One interesting field of affiliate marketing that I’ve had a lot of success in is the business of lead generation. In this post I’ll explain the pros and the cons of this business model so you can work out if it’s something you want to get into.
What is Lead Generation Exactly?
Lead generation is simply where you collect leads on a website and sell them to businesses that can make money from them. Every business wants new customers so you will find that most business owners are pretty open to the idea of buying leads, if they are good ones of course.
Lead generation can essentially be done in any niche, but some do work better than others. Things that are digital in nature are pretty good for lead gen online, such as mortgages for example. However you can also do lead gen for service based industries and generate leads for trades people, such as plumbers, builders, electricians, solar panel installation etc….However you can even do it for caterers and dentists if you want to.
The concept is relatively straight forward, you set up a site in an industry and drive traffic to it and collect the lead through a form on the site. The form then automatically sends the lead to the business, or businesses you are partnering with. You can get some niche ideas by looking at a site like Quotify.
How Much Should You Charge Per Lead?
This is the most common question that gets asked, so I thought I might as well address it now. The amount you charge per lead depends entirely on how much the lead is worth to the person you are selling it to. By this I mean, if the average customer is worth $500 to them, and they convert 1 in 10 leads to a sale, then they would break even if each lead cost them $50, so clearly you would need to charge less than $50.
Reaching a comfortable figure to sell your leads for is something that comes with practice, but at the end of the day you have to reach a happy medium for both parties, yourself and the buyer, so they keep buying leads off you and you keep making money.
You can always trial a price point and test how it goes and reassess it after a month.
Finding Clients
Once you have an idea for a niche market that you think you can collect leads in, you then need to sell these leads to a business. What I do is simply get on the telephone and call up businesses and explain that I’m an expert at generating leads and I would like to help you grow your business by sending you more qualified leads.
It’s pretty hard for people to not be interested in this! You can make it even easier for them by offering them the leads for free for a week…(continued on page 2)
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Hi Matt
As always you provide great information on ways to make money.
Thanks
Matt Carter Reply:
November 13th, 2012 at 6:16 am
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Thanks!
Eric @ ShuckaBuck.com Reply:
November 22nd, 2012 at 3:11 am
Hey Matt, good stuff here. I’m actually using paid traffic techniques to generate leads to a new website I launched not too long ago.
Thanks for the tips!
awesome post………….I’ve been using this business model for over 2 years, specialising in financial leads i.e. mortgages, credit cards etc. This is a very lucrative industry and one that is hardly talked about in IM.
Matt Carter Reply:
November 13th, 2012 at 6:16 am
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Great stuff Michael!
Hey Matt!
I like this idea a lot. You could set up a paid advertising campaign, send the traffic to a squeeze page, give them your free offer/incentive and there passed onto another companies mailing list…right?
You mention you’d have to ring them up and sort out a deal with them yourself, but do you know of any sites that could help with this? If there are any??
Also off topic…..
Am I the only one receiving ‘(not provided)’ in place of what should be keywords in my Google Analytics??
Sorry for chewing the ear!
Chris
Hamilton Reply:
November 13th, 2012 at 10:54 am
@Chris, Matt is right…many people like to promote the same things (ie, Clickbank products), and I am experience this issue myself by getting tons of junks.
Worst thing is that, my mailbox is flooded with the same offers from different marketters on a daily basis…and it’s definitely a waste of time.
I like promotting unique stuff from “shareasale, cj, amazon, etc…” the sky is the limit when using these merchant sites:)
Great post as usual, thanks.
Regards,
Hamilton
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Hi Chris
As for getting clients you dont want to use a third party like a Clickbank as that makes it too easy and lots of other people will target the same client. Its better to strike up these deals yourself.
Thanks matt this is my new direction im heading as afflilate marketing is getting tougher with all the new algo changes with google. Also its easier to rank site/videos locally.
Wow Matt
I really love your post– Quite informative and eye- catching.
Great post as usual.
More grease to your elbow!
Hi Matt,
Terrific business model and very untapped because it requires just that little bit extra initiative to put it together.
I do something similar with converted sales, but I can see how leads can also work very well.
In some instances I wonder if a combination of lead generation and sales conversions would be a great way to make it work better for all parties.
Quinn
Cool, Matt! Giveaways are a good way to get leads too. I’ve made reports answering the FAQ’s people ask about certain niches. Questions they have just before making a purchasing decision and that has generated many good leads for some of my sites. Good content still works wonders…
I’ve also found amazing leads on LinkedIn of all places! I just go to a discussion group and start helping people and answer their questions, with a link back to my related site and Bingo!, they opt in almost everyday.
Love your posts Matt, Thanks!
Gday Matt.
While I was reading through the first half of your post I was thinking, “if just he’d give us an example site”. Thanks for coming through.
