Leadpile’s Blog

Forums – a great way to learn and get to know professionals in your niche. First time I read anything on a Forum I gave up after couple of threads, because of the aggressive and “no ending” fights going on in there. Hiding yourself in the Cyber Space under different names and start attacking anyone you feel like. Well, that’s still the case even in the best forums out there, but I guess that’s what helps creating the buzz. Together with the “exciting” and really “passionate” fights, you have the chance to meet very talented professionals that love the freedom of speech, and most likely can teach you more than any of the panelists from the trade shows you are going to. 

Some Forums are better than others, and I am not going to rank them here, because it’s very subjective, but for sure some can increase your level of adrenaline – WickedFire is just one example . One thing I can say for sure, go out there, check them out and learn from the Pros, as you will find many of them. 

Leadpile Lead Exchange (Marketplace or Affiliate Network) is definitely looking out there and learning from everyone. 

I will close this post with a quote: 

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” Socrates

We all know there are some tough times going on with most Americans. Right now, Leadpile Lead Exchange is experiencing a surge with the payday loan lead type. Not only are publishers wanting to generate the leads, but the advertisers are needing those payday leads. If your not apart of the Leadpile marketplace, take a look at some of the conversions our publishers are receiving.

There are a lot of payday loan leads being generated, and WE want them to be SOLD here!
There are also a lot of payday lenders needing leads, and WE want them to BUY here!

Tracking your Payday campaign could never be easier.  Let’s talk about the LeadPile lead exchange and some unique tools provided inside your campaign to better assist you.  

LeadPile, Payday/Cash Advance vertical has launch above expectations.  We are the Source for Payday/Cash Advance leads.  For uniqueness the placement in our marketplace is powerful.  You see inside your campaign you will see your current bid price, your rank, and the top bid.  Yes, our top payday buyer is currently paying $68.50.  Our quality can stand in front of our price.  

The rank is significant as it will elaborate how many more campaigns are currently active, funded and have priority to accept a lead first.  Our lead exchange is Market Driven.  Rank 1 will have the opportunity to purchase the lead first.  Be aware that you will be receiving higher quality.  Not so much due to the cost, but consider this, you are coming across new consumers that are in some serious need of a loan that might only fill out one application online, hence was our application.  

I always suggest to get a good placement in our PING tree.  If you are an aggregator and you are working with extended amount of buyers you want to take a good placement.  Offer them the best quality lead that they have not seen within the acceptable time frame.  

I provided this screen shot so that you can view and understand how it works.  At any time a buyer can go through the “main settings” inside there campaign and increase the price so that they can jump over a few affiliates.  That’s the nature of a lead exchange.  You have total control over your price and you are notified of your placement. This way you can make some logical financial evaluations and define where you need to be at that makes sense for your company.

With a Lead Exchange such as LeadPile we make it user friendly so that you can at all time have the information you need right in front of you!  No wonder, we are the Largest Online TOP Rank Lead Marketplace!

If 85% to 95% of all emails being handled by the ISPs represent spam which mostly are unwanted messages abusively and indiscriminately sent by unscrupulous marketers or scam artists, and the costs associated with the necessary bandwidth and network maintenance are supported by the ISPs, which in turn get paid by everyone that’s using the internet one way or another, then spammers are really picking our pockets.

Someone has to pay for creating and supporting the infrastructure required by 100 BILLION SPAM emails PER DAY!!! And that’s not cheap: the estimated costs were about $100 BILLION in 2007. So with 1,412,489,652 internet users worldwide (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) and $100 billion in money spent/lost in connection with the spam, it comes to about $70.79 per person using the internet per year.

Incredibly, about 80% of all spam is sent by fewer than 200 spammers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam), which would mean that each spammer steals nearly $500 MILLION per year from everybody else. Now is that grand theft or what? If a bank had HALF A BILLION stolen by 200 different people in a year I would tend to believe these people would be caught pretty fast.

