Let me preface this post by saying that while there are general “best practices” for lead generation landing pages, you never know what might work the best for your particular niche and traffic source. So testing of every option is always the key to making the best landing page.

I thought I would look at 3 lead generation landing pages in one of the most competitive industries around - mortgage leads. I Googled “home loans” and took the top three results. By the way, if you want to see mainly good landing page techniques, check out super competitive keywords as those have usually been optimized to the highest degree.

Landing Page #1

This page from Lending Tree uses the approach of putting the whole mortgage lead application on the landing page.  The visitor doesn’t have to go through multiple “next page” steps, but with 17 fields on the page its a daunting task to fill out.   On the plus side, you have the smiling happy family and dog, the next steps preview, and the trust symbols above the fold.  Overall, I would think this page would have a very low conversion page.

Landing Page #2

This landing page uses the simple 3 field gateway form.  This gets users “hooked” into filling out the longer form on the next page.  Once they start the process, its human nature to keep going until you are done.  In theory, this should lead to higher conversions that putting the whole form on the first page.   On the negative side, this page is all business.  No smiling people or nature scenes.  Just hard numbers with tables of mortgage rates.  While this might give the visitor the information they are looking for, it might be too much data all at once for the visitor to absorb.  Overall, I would think this page would have a medium conversion rate.

Landing Page #3

The last landing page uses the minimalist approach.  Only a 3 field form to hook the web visitor.  There’s a simple line drawing of a house and trust symbols above the fold.  On the negative side there are 20 links on the bottom of the page for the user to click without starting the form.  This landing page is from lowermybills.com so its understandable they want to get users to other sites in their network.   Although I am not crazy about any of these, if I had to pick one of these 3 landing pages to test first, it would be this page.

Hopefully these landing page reviews give you some ideas of how to critically look at your own pages.  As always, test test test.

I’ve been thinking a lot about risk versus reward lately . Taking risks and managing risk is really the key to success in business and affiliate marketing. Every person you read about that has been successful was able to take some big risks that paid off. But I guarantee, those risks were fully weighed out and calculated in almost every case.

It’s true that it takes money to make money, and that is one of the hardest parts when you are starting out with affiliate marketing. I remember how nervous I was on my first media buy 3 years ago when I had to put $10,000 up front. I had done my research though and was confident it would pay off. The risk was managed as much as possible by research about the traffic and expected results.

More recently I took a calculated risk in the stock market. I had done a post using the recession to make some bold moves. When the market was basically collapsing and in sheer panic I bought Citigroup at 1.05. Talk was they were about to go Chapter 11, but my research and gut told me to take a calculated risk. I’ve since made a 195% return on that trade. Of course, not all risks pay off, but this one paid off enough to cover some not so great ones.

Pay per click can seem risky when you are starting out, but there are some ways to lower the risk.

• Use PPC coupons to start out, that way you are using free clicks to test your offers.

• Don’t spend more than you can afford to lose.  This week I talked to a guy on email who had ran up $5k on his credit card with PPC and had 0 conversions on the campaign. He didn’t have the money to pay it back and was in trouble.

• Watch your campaigns closely and set daily budgets. That way you don’t go to bed one night and wake up in the morning with a costly suprise.

In general, risk is part of success. When an opportunity comes along, don’t be afaid to jump on it, but only after you have researched every possible thing you can about it. Then it might not seem so risky after all.

Local lead generation is still not widely talked about on  most affiliate marketing blogs, and one topic that I have never seen addressed is how to get these local customers.   As with any business, finding customers is the key so how do you find local businesses interested in your lead generation services?  Here are a few ideas:

• Your blog or website. Not all of us are lucky enough to have a widely viewed website, so this probably won’t work for most people.  But if you do have a website you can advertise your services there.
• Weekly mailers.  Sometimes called value mailers or coupon shoppers, these are the little 20 page junk mail flyers you get every week.  There are always tons of companies offering things  like carpet cleaning, house painting, dentists, flooring, etc.  These companies are shelling out a lot of money for a very low return form of advertising.  They are desperate for new customers.  All you have to do is show them how much cheaper your performance based advertising is, that is also fully trackable and more effective.  These are a great source of new customers.
• Referals.  Satisfied customers like to tell their friends.  If you are doing a good job for a client, encourage them to tell their colleagues.  This can spread like wildfire throughout a local community of professionals or businesses.  Everyone wants to get in on a good thing.  Soon you can come to own a certain business niche in your community, and the more work you do in it, the better you will become.   You really only need one good niche to make a great living doing online lead generation.
• Trade shows.  Instead of going to Internet Marketing trade shows only, branch out and go to a trade show for the niche you are promoting.   If you are doing well promoting plumbing services leads, go to the national plumbers trade show.  Sure, it might not be as fun as say an Affiliate Summit, but this is about business.  Talk to the attendees and tell them about your services.  Maybe even rent a small booth and hire some people to hand out information for the day.   You could launch your lead gen business to the next level from just one show.
• Professional Organizations.  Most types of businesses have a local professional organization.  You can usually advertise on their website or get a list of members to contact.  There are also networking events you can attend, which are a great place to get the word out about your services.

