Holiday season is quickly approaching, and shoppers will soon be hitting the malls and websites! This season there is a new twist to the shopping discount war from the retail giant Walmart.

Walmart has announced this week that it will offer free shipping on 60,000 online items (including toys, electronics and jewelry), NO minimum purchase required! This could add up to a huge savings for those of us who like to spending time shopping online rather than pushing your way through crowds of people in the stores. Wal-Mart is offering this deal through December 20th.

The free shipping combined with the “Site to Store” program (allowing customers to buy an item online and have it shipped for free to their local Walmart) will save an estimated $25 million on shipping costs for Walmarts customers.

Target and J.C. Penny are also offering deals on shipping from their sites – Target offering free shipping on select items over $50 and J.C. Penny giving free shipping to customers spending $69 or more in online purchases.

Free shipping, avoiding the crowds at the stores while still getting your shopping done – Sounds like a great plan to me!

Going to your favorite shopping website could become something that will become a little more “friendlier” user experience. With recent issues with companies that are partnering up with online retail shopping sites, there has been some complaints by consumers that don’t like what happens on their shopping sites. Many shopping sites in the past have partnered up with companies that privide offers to consumers throughout their shopping experience, however many of these offers are not very clear to the consumers. Because there is not alot of clarity to what the consumer is clicking on, many consumers click on offers that they had no understanding of what they were doing. Many consumers have complained to the online shopping sites, causing the shopping sites to discontinue these partnerships. Yahoo Finance points out some things to do to protect yourself online:

1. Use your credit card, not your debit card. There is better financial protection for you by the bank if you use a credit card versus the debt card.
2. Be careful what you are clicking on. If you are on an online shopping site, ignore and pop ups or offers that appear on your screen. Clicking on these offers could cost you even more money!
3. Watch you credit card bills. Banks mess up, just like we all mess up with accidentally clicking on things, so review your credit card bill each month to make sure every charge is legitimate. If not, contact your credit card company immediately to dispute the charge.

Leadpile works with partnerships where we potentially offer secondary offers to our consumers filling out our forms, however we never utilize any offers that are pre populated or are deceiving. There is a loose loose situation if companies are doing this negative sort of lead generation. So pay attention to what you are clicking on online!

Holiday shopping has entered into “crunch time” as Christmas is just hours away. Many stores this season have offered exceptional discounts and incentives for shopping with them and it hasn’t stopped yet!
Stores such as most Walgreens locations will be open until midnight Christmas Eve with a large percentage of them staying open all night, and even staying open on Christmas with hours of 9am-6pm. Walgreens, as well as stores like 7-Eleven, Borders, Toy R US, Target and CVS will be open extended hours with selections of items such as iTunes gift cards, prepaid cell phones and online game gift cards.
According to yahoo! even Christmas Day is not too late to send gifts via email! Stores such as Victoria’s Secret says you can order a gift certificate online until 3pm that day and it will be delivered via email by the end of the day. Macys.com also offers the option to purchase e-gift cards until 1pm on December 24th and guarantees delivery.
It’s hard to believe that it’s already Christmas time once again! Hopefully you have all of your holiday shopping done and will not have to “take advantage” of the late holiday shopping hours tonight!
Happy Holidays from the whole Leadpile Team!!

The Thanksgiving rush is now over, and retailers seem to be pretty pleased with the Black Friday results. However, now Cyber Monday is here and the kickoff to online shopping has begun. Internetnews.com is reporting sites such as Amazon.com and Walmart.com to be the potential big winners. Time will tell who is going to be the big winner this holiday season. Web sales only represent a small portion of the holiday sales, however year after year more and more people are turning to the internet for their shopping.
Leadpile is hoping to capitalize on some of this increased web traffic with some additional lead generation. Payday loansare in high demand, and we are hoping some will see these short term loans as an additional way to potentially purchase their much needed Christmas gifts.