LeadGen companies and Publishers that specialize in internet marketing do need to have an ethical conduct and refrain from spamming. LeadPile has built its reputation as a lead marketplace / exchange that strictly prohibits the practice of spam or any other abusive or deceptive marketing methods. All marketplace participants have to abide by strict rules which ensure that consumers are protected, and the lead exchange continues to grow based on the benefits it brings to consumers, lead buyers (advertisers) and lead sellers (publishers). All accounts have a dedicated account manager who is in constant communication with lead sellers and our quality control division is closely monitoring the leads production. Confidence in using the LeadPile Lead Exchange is critical to its success and the marketplace proved to be incredibly successful at attracting both quality lead sellers and lead buyers (http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS215372+06-May-2008+MW20080506).

One of the main issues when it comes to affiliates, lead generation and traffic is the fraud. The better you become in tracking your leads, affiliates and methods they use to generate leads, the better your program will work. 

Leadpile’s Lead Exchange  has been working into improving the MicroClick Form (previously known as the I-SaveNow Form) application process, storing as much data as possible, so that we identify the source and also the validity of the lead. 

Some lead verticals are easier to fake than others, and the more fields, checks and restrictions for the data, the better is to control what goes through the Exchange. 

Paid Search (Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing) are facing 20% or more fraud. The Lead Exchanges are not an exception, but the percentage is way lower. 

A click is very easy to fake and it can happen way faster and with a lot more volume than within the lead process. Also, each lead can be refunded in case of invalidity, where the traffic takes more time and sometimes is going untracked. Thinking that in certain industries we are seeing bids that are ranging between $6.00 to $50.00 per click, that can be a substantial loss for the advertisers. 

Let’s take a look at the following Click Fraud Index:

Leadpile has been producing it’s own leads in addition to the leads generated by its own publishers (partners) and that helped the Lead Exchange (Marketplace) becoming one of the top Lead-Gen companies out there. We actually are getting the hit from the PPC and take away the burden of this cost from our Lead Buyer (Advertisers). One of the most successful campaigns are still from PPC, where our Buyers are enjoying top lead quality. Of course, that comes for a price, but our service is going to make up for it, no matter how big or small your company is. 

Our team is geared up everyday to provide the top notch customer experience you (as a Lead Buyer/Advertiser) deserve! No matter what your challenge is, let us know so we can work better for you!

Let’s go into Dynamic Pricing and its advantage.  Let’s say you have a network of advertisers but they all pay different pricing on leads.  How do you integrate this in a dynamic pricing tier for the auto and payday vertical?  Everyone wants first look. In a lead marketplace top bidder will get first look.  Segregate your advertisers by pricing.  

Here’s an example.  You have 5 companies buying from you.  Comp.1 can pay $6, Comp.2 can pay $29, Comp.3 can pay $40, Comp.4 can pay $10, and company 5 can pay $23.  Set up 3 campaigns in our lead exchange.  Campaign 1 set it at $6 Campaign 2 set it at $23 and Campaign 3 set it at $40.  Set up different affiliate IDs and put Comp 1 and 4 on campaign 1, company 2 and 5 on campaign 2 and company 3 on campaign 3.  This way you, we PING leads for your advertisers within the price they can afford to pay and you PING back a response with the price you accepted the lead and sold at.

Dynamic pricing works in different ways.  We can set up a unique tier that we will PING a lead at and you can POST back the price the lead was sold at. In addition, you can set up various parameters as filters, such as if you have zip codes that will pay a higher amount than others we can set up campaigns for higher paying zips and a different campaign for lower paying zips. We can also set it up by states, or even customers.  Whatever works best for you we can do.

The technology within our marketplace is so extreme that our integration and the variation of methods that we can assemble is quite intense.

With Tier Pricing, you set up the tier that you feel comfortable paying, we PING you at that price and you POST a reject or accept response letting us know if you will buy the lead or not.  You will pay the price the Tier is set for that we receive accepts on.  The lead exchange works fantastic, you can up your bid to subscribe you in a higher placement or you can go lower if you need too.  

Take into consideration that you are also taking advantage of the redirect feature that is available when we are doing the POST. 

If you need ideas or suggestions on how to set up your dynamic pricing or tier structure give our friendly experienced staff a call.  We will work with you to make this the best experience in the history of lead gen and find the solution that will best fit your companies platform.  And, finding the best way to set up your campaigns for your network of buyers!

