Best PPL Advice Thread:

[RomesFall]

For those that don't know I'll give a brief overview.

'PPL' or Pay Per Lead is an interesting business model that flips the typical client-employee relationship on it's head.

Instead of you ranking a site for a client, you rank a site in a niche or vertical of your own choosing, you own the website/domain and once it's ranking you can sell the leads directly to business owners who are hungry enough to take them from you.

It can be very profitable, a lot of fun and most importantly a great source of almost passive income once the site rankings, business relationship and tech is in place.


In this thread I want to start of a discussion about this business model, to invite people to share some advice, tips etc.

Who on here is doing PPL, how long have you been doing it, what's your favorite thing about Pay Per Lead and what's your best piece of advice to those looking into PPL?

 

[Sutra]

Would love to learn more about this. Will be watching.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I don't sell directly to businesses, but I do run a Pay Per (Lead) Call site right now. The leads are sold to the company through an affiliate network.

It's so much more profitable than other types of monetization in this niche. Adsense might be $2.00-$5.00 a click. A decent call is about $50 and a good call is $300, all because I'm prequalifying leads by having them pick up the phone instead of just click the mouse button.

 

[RomesFall]

I don't sell directly to businesses, but I do run a Pay Per (Lead) Call site right now. The leads are sold to the company through an affiliate network.

It's so much more profitable than other types of monetization in this niche. Adsense might be $2.00-$5.00 a click. A decent call is about $50 and a good call is $300, all because I'm prequalifying leads by having them pick up the phone instead of just click the mouse button.

Clever. What service are you using for call tracking? CallFire or?

Obviously so you don't have to disclose too much information, I'll ask a better framed question. Are there many affiliate networks specializing in lead generation? Or can these kind of offers be found on general affiliate sites or offer aggregators like oDigger and OfferVault?

Would you suggest someone went that route, or try to sell to companies in the SERPs they target directly?

 

[Ryuzaki]

The network I'm driving traffic to is http://direct-calls.com Heads up to anyone looking, they don't really have their shit together on the front end. They were the PPCall department of another network and they split off on their own. Everything's fine on the backend and I have a fantastic affiliate manager.

I didn't choose them for any other reason than I was tipped off by a friend that they have the best offer for this vertical and niche, particularly because the call center can handle my particular type of people calling in. And on top of that they had the best pay outs. But it was a giant hurdle to get in. I did a phone interview with the CEO, they never sent me my password for about 6 months (then magically it appeared) AND the last company before the split sold my phone number to a ton of companies that bombard me nonstop with calls.

There are tons of affiliate networks for Pay Per Call specifically and even more for Lead Generation in general. CPA networks are lead gen and have various levels of offers, from Zip + Email to two page forms, etc.

I didn't go the direct route because I'd rather pay a cut to the network than to have to maintain relationships and work out software and keep people accountable. Plus you have to figure, someone big enough to buy all the leads and not sweat trying to cheat me on payment isn't going to bother doing all that either. The middle man route is worth it for everyone involved.

 

[animalstyle]

I don't do PPL exactly, but I have a lead agreement based on commission for the leads the convert. Ryu mentioned all the benefits of a middle man, all those are very true, but that's not what I am doing.

I send leads directly to Salesforce, the are worked, and I get a report. The key components I've found have been:
- gathering as much data as you can on the leads you send and keep that data organized on your end. This is essential to making sure you are keeping your finger on the pulse and minimize the possibility of getting screwed over.
- Work with people you trust.

Without a middle man/network, getting and sending leads is half the battle.

Once you have a relationship set up and have some historical data it's much easier to keep your finger on the pulse and it really can become a nice income source that is fairly low maintainance.

 

[RomesFall]

Even though I mainly want to facilitate a good dialogue in this thread I wanted to throw in some hints and tips myself...

I'm not currently running any PPL projects, in the past though I've done a couple and I've also helped others, for money, equity and so on.

