Leadpile’s Blog

Phoenix June 30th, 2009 — LeadPile, The World’s Largest Online Exclusive Lead Exchange announced today record results for its MicroClick Form (http://www.microclick.com) in June, 2009. LeadPile reports a record number of Lead Verticals being served by its MicroClick Form with Lead Sellers producing leads in 61 different verticals in the month of June. This makes the LeadPile MicroClick Form the most widely used Multi Vertical Lead Generation Form in the lead Marketplace and Lead Exchange Industry.

LeadPile’s Centralized Online Exclusive Lead Marketplace supports thousands of affiliates that use the exchange to sell to suitable lead buyers. By using the LeadPile MicroClick Form, Affiliates can focus on driving traffic to their pages and not on managing lead buyer relationships. Over 90% of LeadPile’s active affiliates are currently using the MicroClick form, offloading the responsibility for lead collection, management, technology infrastructure, and quality control to LeadPile.

Astoundingly, LeadPile’s MicroClick form has been used to produce leads as diversified as Tax Debt Relief, Home Improvements, Business Loans, Health Insurance, Equipment Leasing, Credit Card Processing, Cash For Gold and more.

Andrew Jacob, CEO of LeadPile says, “The LeadPile MicroClick Form allows us to handle leads across multiple verticals, including payday, starter credit, debt consolidation, credit repair, bankruptcy, auto financing, and homeowner. While the majority of leads currently being exchanged in the  Marketplace are in the Financial sector, the fact that Lead Sellers are using the MicroClick form to produce leads in over 60 verticals is very rewarding for our team.

Jacob adds, “I would like to personally thank our existing Lead Buyers and Leads Sellers for their business, and it is our promise to everything we possible can to help them in their efforts by continuing to provide the type of technology infrastructure and transparency that they have come to both expect, and deserve, from LeadPile.

To read more, please visit http://www.LeadPile.com/

Everyone knows eBay for it’s marketplace of buyers and sellers of all sorts of items. Leadpile Lead Exchange often times refers to itself as the “eBay” of leads. However, there is no affiliation to one another, yet many people know the concept of how eBay works and is considered a household name.

This household name is now expanding it’s portfolio of services it provides.  Ebay Motors is a division of eBay that provides a directory of automobiles. According to DMNews, eBay Motors has now launched an online classified section. This will allow sellers of automobiles to be connected with the buyers locally. The article goes on to state, “The new listing option is designed to connect car buyers and sellers within a 100-mile radius of their local market, and is being offered free through an initial promotional period ending July 15.” Pre-internet consumers utilized local newspapers to find a car, however this new enhancement of eBay motors will mirror that old school classified section, but be on your computer.  According to eBay, eBay Motors has 12 million monthly unique visitors, and they sell a car every minute. I guess this really means bye bye newspaper classifieds?

In addition to eBay Motors, eBay has a family of websites such as rent.com, half.com, kijiji.com, paypal.com, prostores.com and shopping.com.

Twitter has become a phenomenon. People connect to each other, following each other, and I guess create a different type of network. Even at a point where Evan Williams doesn’t know exactly how to monetize it, he is improving the core of the platform. Slowly, but surely, it’s becoming one of the new “things to do” online. From the networking perspective, Twitter is offering an amazing opportunity for companies out there to keep their readers informed with what is going on at the current moment. Apparently, even the journalists can make some extra money by releasing the news to their subscribers before the article shows in the paper. Of course the subscribers should pay a membership fee.

Leadpile will most likely use Twitter as well, keeping our clients informed with what is going on in the office. We can update the clients on new offers, increase in payouts, or the addition of new buyers in a certain verticals.

If you are using the Twitter, please follow our messages … Just search for vp_leadpile on Twitter, and you will find me.

Have you ever tried to find a unique book in a store, and for one reason or another it was just not available? You then go online and that is where you end up finding that “treasure”.  Going online has become a very popular place for shoppers to find items that are far and few between.  