MicroClick Ads Turning Affiliate Marketing Upside Down, Reports LeadPile

Phoenix, Arizona -July 8th, 2008 — Within three weeks of announcing the introduction of their new “MicroClick Ads”, LeadPile has created quite a buzz in Affiliate Marketing Circles throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK. Leadpile, The World’s Largest Online Exclusive Lead Marketplace, or Lead Exchange, has reported that the MicroClick Ads have contributed to a 17% increase in production for selected Lead Publishers, and have helped LeadPile to continue its position as the leader in the Lead Exchange Revolution.

What are MicroClicks? Simply put, MicroClick Ads are very small single page mini sites that open a new window enabling Affiliate Publishers to have much more control over their own sites than with “Old Fashioned Affiliate Programs”. The MicroClick ads are a tremendous innovation for Publishers desiring to monetize their traffic. To see what everyone in Affiliate Marketing is talking about, please visit http://www.leadpile.com/microsites.html

The MicroClick Ads give Publishers total control over their own site giving them more compelling monetization opportunities for their content.  For the first time ever, Leadpile’s MicroClick Ads place Publishers in total control of their own sites, and their own income because MicroClick ads are located their own Websites, and secured on Leadpile’s Secured Servers. MicroClick Ads have been designed for those Publishers knowledgeable with HTML and JavaScript, and those who are not. Inserting the MicroClick ads into a website is fast, simple, and easy.

Andy Jacob, Founder of Leadpile, says “There is absolutely no limit to the number of MicroClick Ads a Publisher can place on a site. All they need to do with their site is to target each keyword that they want, add the simple code automatically provided by the LeadPile System, and the LeadPile Lead Exchange does the rest. Jacob says, “This could be a game changer for Affiliate Marketing as we know it.”

About LeadPile:

Leadpile, the World’s Largest Exclusive Online Lead Marketplace/Lead Exchange, offers the Lead-Gen “Space” the Largest, centralized location for Buyers and Sellers of Exclusive Leads to engage in an exclusive  Lead Exchange, or Lead Marketplace. The Leadpile Marketplace allows the 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. Visit LeadPile at http:///www.leadpile.com , or visit the Lead Exchange Blog at http://www.leadpile.com/lead-exchange-blog.

Welcome back to an innovated blog that I hope you will find useful and enjoy!

I wanted to show you how LeadPile’s delivery schedule works.  When creating a real time campaign in your account our lead exchange is design to fit your schedule.  If you are looking for specific times or dates, it can be done!  We are honored not only in providing you with quality real time leads but also to providing leads that will meet your best time to communicate with consumers.  We understand that because these leads are real time, you most likely want to be present when you get the lead.  Therefore, you can update your campaigns to fit your days or hours.  

Its easy, so simple you’ll love it! Here’s how to set it up.

• Click on the name of your campaign
• Click on the option called “Delivery Schedule”
• Select your hours prefer
• Select your days of preference
• Exclude or include any important dates.

That’s it.. Its that simplistic.   LeadPile, lead exchange the worlds largest lead marketplace is unique in making it easy to get started. You will benefit from using your delivery schedule to contact consumers in a timely manner, touch base when their interest is the hottest, have an opportunity to get them on the phone instantly and of course make it effective for you to work leads within your hours of work. 

Leadpile’s Lead Exchange has been offering a webpage (confirmation page) since the beginning, giving its buyers the opportunity to present themselves to the consumers. Receiving the lead from a Lead Exchange / Lead Marketplace and transfer it to a call center it is a very important part of the closing process. Having a confirmation page can increase the responsiveness of the consumer significantly as they will be expecting your call.  The page can be hosted by the Lead Buyer (Advertiser) or it can be hosted by Leadpile. Of course, having the visitor redirected to your own website it is the best way to go, but in case you don’t have one, we will provide your customers the information you want them to see: 

- Company name
- Company website
- Customer Service Phone
- Customer Service Email 
- Custom Message
The better you follow up with your customer, the better you will close. One of the first rules of closing it is “calling the customer with a sense of urgency”, and having a confirmation page displayed to the consumer will help you achieve your goal – to close the deal on the first call you make. Leadpile’s Lead Exchange has been always about real time delivered leads, and the confirmation page it is an important piece of the delivery process offered to our buyers. 
Leadpile’s Buyer Account Screenshot:

Who doesn’t? Well, we love them and we hate them at the same time. They are sweet, but if we have too much of them will be unhealthy. Well, it’s the same with the cookies we use for tracking.