These are just a few of the many ways to get customers for your lead generation business.  Do you have any creative ideas for finding customers?

The most limiting factor for all of us in whatever we do is time.  So its important to maximize your time as much as possible.  If you talk to successful people, one common trait is being able to prioritize projects effectively.  To work first on the things that have the most potential for a good return.  But just as important as that trait-  is building residual value.

Basically, this just means using your limited time to build lasting value projects.  When I first started with PPC and affiliate marketing, I was happy to try any offer or niche to make a quick profit.  This worked well in some cases, and really badly in others.  But it wasn’t until I made a conscious effort to only try things that would have lasting value that business really took off.  Now days I won’t even attempt to test a niche unless I am sure there will be some long term value, even if the niche fails.  This means more work building quality content packed landing destination sites.  But that work is time well spent whether you do it yourself or hire someone to build it.  When an offer ends or a niche drys up, you are left with a site that is SEO’d properly to bring in free visitors and even worth money on the resale market. Or an email list of customers that can be used periodically in the future for related offers, rather than just sending PPC visitors to a landing page for a “one and done” visit.

The bonus is of this philosophy is that you never have to worry about Google slaps, bad quality scores, and high bid prices.   Google loves real sites with lots of content even if some of the landing pages eventually go to an affiliate offer.  So next time you get an email about that hot rebill offer that you know won’t be around in 2 months, think about using your time to build something that will be around and have lasting value.

Internet marketers buy and manage a lot of domains.  Its just the nature of our business.  It’s not uncommon for us to split test 5-10 domains per campaign and with the number of campaigns we test, the domains can really pile up.  So finding the quick, easy, and effective domain tools is a key part of business.   Here are my 2 favorite time and money saving domain tools:

Domain Picking:

About 6 months ago, a friend on Twitter told me about Domize.  I now use it exclusively to pick domains and think its one of the best tools I have ever seen.  You type the domain you are checking and the domains instantly show up on the right side.  Blue they are available, red they are taken.  The speed at which you can find a new domain is incredible.

In addition to that, you can use special functions in to append your  search like [verb], [phonetic], or [ending].  These functions will automatically add the words into your domain search.  If you are stumped you can even use [like:word] which will show synonyms you might not have thought of.  I have a lists of special operators that I use to find domains for campaigns and it usually takes me about 1 minutes to find a great name.  Such a powerful tool.

Domain Registrar:

Hands down the best registar out there is Namecheap.  I really can’t overstate how much better I find Namecheap than any other registrar out there.  The interface, ability to make changes, speed, the pricing, the no annoying upselling, the bulk discount all make it the best in my opinion.

The pricing is flat out better than everyone else, and once you get 50 domains in your account you get a permanent discount on everything.  Be careful when comparing pricing, you may get a good price the first year some places but when you go to renew you are hit with $16 fees the second year including whois protection.  Not with Namecheap.  Whois protection can be purchased seperately in bundle packs ($2.88 per domain), then applied to renewed domains.  So its roughly $10 a year, including whois protection for all the renewed years after the first.   Once you get your bulk discount its even cheaper.  Plus they always run a monthly coupon for new .com discounts.

I am such a fan of both of these services, I wish they had affiliate programs.

Affiliate marketing definitely has its downsides. Crowded niches, low payouts, offers ending, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use your internet marketing skills to promote your own “offer” in a niche you created? Well you can.

One of the very successful techniques we use is our own lead generation websites. It became very clear to me early on that the skills learned marketing CPA offers can be leveraged with your own lead capturing websites. I’m not talking about running lead generation offers on networks, I mean creating your own site to capture leads then reselling them to local business. These sites can be built in virtually any niche where businesses need new customers. Some of the advantages of creating your own lead sites: you have total control, conversion tracking/analytics are a breeze, PPC campaigns have great quality score, you collect exactly the data you want, make your own landing pages, and set your own prices.

Many companies are used to buying leads. Real, estate agents, lawyers, financial planners, are all buy expensive leads. Those are very competitive niches, even locally, so I wouldn’t suggest them. But virtually any business can be sold leads. One of the first small niches we tried 2 years ago was personal training. We ran a site that captured local leads for people searching for personal trainers, and offered discounts for training services. The leads went to a local personal training business who paid us a per lead basis, and allowed the customers the discount our site promised. It was a win win for everyone. We pushed traffic to the site through local PPC, social networks, and SEO.