According to Wikipedia, Chris Anderson coined the phrase “long tail” because products in low demand or which have low overall sales, could be the big revenue generator for online stores. “Internet to consumers has revolved around lower prices, consumer benefit (a.k.a. consumer surplus) from access to increased product variety in online book stores is ten times larger than their benefit from access to lower prices online. Thus, the primary value of the internet to consumers comes from releasing new sources of value by providing access to products in the long tail, according to Wikipedia.”

Leadpile Lead Exchange feels we are the outlet for new lead types that you can’t necessarily get anywhere else.  The LeadPile Lead Exchange, while having its “hits”, also has a long tail developing. LeadPile, The World’s Largest Online Exclusive Lead Exchange has handled the buying and selling of 37 different lead types in the past 90 days.

The Leadpile Marketplace allows the actual originators of leads, and the lead buyers themselves, to decide what price they are each willing to sell, and buy, their leads at, and the way in which the lead delivery will take place.  

When and why a Lead Exchange would work? I’ve read many articles on this topic and none seem to understand why an Exchange would work. Mostly it’s because they don’t know what Affiliate Marketing is, and how to generate revenue by promoting websites online. 

We all know that behind every online business stands the “Traffic”. The traffic a website has determines the revenue the site will make. After you have the traffic, you need to have the smart people behind it that understands what to do with it. 

The value of a Lead Exchange stands in its Lead Generation capability, the Network of Affiliates they have, and what tools they make available to its partners. 

Without the Leadgen platform and the Affiliates that use the tools effectively, the Lead Exchange/Marketplace it is nothing more than an “Aggregator”. We all remember the “Aggregators” and their stories. Buying a lead from here and sell it somewhere else for a profit. 

Leadpile has been focusing on the Leadgen, offering alternatives to the existing Affiliate Marketing for over 7 years. Not only that we know what it takes to be successful in generating leads from Search, but we know what painful it is when you use the traditional Affiliate Networks like CJ (CommissionJunction.com). 

The MicroClick Forms and Ads (www.MicroClick.com) are just the front-end pieces of the Exchange, the real stuff starts when you start promoting them and get into the Tracking available in the Exchange. 

In today’s world there are many things that have changed in a advertising sense. One of the largest changes that has happened is in the way in which advertisers advertise towards women. There are more women in the career role, running a business and buying high priced items for their home. I found this article on Phoenix Business Journal very interesting. For instance, they stated:

*Women business owners spend $1.5 trillion on business purchases.
*In today’s world, age is less important than life stage, e.g., 60-year-old women are dating, 50-year-olds are starting new careers and 40-year-olds are having children.
*Women purchase (or influence the purchase of) 85 percent of all consumer goods including automobiles, investments and computers, which were traditionally viewed as male-domain items.
*Advertising that makes a woman feel uncomfortable about her looks or health will have a hard time reaching an audience willing to purchase its product.

More businesses are realizing these facts and starting to adjust how they market their products online, through television, and print media. In previous years, selling your product or service was something you had to appeal to a man, however as we can see things are changing.
With the Leadpile Lead Exchange we deal with all sorts of lead types and all sorts of demographics of consumers and advertisers. The key for our marketplace to be effective is not only diversify what lead types we are working with, but also understand that publishers doing effective marketing to generate the leads is really important. To do effective lead generation, you must know details about the product and service you are generating leads for, AND you must understand who are the potential people you need to attract in this market.

With all the demand for autos to become more eco-friendly, high performance AND attractive looking, Tesla Motors feels like they have what people are maybe looking for. This high demanded car is the Tesla Roadster. The battery operated car is a 2 seater sports car that you can customize fully. Unfortunately, the price tag is not affordable to most consumers at $109,000. According to their website, there is a 12 month wait to get one built. Their goal is to roll out a 4 door sedan at around $60, 000, which is much higher then the GM’s sedan (Volt)they will be rolling out in 2010. GM is estimating the cost of their battery operated sedan to be around $40,000. I will say there is a very interesting fact about the chairman of Tesla Motors, and that is that he was the co-founder of Paypal. Time will tell if this Silicon Valley start-up can get the auto world headed in the right direction towards a more eco-friendly world.
Leadpile Lead Exchange generates a lot of auto finance leads. Unfortunately, I am not sure we are going to come across advertisers/dealers in our marketplace able to provide this new beauty…..yet. However, we do welcome any company able to generate auto finance leads!