Why am I not doing it currently? I wanted to do some authority style sites, and my old partner went MIA. I'd rather go back to it once I'm finished up with my current site/s and go it alone.

Properties:

From a mixture of good sense, good advice and seeing first hand through client work what was working in lead gen I'd find a niche and I'd make 2-3 properties.

The benefit of having more than one site is fairly obvious, you can rank all 3 web properties, which means more leads and more money.

The less obvious benefit is that sometimes your site just won't respond, it won't rank and if you've only got one property in a SERP that's a bitch and a lot of wasted time / effort.

You can mix websites you build yourself with parasites such as YouTube, Yelp and so on.

Getting Leads:

The most obvious way to get leads for many is through organic search, you can do all your keyword research ahead of time and even use plugins like SerpShaker on WP to help you generate hundreds of pages.

This means you can throw up a state scale site easily, targeting a mixture of locations.

Downside to bigger sites:

The downside of this is you'll probably need multiple partners, or a bigger partner.

The other downside to doing such large sites is that I've seen first hand through a client I had that was doing a national scale niche in property / legal... That downside was that the company grew so much that they effectively had to run the company rather than run the sites.

They were just two decent SEOs that got buried under a mountain of bullshit for the best part of a decade, their income became tied to the niche and the business and they had no choice but to carry on. In the end they sold up, but it's a potential hazard of targeting national level SERPs in every location IMO.

White Hat, Grey Or Black Hat Does It Matter?

PPL isn't getting any easier and while there are companies who can win while going down the white hat route (more or less) it's probably not going to work for you or me.

You need to be comfortable using a PBN or/and building a 2.0 network, and even knowing how to spam properly is going to help you rank.

Solid on-page is also absolutely key in my experience, and for me personally silos have always worked pretty well. Just don't forget to see what your competition are doing that's working for them, because every SERP is different.

After your first few sites you should have an idea of what services and strategies you can rely on, what your running costs are and so on.

Generating Leads Without SEO:

I'm not going to lie... Most people I've talked to don't do this.

It doesn't make a heap of sense when you consider that it takes time to rank whereas PPC is more or less instant, you can get a good idea of conversion rates early on and adapt your sites as needed.

If you have the budget you should look into testing the water with AdWords and if you're able to you can even run FB campaigns to your lead gen sites.

This isn't rocket science after all, it's just finding targeted traffic, so there's no rules here other than finding that traffic.

 

[miketpowell]

That downside was that the company grew so much that they effectively had to run the company rather than run the sites.​

They were just two decent SEOs that got buried under a mountain of bullshit for the best part of a decade, their income became tied to the niche and the business and they had no choice but to carry on. In the end they sold up, but it's a potential hazard of targeting national level SERPs in every location IMO.

Could you elaborate on that a bit? I don't exactly understand what your saying here. That it becomes a problem to dominate a niche nationally because now it's a full-time job selling all the leads you get? Isn't that when you hire a biz-dev person/team, build a company and make millions of dollars?

Generating Leads Without SEO:

I'm not going to lie... Most people I've talked to don't do this.

It doesn't make a heap of sense when you consider that it takes time to rank whereas PPC is more or less instant, you can get a good idea of conversion rates early on and adapt your sites as needed.

If you have the budget you should look into testing the water with AdWords and if you're able to you can even run FB campaigns to your lead gen sites.

This isn't rocket science after all, it's just finding targeted traffic, so there's no rules here other than finding that traffic.

This is my only experience with it as I don't do SEO - has always made me a bit out of place here I think.

The key for me was all about making the amazing ads/angles to get people interested and a great pre-sell LP. I was one of the first to use a news style landing page for car insurance in the US and cleaned up in a ridiculous fashion in that niche years ago.

In SEO I find you guys are so good at getting traffic in a very cost effective manner you overlook how much a difference the landing page and form flow makes in conversion rates.