I’m interested in lead generation, but my real take home lesson from your blog today was to provide value in blog posts and people will keep clicking those links.
Thanks mate.
Thanks Matt,
That is some great food for thought as always.
Cheers
Linda
I’ve done this with carpenters in my area. It’s a pretty great model.
A mistake I made in the beginning was targeting local niches in cities that where way to small. This didn’t allow me to easily sell the leads to a new business when someone jumped off.
Stick to big cities and this model is golden.
-Chris
This is a great idea. I’ve not really come across a post on exactly how to start with this before, although I’ve always been intrigued. I’ve spent a lot of my focus on conventional affiliate marketing through promoting offers online with some good success. I’m guessing that a lot of the email submit offers I promote are people doing exactly this, collecting email addresses to sell on. Thanks to your post, I will think seriously about delving into lead generation to add another income stream. All the best.
In addition to my last comment, you’ve inspired me to write about this on my own marketing blog. I will of course credit you and make your article the main focus of the post.
Hello everyone, visited the solar site and see google rank is zero. Perhaps, just for a demo, since cannot be producing any real leads, at that rank? Find people, don’t like multi-quote sites, because they know, it will get them a bunch of big mouth salesmen, calling them on telephone.
I just started an affiliate program direct on the bottom of my main site nucow.com ..I sell hard to find products, for high dollar, hence believe my affiliates, will want to link, due to very high average sale price. My affiliates will earn an average of about $100 to $200 USD per sale. Sure beats .03 for CPC google etc. plus I ship over entire world. Hard to do with solar panels. You would have to have a source, for every city in the world, or freight would kill you.
I am also looking, for sites to affiliate advertise, on my site, but do not want to use, the same Clickbank Chinese Junk Sites. Also, as Matt said, do not like a third party go between.
Clickbank makes you put money up front and take it, if you cancel out. Read the fine print, and it really makes you work for them (users) who provide nothing.
Really like the Matt Carter info. and of course I voted for Obama. Lance, Port Saint Lucie, Florida
Matt Carter Reply:
November 20th, 2012 at 7:47 am
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They do Adwords so they dont care for page rank, you dont need PR to get traffic and make money
Beside my affiliate business i have a small accounting firm. After reading this i will dget leads for it and sign up to your club to learn more. My question is: should i use the current company website to get leads or a hole different website?
Matt Carter Reply:
November 21st, 2012 at 5:40 am
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You could use the current one but you would need to create a good landing page to send the traffic to
Hi Matt, Check this out, this is brilliant for MLM & other niches.
Click on link: http://www.ibotoolbox.com/invited.aspx?jid=29803
Think you for answering My question. What would you do? Create a new landing page or do it on a hole new site? The question is, in the accounting niche, is it better to act as a provider or a information site?
Hi Matt, unfortunately I ran into some trouble with lead generation and it doesn’t seem to do well here in the UK. (at least not for me…) I have a software that allows me to generate 10’s of thousands of .html webpages on any website targeting anything I like. I used it to rank one of my sites and I got to the top of Google for anything-legal + mycityin the form of legalarea+cityname.
I sent an email to a bunch of solicitors in my City and the company I had taken the front page place from reported my site to Google. (I’m NOT a real lawyer of course) Google immediately relegated my site to lower rankings and I had to ditch it.
So next I build a site about plumbers in my area and ranked that… I’m getting emails from people looking for plumbers. So I started contacting plumbers in my area, but out of every single company I contacted (around 20), not a single one was interested. An average plumbing job is around £65.00 and I was trying to sell leads for £2.00 a pop. So I’m not even expensive or anything. Maybe it’s just that some countries are better at buying leads than others I don’t know, but from my personal experience that’s not something I’d waste my time on again.
This is a powerful strategy for local marketers who desperately need clients. If you learn to generate leads you’ll always have work.
Good Stuff!
I could not find many businesses in the Music category so after searching for some time I gave it up. I will start afresh now and check in other niches.
Thanks for the post.
Hi Matt, awesome content. I got your lead gen masterclass from being a member at affiloblueprint. I’m building up several websites targeting local businesses.
What is the plugin you use to collect the leads? I’m shopping around for a good reliable one.
Hey Matt,
I am thinking about doing a lead gen site. Is it taught step-by-step in your IM Super Elite? I’m really the type of person who learns by being given things to do, get them done, then come back for the next task til I finish my site. Is this the type of training that is included in IM?
Thanks!
Matt Carter Reply:
November 22nd, 2012 at 11:41 am
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Yes i provide detailed videos on how to do this in the course
I am certainly going to look into this Matt as I have sold some local sites and this sounds good. Thanks again for great help.
Thanks for the brilliant post Matt! Its awesone how you have obtain the pro’s and con’s of leads. Generating leads is a great source of making tons of money. Thanks for all the tips and well written articles.