If you are not doing well with traditional affiliate programs, you may want to consider pay per lead programs. These are program that pay you a commission based on the number of leads you generate for them. Here are 4 reasons why the pay per lead model is so more attractive:
1. Nothing to buy
In traditional affiliate marketing, an affiliate will get paid only when a sales is made. However, in the pay per lead model, the affiliate get paid when the visitor perform a required action specified by the merchant. This action usually involved filling in a form. The more complex the form, the higher the commission.
This is actually much easier than trying to make a visitor purchase an item with cash or credit card. Some may argue that contextual advertisement revenue sharing program like Adsense is much easier than the pay per lead model. This may be true but in term of commission payout, the pay per lead model is much more lucrative.
2. Virtually no production costs
Just like traditional affiliate program, the product has already been developed and proven by the merchant. Sale copy and banners are provided by the merchants too. Your job is to send as many visitors to the merchant web site as possible. Furthermore, most of the pay per lead affiliate programs are free to join. This means that there is no start up cost as well.
3. No customer support
As an affiliate, you do not own the product. Thus there is no need to do customer support. You do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, product shipping or answer customer queries. These are the duties of the merchant.
4. Thousands of products to choose from
By joining any one of the pay per lead program networks, you can gain access to different type of products from all kind of industries. This means your risk is very low. If any of the products is not performing well, i.e. not making enough money for you, you can switch to another product easily.
The pay per lead business model is a fantastic alternative to traditional affiliate program and contextual advertising. It is one of the easiest ways to make money online without selling products or services. Although pay per lead programs generally pay lower commissions than traditional pay per sale programs, they tend to have higher conversion ratios, which often translate into higher overall profits.