 

[RomesFall]

Could you elaborate on that a bit? I don't exactly understand what your saying here. That it becomes a problem to dominate a niche nationally because now it's a full-time job selling all the leads you get? Isn't that when you hire a biz-dev person/team, build a company and make millions of dollars?

I'm saying it can be a problem if you're not only in this for the money, because while we all want the money that's not always worth the trade-off for some people.

If someone told me I could have a million dollars over several years, but I'd have to give up building sites, marketing and having the freedom to do whatever I want... To become the guy who has to deal with managers, who deal with employees and sit there basically on the phone and e-mail all day putting out fires. Err no way.

Those guys hated their work, dreaded going into the office every morning. They ended up with a lot of money, but miserable for 10 years.

Let's face it... Most of us on here could trade our time away being miserable in exchange for certain wealth, we could be bankers or stock brokers or engineers or whatever we'd like to be.

But I do get the feeling that there's more to it than that for a lot of people, so I thought it was a pertinent warning really.

 

[CCarter]

I'm saying it can be a problem if you're not only in this for the money, because while we all want the money that's not always worth the trade-off for some people.

WTF?

(Those people that it's not worth the trade-off for are called 9 to 5ers).

If someone told me I could have a million dollars over several years,

You HIRE people for this, whatever the next statement consist of hire people for it!!

I've started to realize there are different schools of thought when it comes to SEO versus Marketing and business. I noticed the people mostly into SEO don't want to grow past a certain point I guess. There is something that I can't put my finger on but at one point I used to called it laziness, but I'm starting to think it's a lack of ambition or maybe they aren't out to conquer the world.

Every project I start or work on is so I can grow it to the point I can hand it off to employees while I do what I love. If you are doing the part of your business that you hate, just hire someone else to do it and concentrate on what you love. No one said YOU have to be the sales person if you don't like talking to people or negotiating, there are people in this world that live for that stuff, hire them.

Some of you people need to set your ambitions a little higher in life instead of constantly looking for the "passive income" route.

 

[RomesFall]

WTF?

(Those people that it's not worth the trade-off for are called 9 to 5ers).



You HIRE people for this, whatever the next statement consist of hire people for it!!

I've started to realize there are different schools of thought when it comes to SEO versus Marketing and business. I noticed the people mostly into SEO don't want to grow past a certain point I guess. There is something that I can't put my finger on but at one point I used to called it laziness, but I'm starting to think it's a lack of ambition or maybe they aren't out to conquer the world.

Every project I start or work on is so I can grow it to the point I can hand it off to employees while I do what I love. If you are doing the part of your business that you hate, just hire someone else to do it and concentrate on what you love. No one said YOU have to be the sales person if you don't like talking to people or negotiating, there are people in this world that live for that stuff, hire them.

Some of you people need to set your ambitions a little higher in life instead of constantly looking for the "passive income" route.

Come on man don't try and tell me that money trumps passion in life. That's bullshit. I don't even think you truly think that based on your reply...

You can't say that anyone who doesn't accept any trade-off for money is a 9-5er.

In my view a 9-5er is just someone who trades their time for money, regardless of the trade-off, which is precisely what you're saying to do. Except, oh wait, hire someone else to do it. Just say that in the first place? Because clearly there's a trade-off situation going on there in your mind. Clearly you'd not give up everything for the money, you'd just find a way to adapt and that's fine.

In essence though you wouldn't give up your roles is what you're saying, which is what I was saying.

Yeah, not everyone wants to conquer the world, I don't see that as a lack of ambition. Not wanting to conquer your 'own' world is a lack of ambition, whether that's being the best in your niche or the best burger flipper.

 

[RiverStyx]

I'm with Carter here, if they hated their job so badly and yet were owners of the company they really should have hired in good managers to take over the day to day running of it and then go do whatever they wanted instead. There is no point to the 'I must suffer' mentality. Fuck that. Run the business efficiently, hire management teams and worker drones and be the brains of the operation and don't just create a job for yourself; especially one you hate ffs.

 

[RomesFall]

Except they did have between 300 and 400 employees.

