Leadpile’s Blog

Facebook is the largest social networking site out there. Whether you are looking so see what your friends are doing, finding old classmates, or just trying to stay connected, Facebook seems to have it all. All except Twitter that is.
When Facebook failed to acquire Twitter.com in the fall of 2008 they decided to do the next best thing and try to be more like them. Within the past week Facebook launched Facebook Lite, which essentially works in the same manner as Twitter. Facebook Lite took out all the frills so a user can only post their status updates. This is a great way to get more people to the site who are looking for a simple way to follow what their friends or favorite businesses are doing.
Facebook has also made it so people who already have Facebook can simply “Tag” a friend and then begin to follow them. This will eliminate the need to juggle between two Facebook accounts. Facebook really did their homework when they decided to start to have some of the same features as Twitter. They even decided to copy the “@” that one puts in front of a name when someone “Tweets” to someone else. So it looks like Facebook didn’t do their homework, but just copy off the person next to them.

Leadpile Lead Exchange is happy to be a part of another great way to network.  The eComXpo is a great place to find new affiliates and companies out there, right at your fingertips.  There are virtual booths, a networking lounge, presentations and even an ability to exchange business cards.  If you are not a part of the eComXpo craze, take a look and see how to become a part of this modern innovative way to network from your computer.

First, I would like to say congratulations to our next president of the United States. No matter who everyone voted for, we are all keeping an eye on how the future of our struggling America pans out.  Secondly, there was something that America should really pay attention to, and that is an amazing effect the internet had on the election of our 44th president.
The internet AND social networking tools contributed to the Barack Obama being elected. According to businessstandard.com,“Obama, on his part, has refined the digital act further — a fact revealed during his presidential announcement speech in Springfield last October when he said: “Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age…” A few examples of this being implemented, was in the case where almost 300,000 people created accounts on the barackobama.com website, he became the first YouTube politician, got involved on Facebook, MySpace, text messaging and all other avenues of the internet for fund raising and party awareness.
Another interesting aspect in this presidential campaign was, “Obama has proposed the creation of the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that the American government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will have a specific focus on transparency, by ensuring that each arm of the federal government makes its records open and accessible as the e-government Act requires. The CTO will also ensure technological interoperability of key government functions”, according to Business Standard.
No matter who was elected, the excitement of the internet and the power it can have also excited Leadpile Lead Exchange. We are in it for the long hall on wherever this great internet craze LEADS us!

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. 

Leadpile Lead Exchange is proud to announce we are now a part of the Facebook craze. Social networking sites are key to helping to define a company’s online presence. Leadpile realizes this, and now has it’s own profile. Join our Leadpile list of friends, and become apart of our Lead Exchange if you are not already.

Who is still picking up the Sunday Paper?  It has some fascinating stuff like clip off coupons, find an automobile, or look for a job.  Sunday mornings, while I go for breakfast, I see the older generation reading the newspaper. Not so much the younger ones, they choose to have their laptops next to them or their iPhones. 

I was reading an article today on www.investopedia.com regarding the yard-sales.  They were explaining how to set up a yard-sale and make some cash. I’m familiar with the advertisements inside a lead exchange, but this was somewhat out of the box thinking.  The article is called “In A Cash Crush? Hold A Yard Sale” by Lisa Smith.  Lisa is explaining how to advertise and how to have a successful Yard Sale by making it unique using Craigslist, or putting colorful bulletins or advertising in the newspaper.  

It all comes down to: targeting the audience.  The older generation are not computer savvy, and they are not sitting on their computers as long as the younger generation, so they are better of reading the paper. Than you have some other people that are traveling a lot, they are more targeted by the bulletins. The ones hanging out in the Starbucks, with their computers, or with their web enabled phones, are going to see your ads on the web. The internet is the highest growing method of advertising, and it’s also the most targeted one. Not only that you are able to target exactly the demographics you are looking for, but you are able to track the efficiency of your campaign as never been possible before. You care see where the consumer came from, what ad they clicked on, how long they’ve been reading your page and even how long it took them to finish an online application. 

After reading this article, I came to think about advertising to the leads that did not sell in our marketplace. These are mostly aged leads that were left behind because the advertisers met their caps.  They might not be of any interest to the current buyers buying real time leads, but they are a treasure to the companies interested in cherry picking their leads.  LeadPile Lead exchange has an increasing network of publishers and active verticals that is doing business in.  As the Largest Online Lead Marketplace, LeadPile Lead exchange has a good number of valuable leads that can work out for the advertisers that have small budgets, or they want to complement their current inventory of leads. 

Testing out different venues of advertising or using aged leads and filtering them by the consumer initial interest, can bring some value to your current business. 

Leadpile is working closely with the buyers to increase their ROI, and we are committed to your, the Advertiser, success.

As the Affiliate Summit Boston 2008 comes to a close, we would like to thank all of our affiliates for a great show. We would also like to say thank you to the city of Boston, for providing a beautiful place to have an Affiliate Summit.
We enjoyed some good conversations, nice business meetings, site seeing, GREAT food, and nice hospitality. We all look forward to speaking further with the affiliates we met, and potentially doing some business together. Also, Leadpile Lead Exchange would like to thank all those for coming by our Meet Market booth!

AND…Thanks Boston for the great lobster!

I couldn’t count how many home based business exist.  Truly its so diverse that its unbelievable.  Think about it, home based business have been around for ages.  Remember Avon? Most women will.  Yes, that’s a home based business, earning 50% of what is sold. 

In this day in age society has expanded to different types of home based business.  From selling cosmetics, to vacation packages, to Tupperware, software, natural products , home improvements, to juices and vitamins and insurance to web development and much, much more.  So many people across the world are taking advantage of their own unique home based business.

Home Based Business is diverse for men and women to make some extra cash.  Believe it or not, many people actually live off the earnings in a MLM.

But part of the catch is the majority of these business needs a down-line to actually see earnings.  You need to sign more people up to be part of your down-line and you also benefit from there sales.  How do you think some of these MLM or HBB consumers actually make it in the day to day life.  Well, think about it, they are not spending gas money so they are saving cash on gas alone.  They are also, setting up there own hours and times that they want to work.  They are responsible for their own advertising.  And best, of all they are getting paid to work from home. 

Independent consultants are marketing and spending some of their own revenue to buy leads.  Yes, most Home Based Businesses are using leads to get more people to sign up within their network.  Its an investment that for many have been well work it.  With some extra cash in your pocket and an effective process to pay your bills, is a home based business right for you?

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

Many in the affiliate marketing world are getting ready to reunite with those in the industry, or see some NEW faces at the Affiliate Summit Boston. The Affiliate Summit is a great place to get to see what others are doing in the industry, hear some new concepts, and get some nice FREE goodlies from all the booths.
The mission of the Affiliate Summit is to be the leading global source of learning and networking opportunities surrounding the affiliate marketing industry, according to Webmasterradio.com.

Leadpile Lead Exchange will not be having a full booth set up, however we will be apart of the “Meet Market” gathering. We will also be visiting all the booths to say hi!
We looking forward to seeing all of our wonderful affiliates that attend the conference!

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).

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!