Leadpile’s Blog

Craigslist took over the top spot for the most searched term that Internet users clicked through to in the United States, during the week ending March 14. Myspace had held the top spot as the most popular term since March 2006.    According to Hitwise, “U.S. searches on the term “craigslist” have increased 105 percent for the week ending March 14, 2009, compared with the same week last year.”  Why is this?  Could this increase in searching “craigslist” be a result of the economic position many consumers are in?  Either way, this is positive for Craigslist!  

So, who will be the next king of the hill?

Publishers in The Leadpile Lead Exchange certainly look at Craigslist as a place to promote their websites and the Leadpile offers. Those that are not, should maybe look into this site as a potential source of traffic.

The economy is bad, and consumers are needing help with their mortgages and debt. Leadpile realizes this, and so does our advertisers/lead buyers. There are loan modification and debt companies out there looking to help more consumers. Leadpile is looking for those people to be matched up with our advertisers to provide these services.

Leadpile Lead Exchange makes it quick and easy for lead publishers.  Here are the offers you can get up and going in minutes.  This is a great way for these consumers to fill out the required information, and be matched up with those that can provide the service to them!

Being that this is a blog and we have an interest in other bloggers, I thought I would point out Time.com’s 2nd annual top 25 blogs for 2009.  Unfortunately, Leadpile missed the list this year, however this list is a very interesting list I thought I would share.

Many Leadpile Lead Exchange publishers are looking at monetizing a blog/website, or are looking for some new content for their sites.  These blogs might be a great place to take a look at for some ideas.

1.  Talkingpointsmemo.com- great source for news
2. The Huffington Post- political blog
3. Lifehacker.com- place to look for tips on making life easier
4. Metafilter.com- blog about anything readers deem important to share with others
5. The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan- very opinionated political blog
6. Freakonomics.com- economic theory and how it really relates to real life
7. Boingboing.com- geeks writing about wonderful things and presenting can’t believe it photos
8. Got2begreen.com- everything green blog
9. Zenhabits.net- blog about ways you can become more productive
10. The Conscious of a Liberal-economist with a lot of great views to share

and more………

Blogs, like all of these, are a great source for information and keeping up to date on current events.  Take a look, you might learn something new!

                  AND                    

It’s that time again….. Leadpile Lead Exchange will be attending and exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit Vegas (January 11-13th). We are looking forward to seeing some new faces and catching up with some old friends. We will be exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market on the 11th. Please feel free to stop by and say hi!  We are looking for new partnerships with publishers and advertisers with the 37 or so lead types we are currently working with.  

   Well it is that time again, Ad-tech New York is happening in a little over a week, and it will be represented by all the top advertisers in the country. This conference has been around for more than 10 years bringing together media, marketing and technical professions. According to ad-tech.com, “As the digitization of media continually redefines the business of marketing, it is ad:tech’s mission to provide brand advertisers, agencies, portals, online publishers and technology providers an unparalleled forum – one that supports the exchange of ideas, experiences, new practices, emerging models and expert opinion.”

Leadpile Lead Exchange will be attending the conference. This conference allows businesses to meet current partners and also look at setting up new partnerships. We look forward to seeing old faces and new faces. If you are planning on being there, we would love to see you! Let us know!
Leadpile would also like to say thanks to all the affiliates we are currently working with, and those that come on board with this Brilliant Lead Exchange!

The PPC gurus love the MicroClick ads and especially the MicroClick Form. Why? Because no PPC expert would want their traffic wasted, especially on broken links, or crowded pages with banners and text links. 

We all know that the CVR is extremely important when we pay for clicks. If we pay $3.00 or more on a click, we want to make sure that the consumer is going to click on an add, and go all the way to a conversion – a lead. That is going to determine the profit we make out the money spent on Adwords or any other PPC search engine. 

Our affiliates love the MicroClick Form because it’s co-branded and not only that, it’s compact. Being compact and easy to integrate in a website will maximize their CVR. The “call to action” is there, and it can be added on every single page of your site. That’s important, because you will have the consumer focused on the Form no matter what they read or on what page they are. 

In addition to the Form, we have added the MicroClick Ads. That helps the publishers that have blogs, or any other sites with a lot of content (and the SEO experts know what I am talking about). 

The PPC gurus know how to generate leads, drive traffic and optimize their campaigns. Not all are good designers, or some they are, but don’t have the time to waste time designing new sites. That’s where Leadpile can help again – we design the sites for them, host the site for them, or zip it and send it to them. All the ads and forms are integrated in their site, with no cookie tracking needed – that’s what we call an Affiliate Marketing Revolution. 

Leadpile can give you the real deal, exquisite treatment, no matter how small you are. 

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.