For many of you, it still might be a little early to do your holiday shopping. When you do start your shopping many people may ask which is better; to shop online or to go to stores? In several cases it can really depend on numerous factors. Many people think of Black Friday as a kick off to the holiday shopping season. Consumers will wake up at four in the morning (myself included) to go and get the incredible deals that are being offered. Many of them even have a certain route that they will go to hit up the stores in a certain order to make sure they can get the best deals before everyone else.
But what about everyone who wants to get the great deals, but can not justify getting up at four in the morning to save a few bucks – just hop out of bed and shop online. More times than not, a consumer will be able to get the same deals that they would online as they would when going to the store. According to adweek.com“…buying online saves on trips to the store and gas expenses (53 percent) and makes it easier to compare prices between retailers online than in the store (51 percent), the other top-cited reasons all came back to convenience. The No. 1 reason for shopping online (69 percent) was that “when I buy online I can shop whenever I’d like,” while 57 percent of respondents said it “allows me to avoid the holiday shopping crowds at stores.”
Even though the convenience factor of shopping online is huge, it can make it a little more difficult as well. Since most of the holiday season is spent shopping for other people, consumers want to make sure that the products they are buying are the right size, ensure quality, and ask questions about the product to a sales associate. At the end of the day it all comes down to the consumer and which method of shopping they like better. I know that I usually do a combo of the two. Hard to find items I will purchase online, but toys I will go to the store. Below are some useful tips for when you go shopping this season:
1. Do your research before buying – Compare prices online to make sure you are getting the best deal out there
2. Look for the holiday specials – everywhere is having discounts so paying for full price should not be an option
3. When ordering online, always check for free shipping
4. Use coupons/coupon codes – If you are going to be buying a certain item there is no reason not to get percentage off. A lot of product coupon code can be found online just by doing a simple search
5. Know the return policy of the store/items just in case your item is not a hit
6. Make a list and stick to it – this will help prevent going over budget and buying unnecessary items

I hope that you find these few tips helpful and save you some money. Have a wonderful shopping season!

Recently, Kiesha McFadden and myself participated in a holiday shopping spree with some that are less fortunate. Headed by John Murray and some children from The Salvation Army, we helped some AWESOME children pick out some holiday gifts for themselves and their families.

Kiesha and Lianna taking a break for a picture!

Leadpile believes giving back is so important, and something you can’t do enough of. Thanks kids for a great time! From our families to yours, Leadpile Lead Exchange wishes everyone Happy Holidays and have a Happy New Year! 2009 here we come!

Everyone is still scrambling to get their shopping done, and Black Friday/Cyber Monday is officially over. These days, more and more people are looking to shop online to find the best deals, save time and energy.  To help with this cause, I researched some top retail websites listed by Hitwise.  This information is based on total internet usage through the end of last month. Maybe these are where the deals are at and we should ALL take a look.

1.  www.amazon.com

2.  www.walmart.com

3.  www.target.com

4.  www.bestbuy.com

5.  www.circuitcity.com

6.  www.jcpenny.com

7.  www.toysrus.com

8.  www.kmart.com

9.  www.khols.com

10. www.overstock.com

According to Hitwise, there is a lot of traffic being driven to these popular retail sites through email marketing.  Searching for the best deals is becoming a lot more convenient for customers because you don’t have to go physically store to store buying each store’s best deals.  While looking at these various sites myself, I will say that it looks like all of them have major deals going on and FREE shipping. My prediction is Cyber Monday is going to eventually become more and more popular than Black Friday.
I am sure companies that also work with Leadpile Lead Exchange, are currently working with online retailers to capitalize on this demand for increased traffic. This is a perfect example of how beneficial affiliate marketing can be to online companies!

I wanted to follow up on a previous post where I had brought up some great websites to download some coupon codes.  Being that the holidays are here and people are trying to save as much much as possible, I thought I would point out an interesting article I found.

