As a merchant, these are my thoughts on loan affilaites

[speedtouch]

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ok, what would a loan lead generator charge for generating secured loan customers that said

"YES, I want to go ahead with this loan" ?

please give a proper answer.

I think affiliates should work to get the quality right and work with one merchant. 5 decent loans a week could be worth 20k in a month. why mess around generating and spending on large ppc campaigns to generate volumes? concentrate on marketing for quality. to get that, work and develop with the merchant (content, keywords, customer incentives).

Generating a 1,000 leads a month is ok, but its the quality that dictates the conversion AND having a decent merchant i.e. NO LARGE FEES, GOOD PANEL OF LENDERS (ideally whole of market), PROPER CUSTOMER SERVICE and COMMUNICATION with the introducing affiliate. quality works both ways.

do your research and stop looking at who pays the most. clearly people are getting shafted. if i paid £40 per loan and someone offered £100 - workout the total package. the £40 cpa might work out better. if it did, I am sure the merchant would want to improve the deal.

I have a finance company with national advisers. we have our expertise and clearly a4u affiliates have theirs. i know there is a cost to generate a lead, but there is also a cost to convert a lead - phone calls, face to face appointments, product research and quotations, valuations/surveys etc and then the client can say "NO". A traditional problem is getting hold of the client - which can take more than a week. plus there can be clawbacks if the loan is paid off in the first year.

it is a extra concern that if one of those conversion factors fail, the merchant can get lambasted on here.

those are my thoughts. i would like to work with good affiliates. volumes are not paramount. quality is and mutual understanding is.

[cyates]

i agree , its always better to establish a relationship with 1 broker who can cover all clients financial requests

[Keyser123]

i agree , its always better to establish a relationship with 1 broker

I agree with that, too. If you can find someone you can trust who will deliver what they say they can then that's all you can ask for. The worst thing that can happen is when someone promises something and never gets back to you. It's a pity it takes a while to find out who these 'players' are. It's ok once you find out though, you can let as many people know about them as possible to ensure people deal with them less and less.

[123debtsolutions]

Well said speedtouch.
There needs to be some standards throughout affiliate marketing.

Clear and precise rules/terms that all parties adhere to.

Vetting of web sites and marketing sources works very well but can also help the affiliate from benefiting from the industry knowledge and experience the merchant can also be imperative to those that want to succeed in an already competitive market place.

I have genuine serious affiliates that listen to the in-depth advice I share with them. This has and is seeing a massive improvement in the quality that is being received.

Granted we are on a smaller scale as our market is not nearly as large as the secured loan market but nevertheless control of affiliates, help and advice along the way , and a simple no nonsense fee structure can only help.

With regards to having your eggs in one basket I can't agree with that but I have found by working closely with the IP's (Merchants) I have been able to deliver to the precise requirements almost every time.

[cyberbird1]

As an affiliate (i.e. don't have full understanding of what merchant does) I can suggest a possible strategy for attracting the best affiliates.

• Pay the highest commissions
• Tell affiliates what lead quality they need to achieve to stay on the programme
• Offer affiliates tools for separately monitoring different traffic generation strategies. They can then identify the best sources of traffic and keep quality high.
• Regularly review affiliate performance and throw poor quality performers off the programme

You may need to limit the number of affiliates so that you're only 'trialing' a certain number at any one time.

[Michael_Anthony]

We do all of the above and more. There's no point working with a merchant for one month just because he's stupid enough to offer a huge CPA deal.

As I've always said, a merchant needs our advice and expertise on what converts and why BEFORE they start buying leads. We can advise on criteria based on existing merchant relationships, and also ensure that the leads are dealt with properly when received.

To my mind, the single most important factor in any lead generation relationship is this - BOTH parties have to make a reasonable profit, which is sustainable over the long term.

We like to create win-win relationships where we share our learnings from merchant feedback with our affiliates, and where we share best practises amongst our affiliates so that the "pie" gets bigger for everyone in affiliate marketing, not just us.

Building trust and loyalty in this business takes time, intelligence and complete honesty. Which is why many people see me as a threat when I question the validity of these £200 per lead posts, "declines", hot keyed leads, etc.

How many other lead gen networks have 4 out of the top 5 UK Finance Merchants on their books? None. This is no accident, it's the result of many years of very careful work, with our merchants, with our affiliates, and with all the people involved in our business. We see people as people and treat them with the respect they deserve - I suspect many others are only interested in the size of their wallets.

[cyberbird1]

We do all of the above and more. There's no point working with a merchant for one month just because he's stupid enough to offer a huge CPA deal.

Michael,

Can you point me to where your site describes your tools for separately monitoring different traffic generation strategies. How do your affiliates identify the best sources of traffic in order to keep quality high?