Ever wonder what search engine terms are used the most? I know I do, and search terms also tell a little bit about what is going on in the world around us. According to dmconfidential, eBay gets the award for the top terms (eBay and eBay.com)in the month of August. People trying to find bargains, or sell items they have I would say is partially responsible for this. Home depot was the next highest term used, followed by mapquest. The shopping/office supplies category received 43.15% of all paid search traffic. The fortunate thing is that this is an 8% increase from July’s 39.81%. Maybe people are staying home and doing more of their shopping online to try and get the best deal, without driving store to store. Business telecommunications and pharmaceutical & medical traffic was slightly up. However, travel and business/legal traffic was down for the month of August.
Another interesting fact, yet not surprising, is that Google accounted for 71% of all US searches in the month of August. In a distant second place was Yahoo with 18.26% followed by MSN (5.32%) and Ask (3.45%).
To truly be effective with lead generation, knowing this kind of information and detailed information about the verticals you are promoting is key to being successful. For instance, someone who is doing PPC for payday loan will loose a lot of money if they are not first aware of everything there is to know about payday loans, and also if they do not understand search engines.
Here at Leadpile, I am going to do everything I can to help publishers know what buyers are maybe looking for in a particular lead type. This helps with how the traffic is driven to the website and ultimately helps with conversions and payouts. Communication with your affiliate manager or account manger is key to running a successful lead generation campaign.

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!

Now might be the time to go out and get your new GM auto. According to MSNBC, the employee discount promotion will not be extended past the end of this month. If you are wanting any type of GM, now would be the time to go out and get it and save some money! The discount was saving some consumers anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars on that new car. This promotion has been going on since mid August, however sales are still down from the year before. Fortunately, it has allowed GM to have less of a “slump” compared to Ford and Chrysler.
If you are a consumer who is wanting to get that new auto NOW.. Let Leadpile connect you with dealerships in your area. Go to my loan and debt website to get matched up with an auto dealer.
If you are a publisher or advertiser, we would love to work with you here at Leadpile Auto Lead Exchange to connect consumers with dealership near them!

How many of you have been approached to get a life insurance quote from your insurance agent? Let me guess, you said I am too young to buy life insurance. Any successful life insurance sales person will tell you the key to life insurance is really “understanding” it. There are a lot of misconceptions out there regarding life insurance. There really are a lot of specific reasons consumers take out a life insurance policy, besides just to “be covered” when they pass away.

1. Business owners can take out policies to take care of their key employees, so the business can run smoothly if the business owner passes away. Is the deceased person’s spouse really going to be able to run the business if they passed away? Probably not.
2. Spouses take out a policy to cover their spouse so they can try and maintain a similar lifestyle, if their spouse passes away.
3. Some take out policies for a short period of time to cover loved ones, because they took out some extra debt and they want their beneficiaries to not incur this debt if they pass away.
4. Some take out a life insurance policy because they want to have their loved ones to not have to take care of paying for their burial expenses.

Overall, there are so many reasons why a person has to consider taking out a life insurance policy. The most common types of life insurance policies are whole life and term life.
Whole life insurance generally is more expensive because it generates cash value, and it remains with you till you pass away. However, term insurance is an insurance policy that generally lasts for 10,20, or maybe even 30 years only. These policies expire at the end of their designated time frame. Unfortunately, if you take out a policy and then cancel it or don’t pay, it can expire and if you wanted another one, you then will be rated on the age you are now. Buying life insurance at a younger age can have some long term benefits for individuals, because life insurance premiums are based on your age (and health condition too).
According to Yahoo.com, 94% of life insurance that is sold is sold over the kitchen table. This means that most consumers who get life insurance have chosen to get it while meeting face to face with their insurance agent. 4% of consumers feel comfortable getting a life insurance policy over the internet. This is where Leadpile Lead Exchange comes in.
We work with some of the best publishers out there, and they are ready to embark on generating more insurance leads. Not only will we want our publishers to bring in auto and home insurance, we will ask them to bring in life insurance. This is a very important lead type that is a very important insurance for every American. We ALL need life insurance at some level. Just like in any loan you take out… do your research with life insurance. Ask a lot of questions.

There is generation “X” and baby boomers that we all hear about, however have you ever heard of Generation “V”? Generation V is the generation of the future… the generation that is dealing with online EVERYTHING. Unlike the other generations, Generation V is not defined by an age, gender, social class or where they live. However, this generation is based on what they can and have achieved, accomplishments, and an increasing desire for the use of digital media channels to discover information and build knowledge. If you are a company that is not online… you better be soon!
According to marketingcharts.com, 80% of generation V will be “lurkers”. These are people that will reap the rewards of the online world. Others are trying to be apart of the online world by participating in the activites such as blog posts, forums, and YouTube. Those is previous years did not do such things to keep an online presence, however this is something that companies need to take a look at when dealing with how they market their company online. Defined demographics of consumers are a way of the past, because it is getting harder and harder to determine those that are online and buying the product.
Companies must change around how their online presence is represented, because so many people are using the internet as their only source for information and other key aspects to their daily lives. Why is it though that many create accounts in places such as dating sites, email providers and blogs, that is not themselves (anonymous)? Are they trying to protect themselves from people knowing who they really are? Not sure on why Generation V does this, but we will see how much more the online world really affects various things such as retail, dating, lead generation and other up and coming industries.
I have to say the publishers I work with in the Leadpile Lead Exchange are mostly going to be considered Genration V. These are people that live, breath and do everything around the internet.
We welcome all generations to our marketplace, but I have a feeling there will be much more Generation V making up the Leadpile Lead Exchange!