A lot of assumptions being thrown around in here... Surprised any of you would even think that 2 guys could run multiple sites targeting every location in the entire country.

 

[CCarter]

@RomesFall Is your logic stating that because a single company couldn't do it, that no other company in world can? I can't make comments on that one single company- maybe they were bad owners, maybe they hire managers that where Bs who hired C employees. Maybe their original business model was unsustainable cause they depended on spam / GSA SER methods, I don't know. Just because someone out there created a bad business and failed doesn't mean all other attempts should be null void.

I have ran companies with 20+ employees, I've managed companies with a 200+ ppl call center, if you hire the wrong people, don't give them correct guidance, or are in a bad business model shit will fall apart. Does that mean you shouldn't try again?

If you don't like a part of the business you hire people to do it. If you hire shitty people they will put more work into you. If you start with a bad foundation, then it will implode eventually.

There are certain part of my businesses I just don't care for and my business partners handle them. When I get the feeling its time to bring on employees I am going to do it based off my personal experience of successes and more importantly failures from the past, my own and my competitors.

As for passion, my passion is crushinng my competitors in whatever endeavor I choose to get into. That IS my passion. So my business partners know when I say I am going to get it done, it will get done even if it take 24 hours of work for months on end. I have a paasion for winning, and have a distaste for anything that seems there is some "reasoning" for it not achieving its maximum potential OR shows a lack of ambition.

If I get the sense someone doesn't want to "go all in" or "work too hard" cause they rather coast through life- well I think you can figure out my thoughts on that.

Yeah, not everyone wants to conquer the world, I don't see that as a lack of ambition

Its weakness and they won't survive the winter...

 

[builder007]

I'm brainstorming my next project and this thread was exactly what I needed. I'm hoping we can elaborate on this topic some more.


Goal:
Build lead generation site (PPL site for my own business) to generate leads for buying or selling real estate.
Target Market:
People wanting to sell their homes
People wanting to buy a home
People who want to know the current market value of their homes
People who want to know how much their home will sell for.
People who want to know real estate market statistics
People want to upgrade their home to a bigger one

Brainstorming ideas to get it done:

Building out 2-3 domains

• Implement Digital Strategy Crash Course
• build out content, infographics, and videos of local community events
• syndicate content with ifttt to social media channels
• Use BuSo WP theme for landing pages
• Use SerpShaker on WP. (thanks @RomesFall )
• Build out effective landing pages with contact forms with wordpress BuSo theme( @miketpowell any suggestions/direction on landing page effectiveness would be greatly appreciated!)
• collect emails through mailchimp and send a series of emails to introduce myself, bring value, and present my services with call to actions to be contacted by phone, email, or text message

Use PPC and facebook ad campaigns initially and scale back as organic traffic grows.

-Respond to leads and set appointments to meet in person or video chat.

Any suggestions, more efficient game plan, or more profitable way of doing this would be greatly appreciated!
Or if any of you have done this and automated many of the tasks, I would love to hear it.

Thank you guys!

 

[miketpowell]

Thanks for the answer @RomesFall - I was not thinking from that perspective but now I get what you are saying. I'm not looking to work my life away but I am looking to multiple my income by building and managing teams; it does come with the sacrifice of having to be more connected to the business while growing.

@builder007 - Oh boy that is an ambitious project you got there. That is a huge and very competitive niche. But if you go for it I'm sure you can get a piece of the pie.

Look at what major players do for forms that spend a ton on traffic. Type in your keywords and click on the top Adwords ad and see what flow they have. They have to be great to afford to pay that much. Asking for the right information in the right order can be big so see what others do.

Getting more specific than would need to be based on a certain lead category.

Also within that niche you are missing a significant part beyond the real estate transaction - the mortgage. The agents make 6% of the transaction but most home purchases involve a loan and that's about 1% on that as well.

Also credit checks can be big in that niche. Anyone thinking of buying a house should get a loan, but anyone thinking of getting a loan should get a credit report.

