Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Preview Pay Per Lead Programs: Buyer Beware

I was speaking with an attorney recently about a pay per lead program that he was experimenting with. The program was designed to overcome any reasonable objections and carried very little risk.
  • The lawyer only had to pay $20 for every personal injury lead that they wanted to buy
  • The lawyer was able to see the lead detail before they decided to purchase it. If they did want to purchase it, then the consumer's contact information was forwarded to them.

While I can't speak to this particular program and whether or not it works, it does bring to mind a relevant point: when something seems too good to be true (which it often does online), it usually is.

Consider:

  • It costs between $20-25 to buy a click on Google when a consumer searches for "personal injury lawyer" or "car accident attorney" or any other obvious search term.
  • The average value of a personal injury case worth taking is what, $15,000, $20,000, more??

Because of its massive scale and integrity, we know Google is as close to an efficient market as we will see in advertising. Most people that pay $20-25 per click in Google end up paying $300-400 per lead (lead meaning a completed contact form). That's probably pretty close to the market price for a qualified personal injury lead.

If something was worth $300, why would you sell it for $20? Furthermore, it costs money to generate a lead. You either to advertise your service to attract the consumer or you have to publish helpful information or . . . In other words, there is no free lead source so the provider of this service has to earn more than an average of $20 per "good" case.

So, before you jump at the low cost, risk free service stop and think . . . "does this make sense?" If it doesn't, then you probably aren't seeing the entire story.

3 comments:

  1. Affiliate Promotion Strategies

    Affiliate promotion basically works on the principle of paying commission for the referred business. This model was introduced when the e-commerce concept gained prominence in the 1990s. This is nothing but revenue sharing by an affiliate for promoting a company's product. An internet affiliate free program is a boon to a company looking to expand its online business.

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  2. How do pay per click affiliates make money? Online marketing affiliates make money by placing ads on their sites that are likely to appeal to the type of visitor their web site attracts.

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  3. Who started the concept of an internet marketing affiliate program? As far as we know, the idea originated with Amazon.com back in the 1990's. They began recruiting other websites to promote their business by hosting advertising banners, balloons, popups, info, etc. and paying the host sites whenever they generated business.

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