Shafted by Only Finance at OMG!

[jimmysavage]

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The purpose of this post is to serve as a warning for those affiliates currently promoting or intending to promote Only Finance Secured Loans, via the OMG Network.

The aforementioned story beings several months ago when I identified a relatively small niche in the Secured Loans market, and subsequently decided to promote Only Finance (via OMG) as the sole benefactor.

The said niche delivered 1-2 fresh secured loan enquiries (per day) and totalled some 40+ leads within the first month - all put exclusively with Only Finance!.

Fantastic! I'm onto a real winner...........or so I thought.

At OMG you have to wait a good month before you can find out if your leads have been accepted/validated. So when Only Finance finally got around to verifying the leads, I was in got a BIG shocked to say the very least.

Out of the 40+ leads generated, all but 2 of the leads were rejected.

Rejected???....how could this be?

Now, I'm not stupid, I know that out of 40 or so leads 25% to 30% would be hoax applications (as in any affiliate programme). But rejecting outright 95% of all the leads is just bloody un-believable. Stranger still, is that out of the 40 the 2 validated were the very first leads to be generated?.

Now, just for clarity, the terms of the Only Finance programme state the following:-

The customer must be a UK resident, homeowner and complete both an online enquiry and valid application form (completed over the phone) that are not duplicate, fake or fraudulent and can be contacted.

Payout: £90.00 per Lead

(extract from OMG - 1/10/2007)

So, as long as the applicant can be contacted, is a homeowner (which is what my marketing efforts target), and is prepared to go through the manual steps of completing a form over the phone, the lead should be paid out!

Well, I decided to test this statement to the test.

Lucky for me, a colleague of mine (homeowner) was actively seeking a secured loan and agreed to submit his details via one of my sites to test Only Finance.

After completing their very short secured loan enquiry form, a few minutes later he received a call and proceeded to go through the motions to get a quote. To my surprise, he later told me that the quote wasn’t bad at all, but he later found a better offer elsewhere (and advised Only of this at a later date).

A few weeks later I checked the lead status on the OMG portal and guess what.......the lead was rejected!

SHAFTED!!!!!!! However you want to put it!

Clearly, Only Finance is running a Commission based programme - NOT A PAY PER LEAD!

Oh, and just to add more fuel to the fire, I'm putting exactly the same type of leads with another Merchant and achieving 87% conversion - Explain that!

What can I do about it, very little? My relationship is with OMG who, for the best part, have been reasonably supportive – eventually obtaining the rejection codes etc (which are laughable – only 3 fakes on the list, the rest labelled as not interested?).

So, be WARNED. If you see the name Only Finance stay away!

[rick_n123]

I have experienced the same. In addition to this, I was sending leads to eloan at OMG and got the same thig - 95% were rejected.
The morale of this story is:
Merchants such as Only Finance, Eloan, and many others who work through big networks are cheaters and are stealing leads from the affiliates by not paying for them. Another exaple is Promise finance (on all the networks), and worst one is Shakespeare. They haven't paid me for over 100 leads.
Check out the Affiliate Marketing School, this is the only place now who does business honestly. They have a selected reliable merchants and are paying for all the leads that you send them.

[123debtsolutions]

1 month to give you an update is a joke.
Back tracking on the stated terms of the program is a disgrace.
Hiding behind a network is just wrong.

The answer is to establish relationships with a merchant. You should request real-time reporting or daily/weekly reporting at the very least and ditch them quick if they haven't accepted a realistic number within xx days or xx leads.
Or
As Rick says join AMS for guaranteed fixed fee payments for the leads that you generate.

Also
Get advice from affiliates in the forums on what actions you can take.

Good Luck

[Mike_M]

I'd like to hear what OMG have to say about this, because the same thing happened to me but with a different merchant.

[Gavinio]

The key with finance leads is to contact the customer asap (ideally within an hour of applying, or even less!) so they should know pretty quickly whether a lead is valid or not. (Not commenting on specific programmes here, just generally in finance).

[benfriedman]

We at R.O.EYE have a number of Finance programmes which may be of interest to you. I will PM you with some details.

Ben

[Michael_Anthony]

I just got off the phone with someone who had a 72% rejection rate from RO Eye's Freedom Finance loan program. He's not the only one who has told me similar tales.

"Check out the Affiliate Marketing School, this is the only place now who does business honestly. They have a selected reliable merchants and are paying for all the leads that you send them."