The quality of leads in a lead exchange is one of the most important factors in making the exchange work. Leadpile Lead Exchange currently allows 48 hours for a lead buyer to return a lead for bad contact information. Our quality control department is there to provide feedback from the leads being returned to the business development department. If there is any sort of consistency with bad quality, the issue will be addressed individually with the lead seller/publisher.
However, how does a lead company potentially deal with lead quality if they do not allow returns?
According to the Leadcritic, Lower My Bills has not allowed leads to be returned for some time. However, they incorporate an expected return rate into the cost of the leads. Do you think this is as affective as companies allowing returns?
Each lead company is different on the time frame they allow leads to be returned, and that is another question to address. What is a fair amount of time to allow a lead buyer to return a lead? Is it maybe simplified to do things the LMB way, and just incorporate the cost of potential lead returns into the cost of the leads?
Leadpile Lead Exchange believes that hearing the feedback of the buyers – good and bad – is crucial for us to make this marketplace work effectively. If we do not get feedback from our lead buyers, we don’t know how to fix a “problem” that we might have. We LOVE feedback… good and bad!

The lead-gen, as many knows it so far, refers to the generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services – generating a lead. The characteristics of lead-gen are changing, and same as the web, it has certain phases, which makes it evolutionary. 

In the beginning of 2000, the lead-gen has become more popular in the online channel, and with it, more and more companies started to allocate a certain budget for lead-gen, finding it as a good alternative or addition to their own advertising channels. 

A GP Bulhound Research report states that from 2006-2007, the online lead generation market grew 71% YTY. That’s more than twice as fast as the online advertising market. 

The growth, it’s of course, determined by the increasing demand for leads, but also the effectiveness and low costs offered by Lead Exchanges compared to the SEM. 

The Lead-gen 1.0 is considered as being a fragmented, not scalable, where the pricing for leads and volume needs to be artificially managed in order to create profit. 

Leadpile, has started as being a lead generation company, and by knowing the ins and outs of this industry, created a unique Exchange where the price and volume are market driven. The platform has arrived to a mature state, and that’s due to the years of experience and being on the right track from the start. And so, the Lead-gen 2.0 is here. Below you will see certain tools available in the Leadpile Exchange, making it a true Lead Marketplace/Exchange with the technology to be considered Lead-gen 2.0: 

1. Real Time leads and Cherry pick leads:

- the ability to choose between real time delivered leads (Lead Direct) and cherry picking the leads (Self Select)

When it comes to Real Time leads – you can choose the preferred price, volume, schedule and any other filters you want. 

A true lead-gen platform would also enable you to filter the sources of leads (producers/lead sellers): 

No matter how small or big your company is, a true lead-gen platform would also allow you to receive the leads in your own way, that can be from the most complexed integration to the most simple delivery method, like email. 

Of course, you need to have the freedom to receive the leads whenever you want to: 

Also, a complete lead-gen platform would allow you to “talk” to your consumers as soon as they finish the application. That’s where the confirmation page, or redirect to your site, comes handy and really crucial when it comes to customer acquisition:

We are sure that more lead-gen companies will come along, as they already did, following our model. That’s the beauty of this business! We are all working together and we will inspire each other in order to create a better business model for everyone. Leadpile, as the first company to launch a real integrated system for buyers and sellers of leads, will never stop to grow and improve. Out motto is and will always be: “The Impossible is our Expertise”. 

We look forward to your comments and suggestions – We Need You!