The HTTP cookies (or the tracking cookies), are parcels of text sent by a server to a web client (usually a browser) and then sent back unchanged by the client each time it accesses that server. HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts. (Wikipedia:cookies)

The reason we hate them is because we can’t count on them. In the affiliate marketing, a cookie is storing the affiliate ID and the offer we use on our site, so if something happens with the cookie, we (the affiliates/publishers) are not going to get paid for the transaction. A cookie can be blocked by the browser settings, it can be deleted or it just expires. Every time something like this would occur, we are loosing the tracking, so we are loosing money.
For this reason, and not only, we have developed the MicroClick Form (previously known as the I-SaveNow Form), which was released to small groups of webmasters in 2001. The main advantage of using the Form, instead of a regular banner or text ad, was the embedded “producer ID” (affiliate ID) in the form, which would be consistent, no matter what the browser settings were, or if the visitor would delete (destroy) later on the cookies. Also, instead of having 30 days expiration time (as the cookies have), the producer ID would be available for tracking for as long as you are keeping the form online.

The response from the affiliates (publishers) or Lead Sellers (in Leadpile’s Marketplace) has been fantastic. Over the years we have grown our Marketplace to thousands of publishers that are using our forms for their websites, generating millions of impressions daily.

Unfortunately, the ones that don’t have a website in place or they have something that isn’t specific to a certain industry, they will still have to redirect the consumer to a website with specific content related to the advertised product/service. To fill in this need, Leadpile has developed the offers and the new MicroClick Ads, which are more like Microsites, used to host the Form and capture the visitor data. In order to keep the traffic focused on the publisher website and increase their monetization capabilities, we have developed the Microsites to open in new small windows. Same as we did with the Form, the MicroClick Ads and sites are hosted by secured servers, so the transactions can be processed through a secure socket layer (SSL) connection. Unfortunately, we will have to use the cookies for this process.  I guess we will have to love the cookies, with their good and bad consequences. The good news is that, if you choose to go on a “diet”, you have that option with Leadpile. 

Good things!

After receiving a few interesting calls today, I decided to write about it! Are leads another method of driving traffic to your website? Is it cheaper to purchase real time leads than to generate your own?

Many might know this but others might not. Depending on the lead type only a percentage of the traffic that’s redirected to your site will actually fill out the application online. Then you have to consider how many you have to filter out for invalid phone  numbers or bogus contact information.  It could get pretty expensive to generate your own leads. Especially for companies that are not doing a lot of marketing online.

Is it cheaper to buy leads? Depending on the marketplace, it could be!  Let’s face it, in our marketplace for example you can buy leads at great prices. We can POST the leads over to you on a real time basis. Honestly, that doesn’t sound good, it sounds great! Instead of you spending money and filtering out leads let a Lead Gen do the job for you! It’s less time consuming for you and more cost effective to just buy leads.  With the money you save, turn that around and spend on more leads, which will help you close more deals!

Increasing your ROI is an important factor that all lead buyers are looking for.  It makes perfect sense to allow a lead gen that is already generating leads to deliver them to you on a real time exclusive basis. It will also be considerably cheaper than attempting to generate them yourself.  

Just make sure you pick the right marketplace to provide you with real time quality exclusive leads! Not everyone in the industry produces quality so make sure you ask plenty of questions. 

How are your publishers bringing the leads into your marketplace? How do you make sure that, the leads they bring in, are having a reliable source? If you are playing in the lead-gen, these are important issues when it comes to your new publishers or partners joining your marketplace. Unfortunately, many out there are just a middle man, and they don’t really care where the leads are coming from as long as they are making few dollars. Well, the truth is that, following this path will shorten your life span.
By assuring that you are not getting old leads in your system (as new applications), or receiving non-exclusive leads as an exclusive lead, your buyers (end users of leads or other Lead-gen network) will be paying more for the leads, as their ROI will allow them to do so.