Many thanks for these kind comments - I couldn't have put it better myself.

From what I understand, OMG have a new sub-brand for their finance lead merchants called OGM. It stands for Only Greedy Merchants, which is the only side of their business that they care about

[chrisuk]

Imagine an advertiser on a ppc network suddenly turning around and going ' err yeah mate, actually we will only pay for clicks if some guy buys something.' Wouldn't happen.

Its mad I don't know how finance lead affiliate make a profit sometimes, can't speak for the rest of you but a secured loan lead costs me anything from £15-70 to generate via ppc depending on when Im advertising. Now thats only a profit when you can be sure the merchant ain't gonna run off with the readies.

I do not for the love of whoever get WHY networks let merchants pull these stunts, we all know an affiliate has to stump up many thousands of their own hard earned dough to generate the biz. You just can't have merchants running programs where the payment criteria is either unclear or supports cherrypicking.

If a prog is per lead then the networks need to pile on the pressure so merchants understand that per lead is not the same as per sale and that it is the merchants job to take the lead and convert it.

That said you need to protect yourself, I only give 2-3 leads to a network when I try them, any games and I walk, their loss, thats the only way to play until the pennies drop at affiliate network hq.

[Gary Bicker]

Hi jimmysavage,

To reassure you, we are looking into this with Only Finance and will contact you on Monday with an update.

All other comments have been taken on board.

Thanks,

Gary

Gary Bicker | Account Director

[tomj]

Oh My God sort it out!

[beejeebers]

I would also add the following to the list of horrible networks and merchants:

Affiliate Future:

- Promise Finance
- Only Loans
- Shakespeare Finance

Affiliate Future just doesn't care how badly those 3 companies screw affiliates with their "open to interpretation" wording and other b.s.

The newest member of the list is...

Affiliate Window:

- Loanline

I sent Loanline 120 secured loan leads last month. They paid me for 40 of the 120. That is just NOT ACCEPTABLE and the network and the company should be ashamed of themselves.

Steer clear.

[YardenG]

It's happend to me not so long ago with Only Loans and after that same thing with Affiliate Future that didn't want to pay me for leads that was verified.

The only network I had good experience is AMS.

[magenta]

Hi jimmysavage,

To reassure you, we are looking into this with Only Finance and will contact you on Monday with an update.

All other comments have been taken on board.

Thanks,

Gary

Gary Bicker | Account Director

Good, but i wonder how you're going to prove anything.. i think the merchant needs to understand the difference between a lead and a sale.

[beejeebers]

My opinion, in having dealt with several merchants and network "yes men", is they know exactly what they're doing and just plain don't care. It's not about creating good relationships with lead suppliers anymore. It's about, "let's phrase this so we have several ways out to screw the affiliate". I believe merchants, (especially those offering large payouts), know from day one that they're going to reject a retarded amount of leads.

They know exactly what the difference between pay per sale and pay per lead is, but they don't care. Promise Finance is known for being pay per sale, yet insisting they're pay per lead. There are maybe 3 real pay per lead companies left and 2 are not on any major networks.

Basically these are valid pay per lead rejections:

- hoax app
- fake app
- duplicate app
- wrong or incorrect information

That's it. These are NOT valid rejection reasons for pay per lead programs:

- not interested
- client was mean on the phone
- client didn't call back to follow through
- client changed their mind
- Payment Not Cleared
- Order Cancelled
- Client is not interested and he said he is fed up of receiving calls from lots of different companies.
- Order Cancelled - not last referral.
- Order Cancelled - No longr interest.
- Order Cancelled - No product availbale.
- client will not consent to a credit search
- client is no longer looking for finance.
- won't speak to us
- declined heavy adverse
- incomplete app
- applied days ago and has had numerous calls
- only wanted a quote
- Mr not happy
- no app

I have recieved the above as rejection reasons in the past and am astounded at some of them. It's ok to be a pay per sale program, just admit it and don't pretend to be pay per lead.

[lethal0r]

well put beejeebers.

The best thing we can all do is to let everyone know about the worse merchants and dry their affiliate business up. All the merchants mentioned above employ dubious tactics when paying affiliates. This is a definite by the way Gary & any other networks reading, its not my opinion or anyone else's opinion, its a fact.

If you are running finance programs I would recommend signing up to a dedicated finance network, most of the generic networks are no good (AF spring immediately to mind).

Tom