Leadpile Lead Exchange needs Credit Card Processing leads. If you are generating credit card processing leads, bring them in our marketplace.  Honestly, everyday I’m having a new advertiser sign up DEMANDING this lead type. It’s the new lead type that will sell! Think about it for a quick sec…… Who in this time of age does not have a credit card? Some teens might not have one, but even they are getting them younger and younger.  It makes logical sense for every business out there to accept credit cards. What I can not believe is that many new businesses do not accept credit cards.  This could be affecting their revenue. Overall, when businesses accept credit cards, their sales should be higher.  Reality is most people would rather charge a purchase versus pay cash.
Credit Card Processing companies are really targeting these businesses that do not currently accept credit cards.  This makes perfect financial sense in the fact that the business gets the credit card machine, and the credit card processing company makes a sale!  Now evaluate all the new home based business seekers that are working from home. There are millions of them in the U.S. currently. Is it a good business decision for even these types of businesses to plan on accepting credit cards?  Possibly not, depending on the type of home based business they are doing.

Great lead type and I need leads!  We are currently generating Credit Card Processing in our lead exchange, but NOT ENOUGH to fill in our demand! If you have them………… bring them over! 

Need AUTO FINANCE leads?
How about PAYDAY LOAN leads?
DEBT leads by chance?
What about CREDIT REPAIR leads?
No wait, how about BUSINESS CASH ADVANCE leads?

No matter what type of lead you are looking for, Leadpile is probably generating it…or can potentially generate it for you. Leadpile Lead Exchange is made up of buyers and sellers of real time web based leads. We are always looking for new buyers of leads to join our marketplace. Where else can you:

1. Get various leads types in one place?
2. Set your pricing you are comfortable with?
3. Define exactly what filters you want?
4. Get top notch customer service to answer your questions and provide support?
5. Work with a company that “does the right thing”, and is always wanting to have our buyers and sellers that are “doing the right thing”.
6. Have the ability to have leads posted to your website, redirected to your site, delivered on email or able to downloaded reports at any time!

What are you waiting for? Try out the Leadpile experience!
For those of you that are already buying or selling leads.. THANK YOU!!

Publishers are spending a lot of money on PPC campaigns through Google AdWords.  Have you ever researched the cost of producing a real time quality lead? Depending on the vertical, it can get really expensive, especially if you are looking for quality and genuine interest.

Capturing a name, number, email, address, best time to call, can get really expensive. If you want to target geographically, by zip or state, it will increase your price and lower the amount of traffic you are getting. A lead can be really inexpensive, if you are just capturing email address, and you incentivize it, but if you are looking to attract customers that are genuinely interested in your service, its not going to be .20 cents or .50 cents, it will be way more expensive. You can expect prices as these if you are looking for lists, but why would you do that when you have the Yellow Pages and costs you nothing. You can definitely get leads for such a price, but those will be leads that are generated from the yellow pages, or aged data (lists) of consumers that showed an interest in your service years ago.  So what is the price for a good, real time, exclusive leads? It depends, it can be very expensive, depending how competitive is your vertical.  You will get what you are paying for. In other words, you are going to be happy with the return on your investment (ROI).

Advertisers have to consider that publishers or lead exchanges are eating the cost of any leads that are invalid.  Paying anywhere between .25 to $1.50 per click, or even $15, does not guarantee a conversion. Even if we get a conversion, it will not necessarily mean that you, as a buyer, will accept the lead. If you are a Debt Settlement buyer, you might want only want $15,000 and above in Unsecured Debt, which will significantly increase the price to produce that lead. 

Lead exchanges welcome advertisers to join the marketplace to HOST their offers. Paying the right price for the lead, working with the lead exchange to optimize your campaign and filter the lead sources, will ensure a successful campaign for you, as a buyer, and for the Lead Exchange and its publishers. 

Think of it this way, lets say you need to travel to a different state.  Would you rather rent a bike or a car? By renting a bike, you will save money on gas and get in a better shape If you are concerned about the time you need to get to your destination, this will not work too well for you, and renting a car might be more suited for you. Time is money, and we all know it very well.

Make great choices and you will see more money coming into your business! Buy quality, real time exclusive leads, and you can be assured that Leadpile will be on your side from start to end! Pay the price that they are worth and you will get the satisfaction that you are searching for!

Leadpile’s Motto: “Good is the Enemy of Great!” – Jim Collins, Good to Great