 

[builder007]

thanks @miketpowell I'm currently a full time agent with coldwell banker. So i'm just building these sites out for myself. I'm already prospecting expired listings and fsbo's over the phone. This project will hopefully one day allow me to hire and inside sales agent to do the phone prospecting, so I can focus on the client customer service and online lead generation(or start outsourcing it).

Plus this project will be targeted to very specific zip codes which should save me money on adwords?

 

[Island]

I think there's a ton of opportunity in the lead gen space, ESPECIALLY outside the US.

If you speak other languages, that's a major opportunity.

Thinking about the other thread about the Google results being owned by major sites, I think there's still plenty of space in lead gen space. I'm thinking of building out multiple sites in the vertical to capture a nice slice of the pie.

 

[c4yrslf12]

Here's something which has worked for me:

Charge a nice, fat premium. One of the worst things you can do is let someone haggle you for price and drop you to average, or worse. If you're not charging a premium in the lead gen space (unless you're bulk selling), you're just another source. The buyer doesn't see anything but price from there on.

I'll repeat it: the worst thing you can do is allow your price to drop to average or below market. Period. You want to stay in PPL a long time? You better be selling at a fat premium.

I sell all my leads at a drastic premium (so much so, the sticker shock is literally laughed at every time I say it to a new buyer), but only because I've taken the time to know everything about them. I know my buyer's make money, and they drool for the leads I generate. As I attract new buyer's... the price only goes up, not down.

In PPL, you need to create longevity buyers. The fly-by-nights are the ones who create a giant time suck for you. Instead, spend the time up front finding the best buyer's and your time spent is limited to sending them an invoice once a month and cashing the check.

I have plenty of time to cash checks.

The reason I charge more and more is because the first few buyer's are "grand fathered in" at the lower price, which makes them even more sticky over time. They don't want to quit because they know they risk losing both their source and their margin.

Other than the buyer being on vacation, holiday or a family emergency, I don't allow them to 'turn off' leads in any way.

The faucet is on, or gone.

 

[Capital]

Here's something which has worked for me:

Charge a nice, fat premium. One of the worst things you can do is let someone haggle you for price and drop you to average, or worse. If you're not charging a premium in the lead gen space (unless you're bulk selling), you're just another source. The buyer doesn't see anything but price from there on.

I'll repeat it: the worst thing you can do is allow your price to drop to average or below market. Period. You want to stay in PPL a long time? You better be selling at a fat premium.

I sell all my leads at a drastic premium (so much so, the sticker shock is literally laughed at every time I say it to a new buyer), but only because I've taken the time to know everything about them. I know my buyer's make money, and they drool for the leads I generate. As I attract new buyer's... the price only goes up, not down.

In PPL, you need to create longevity buyers. The fly-by-nights are the ones who create a giant time suck for you. Instead, spend the time up front finding the best buyer's and your time spent is limited to sending them an invoice once a month and cashing the check.

I have plenty of time to cash checks.

The reason I charge more and more is because the first few buyer's are "grand fathered in" at the lower price, which makes them even more sticky over time. They don't want to quit because they know they risk losing both their source and their margin.

Other than the buyer being on vacation, holiday or a family emergency, I don't allow them to 'turn off' leads in any way.

The faucet is on, or gone.

Thanks for the information. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how this fits into my current conception of Lead Gen best practices... but good stuff to think about it.

1st Question (if/when you have time): Your Premium Per Lead model sounds ideal, but at odds with what most ppl in the space have voiced: Mainly, if you want to mitigate "confusion" and conflict, put buyers on a monthly payment plan for X amount of leads/mo (So I guess it would be "pay per batch").

Since it sounds like you're literally charging by the lead, how do you avoid dealing with buyers who want to dispute the quality of leads when they hit a few bumps in the road converting them? Or is that not a problem because you necessarily fuck with the most legit and qualified buyers?