According to Yahoo, “In October, 27 million people visited a coupon site, according to comScore Media Metrix, up 33 percent from a year earlier.” However, Yahoo also states, “Generally, companies prefer limited discounts, e-mailed to a select group of customers or sent inside packages with a purchase. When the coupons get wider exposure, retailers lose control, potentially costing them more money than they expected.” In tough times, retailers are probably saying they were would rather not make as money on their sales, versus not having the sales at all. This is all great for the consumers who are doing the shopping.
A great tip that is offered on this article suggests, “searching the name of an online store and the word “coupon” and compare the promotions, because bigger sites are often able to negotiate better offers; if you find a coupon for an offline store, call the Web site and ask it to match the price; and insist upon free shipping, even if it means calling the manager and asking for a coupon code.”. This will allow you to pull up any sites that might contain a coupon for what it is you are looking for. A couple other coupon websites listed in this article: couponcode.com, couponmom.com, and couponcabin.com.
Leadpile Lead Exchange unfortunately has no coupons to offer you for certain products you are looking for, but we do offer the ability to match you up with companies that are able to provide services that are very much needed.

In recent news Amazon.com rolled out that they will be using customer feedback to help market products on their website.  According to DMNews, “The company announced this week it has formed a “Holiday Customer Review Team,” comprised of six of its top customer reviewers.” These reviewers are going to provide helpful tools to fellow Amazon.com customers. This is something that caught my eye because you don’t normally see companies utilizing the very same people that are also customers. Customers listen to other customers, so this could be a good thing for Amazon.
Today will officially start the Cyber Monday, which refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hopefully, with the kickoff of the shopping season, we will see more customer feedback being used to help guide customers on shopping “smarter”.
Besides shopping websites, sites such as Leadpile Lead Exchange use things such as testimonials to help provide feedback. Testimonials, customer feedback and other forms of “product review” are great ways for companies to know what’s working and what’s not working in their company. Nobody knows a company better than the people actually using it!

Remember those days when you could pick out all the items you want, and then pay for them each week at your local store?  Okay, maybe not everyone did that, but I remember doing this sort of thing when wanting to buy some “big” ticket items.  Those days seem to be back.  Sears announced it is rolling out layaway!  You shop for what you want and then make a small down payment, then you are done.  Layaway is not a common thing these days, however with the economy retailers are doing whatever it is they can do to get consumers in their stores for the holidays

What happened to layaway and why did it pretty much disappear?  According to creditcards.com, the rise in credit cards being issued erased the high demand for layaway.  Now with consumers having maxed out credit cards, delinquent mortgages, and jobs disappearing, retailers are trying to come up with ideas on how to get that limited amount of consumers in THEIR stores.  Other stores that I found offer layaway are:  Burlington Coat Factory, TJ Maxx, and also take a look at elayaway.com, because this website offers a layaway service.
So, why would Leadpile Lead Exchange be writing about “layaway”? As I have stated in previous posts, we see consumers that are in all sorts of financial situations. Seeing stories such as retailers rolling out an old idea in this tough economy, gives me optimism that there is possibly some light at the end of the tunnel. Every little piece will help those consumers and the economy get headed in the right direction!

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.

More and more people are doing research on the internet, shopping, and supplying their credit card information online. With shopping and other reasons to supply your credit card information, consumers need to be sure to fully know if they are on a “safe” website. There are a few tips the Associated Press says to utilize in order to have a “safer” online experience.

1. Check and make sure any place you enter your credit card information there is a “lock” on the website, and “httpS” in the browser.

2. Be careful about clicking on links that come to your email, instead manually go to websites that you plan on using a credit card.

3. Look for your browser’s address bar to turn green. This is an indication that the site you’re visiting has paid for and also has passed additional background checks to verify it’s a legitimate business. Also, having the validation Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is a new feature that also indicates the site is sending your data securely using proper encryption methods.

4. Use a separate email address just for your online shopping and other online activities.

5. If possible, have a separate credit card for your online activities. This will allow you to keep track of everything a little more easily, because everything is on one credit card.

6. Use a credit card, versus a debit card. Recovering lost money from a credit card purchase is much easier than when you use a debit card.

These are all things that I would be conscious of when doing any sort of online activities, which potentially involve money. Leadpile Lead Exchange deals daily with advertisers that are required to put money on account to purchase leads. However, maintaining a safe user experience is what we strive to have every ADVERTISER experience. Precautionary measures such as using Verisign, and having every advertisers go through a verification process, allows Leadpile to provide a “safe” maketplace for our advertisers.