to Z. Know how the leads are being generated, where they are being generated and what the cost to you is. You will see, lead generation will be an effective way for you to spend your advertising dollars.