Do you have to keep it local? Of course not, you can sell leads to companies wherever you want. Its usually just easier to use your local knowledge and proximity to clients in your area.  If you live in a decent sized city you probably have access to more business than you can ever handle.

Getting customers:

This is probably the hardest part to get started. Expanding into B2B lead selling will take you out of the comfort zone that you enjoy as an Internet marketer. You actually have to contact businesses and sell your product to them. Again, you can probably use your online marketing skills to get some customers, but you may have to resort to old school techniques. Once you have a few customers in a certain niche though, word of mouth can quickly spread among business owners and professionals.

Pricing:

Customer acquisition costs are high and most companies know what that average cost is to them. Once you research the going rates for leads, you can usually undercut the established rates due to the low cost of operating online. When you are setting up your contract with the company buying your leads, everything is negotiable. You can sell leads at a flat rate fee, a percentage of sales from lead, by monthly subscription, using a sliding scale based on lead quality, etc.   Just make sure everything is very clear in your contract.

This topic is so huge its a whole industry in itself.  I haven’t even scratched the surface.  My point of this post was only to get the ideas flowing and let you realize you probably already have the skills to do this.  If there is interest though, I can dive into this topic more in future posts.  Good luck!

As the economy continues its downward spiral, one trend that is on the upswing is comparison/review sites. These are sites or landing pages that feature many products usually with a chart of ratings based on certain criteria. Studies have shown that as money gets tighter, people are doing more online research before making any purchases. They are less in buy mode and more in research mode. The savvy internet marketer can hop on this growing trend and help these consumers out, while helping themselves make better profits.

My first experience with comparison landing sites was back when VOIP offers were paying close to $90. I had a large chart with the pros and cons of each VOIP service and of course my affiliate links to each service. The site did very well, and even started ranking organically for several VOIP phrases.

Tips for building comparison/review sites:

1. Build your comparison site with consumers in mind. These are researching consumers not direct buyers, so give them the actual information they are looking for to make their buying decisions.

2. Build in comment functionality. If you can get an actual community of users commenting on the reviews you will have a goldmine.

3. Build your site with SEO in mind. Search engines love to index review pages, and you might end up getting free traffic. Your pay per click campaigns will have higher scores and not be slapped.

4. Don’t make up your reviews. Do research, visit authority sites and the product vendors. Tell them you are building a review site and ask for permission. Provide real info, not made up ratings to push the highest paying offer.

When done right, comparison/review sites should continue to work better and better in the current economic climate. Good luck!

Over the weekend I was reminiscing about some of my earliest efforts to make money online. I tried a lot of strange things, most are long forgotten, but there are a few I remember. As I look back now, some of those ideas were surprisingly ahead of their time. I always had a full time job so these were just things I tried in my spare time for fun.

1997? - The first website I ever built was called The Downhill Scene. I was heavily into downhill mountain bike racing at the time so I learned HTML and made a really crude site. Compressed images, tables with borders, the works… I had no idea that monetizing a website even existed back then, but it was a fun site. I even had web 2.0 style user generated content with an HTML guestbook.

2001- I had an idea to write what is now known as an Ebook and sell it from a website. It was a 5 page PDF guide on how to secure your PC against spyware and viruses. I put the site up and waited around for traffic, and actually sold a few copies. I was an info product marketer without even knowing it. I even used Ebay auctions to sell it as well as drive traffic back the site to make sales there. I think that might have been against the rules.

2002 - I signed up for a weekly email from Dell computers that sent out coupon codes. I would take the coupon codes and buy notebook computers, usually at about 30% off, then sell them on Ebay. This actually worked for a while and I made about $100 profit on each computer. I would buy 10 or so at a time, store them, manage the auctions, deal with shipping, returns - it was a total nightmare. But I was pretty proud of myself to actually make money on my own.

2003 - This was a big breakthrough when I finally realized you didn’t actually have to have a product to make money online. So instead of managing all the headaches of the Ebay stuff I would try affiliate marketing. I made a website with the coupon codes then got in the Dell affiliate program. I even made a form on my site to collect email addresses to notify people when the codes were released. I pasted those email addresses manually into a spreadsheet and did the emailing manually as well in Outlook. I had no idea at the time, but I was a list building marketer! This was going pretty well, until Dell threatened to sue me for copyright infringement.

2005 - I learned about Adsense and started building all kinds of sites for that. Then I learned pay per click, tied it into affiliate marketing and the rest is history. I never really got serious about making my living online until 2005 , but after deciding thats what I wanted to do things really took off.

What crazy things did you try back in the day?