2nd Question: You state:

I sell all my leads at a drastic premium (so much so, the sticker shock is literally laughed at every time I say it to a new buyer), but only because I've taken the time to know everything about them. I know my buyer's make money, and they drool for the leads I generate.

Hmmm... but couldn't buyers simply cop leads from a much cheaper supplier?
The only way your approach makes sense to me is if:

1. Your premium pricing signals quality, so buyers bite regardless of actual quality.
   
2. You're qualifying leads much better than your competitors, so you're actually justified in charging premium. Your buyers know they'd be fools if they tried to go the "cheap" route because they'd actually be losing out on superior leads.

Or is there a 3rd reason?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Phenom]

Here's something which has worked for me:

Charge a nice, fat premium. One of the worst things you can do is let someone haggle you for price and drop you to average, or worse. If you're not charging a premium in the lead gen space (unless you're bulk selling), you're just another source. The buyer doesn't see anything but price from there on.

I'll repeat it: the worst thing you can do is allow your price to drop to average or below market. Period. You want to stay in PPL a long time? You better be selling at a fat premium.

I sell all my leads at a drastic premium (so much so, the sticker shock is literally laughed at every time I say it to a new buyer), but only because I've taken the time to know everything about them. I know my buyer's make money, and they drool for the leads I generate. As I attract new buyer's... the price only goes up, not down.

In PPL, you need to create longevity buyers. The fly-by-nights are the ones who create a giant time suck for you. Instead, spend the time up front finding the best buyer's and your time spent is limited to sending them an invoice once a month and cashing the check.

I have plenty of time to cash checks.

The reason I charge more and more is because the first few buyer's are "grand fathered in" at the lower price, which makes them even more sticky over time. They don't want to quit because they know they risk losing both their source and their margin.

Other than the buyer being on vacation, holiday or a family emergency, I don't allow them to 'turn off' leads in any way.

The faucet is on, or gone.

This is 1000% correct. If you are say capturing leads in say luxury real estate, even at 1/10 conversion rate, one damn conversion makes them so much that you're "lead fee" is a drop in the bucket. Its all in knowing the market and treating this like a professional business.

If you can produce leads, I would be willing to bet some industry would be willing to buy them. The biggest thing I have learned since doing some lead gen is people are still old school. Every client or partner I have had to date I have talked to on the phone. But, as stated before in this thread, I do a shitload of research and understand what they are looking for.

Put on your thinkin' cap, everything can be marketed. Just find a buyer.

 

[c4yrslf12]

how do you avoid dealing with buyers who want to dispute the quality of leads when they hit a few bumps in the road converting them?

I proactively combat every objection before it happens. Therefore, the bad leads are already 'baked into' the total cost. It results in a slightly lower cost per lead, but I don't ever deal with returns, and they have less money out of pocket. I net the same, they never have to call me. Everybody wins.

couldn't buyers simply cop leads from a much cheaper supplier?

You get what you pay for. Both of your reasons are correct.

The same exact thing happens every time. A new buyer comes in, wants the minimum to "test the waters" and within 45 days they're asking what the maximum is.

I don't have a demand problem. Only a supply problem. I can't possibly get enough leads. Literally, impossible.

 

[Dani]

I'm building lead gens right now and will be able to call business owners next week.

Short question.
It's clear that you call them but what's the your opening?

"Good day, I just wanted to ask you if you're interested in more business/first page rankings/more money?"

What's your approach?

 

[Capital]

I proactively combat every objection before it happens. Therefore, the bad leads are already 'baked into' the total cost. It results in a slightly lower cost per lead, but I don't ever deal with returns, and they have less money out of pocket. I net the same, they never have to call me. Everybody wins.



You get what you pay for. Both of your reasons are correct.

The same exact thing happens every time. A new buyer comes in, wants the minimum to "test the waters" and within 45 days they're asking what the maximum is.

I don't have a demand problem. Only a supply problem. I can't possibly get enough leads. Literally, impossible.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the response.