Mortgage Lead Gen Aff Business Model?

I have been promoting CPA - PPL (pay per lead - lead generation) offers for over 16 years.

As you are finding out, it is all about generating cost effective traffic. I can't really help you out with your specific questions, as I don't generate traffic the way you are trying. I can tell you what I do.

I acquire data(email), that way I'm building assets that I then own and can market to over and over at low cost. I do this in several ways...

I purchase fresh / targeted data, in that I know what the users are interested in and that a PPL offer exists, that matches their interest.

I generate real-time co-reg that targets specific PPL offers.

I buy aged / domain targeted data. However, this is a bit more complex and requires additional tools / resources.

I also get (fresh / targeted) rev-share data, which is data that has $0 upfront cost and then I split the revenue generated from sending it, with the list owners.

In case you think this in some way is spamming, all the users have given permission to receive messages by third parties and is completely can-spam compliant, Additionally, with co-reg, all the users actually see my offer and are requesting more info directly.

I will be the first to admit, that data that you purchases is rarely ever going to be as responsive, as a highly targeted opt-in list you develop on your own. So to compensate for this, you have to work with higher volume. This however, is not a big deal, because you can buy data much faster and cheaper than you could develop it.

There are a couple important things you have to know.

You always want to test data sources before spending any significant money. That way you will get an idea how long it is likely to take to break-even. Based on the test, you could then try and negotiate a better price, if you need it to break-even quicker. This is where rev-share data has an advantage, because with the right connections, you can have an a;most endless supply of data to test with no upfront cost.

The data that you initially acquire, isn't what is going to make you money long term. You want to always be segmenting your open / clickers and removing the unresponsive users. That way you are building smaller lists that are most responsive. Then you will eventually be a be to send less and make more with each mailing. Essentially, you are converting the data from quantity to quality.

Also keep in mind that this isn't about promoting a single offer. You want to build up many good offer that you have available. That way you can cross promote them, which is fairly easy. For example with mortgage refi data, you know the users are homeowners. So can promote other homeowner related lead generation offers and offers related to that demographic.

Lastly, 90%+ of the offers I promote are lead generation offers. This is the way to go, because there is no credit card / purchase required to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a short form, so conversion rates are typically much higher than offers that require you to make a sale. This is what is really making it possible to convert the data into cash producing assets.

It is more of a business model than a traffic strategy, as you are really monetizing data.

As I said, I have been doing the above for over 16 years and it really does work. Everyone that I lnow that is in the business and knows what they are doing, does 6-7 figures. While that is a huge range, much comes down to ones ability to scale and effectively manage the infrastructure that comes with scaling.

Something to think about.

Mortgage lenders make between 1% to 2.75% of the loan amount.

If you're one of those who charge 2.75% and you live in an area where the average loan is $250,000, at 2.75%, you're grossing $6,875 on average.

Let's say you're not that greedy or are active in an area where you only get $4,000 per closed loan. How much of that amount are you willing to pay to get another $4,000?

By the way, a lot of the sites that do this lead gen for mortgages have tiered payments, with a few dollars per lead to $40 or $50/lead, depending on what type of lead you get.

If you get 1 sale out of every 10 calls you make, at $4,000 per sale, and you're willing to spend $200 to make one sale, each call you get is worth $20 to you.

If you're willing to pay $500 per sale you make, and you convert 1 in 10 calls, you're willing to spend $50 per call.

If a lead is an email address and a name and you need 50 to get 1 call... you do the math...

The point, what's profitable depends on who's buying (their costs, average loan amount, and greed (profit desired)) and how well the leads convert (a combo of how good the leads are and how good they are at converting them).

In other words, sometimes $7 leads are expensive and some $50 leads are not. And sometimes it's the other way around.

What Diablo and DABK have said is actually pretty spot on.

You may however want to stay away from Outbrain if you want to run any mortgage or mortgage refinance offers. I used to run a ton of these before the credit crunch and the going rate was like $150 bucks per lead. Now its barely $50 if you're lucky with a lot of criteria attached to it ... so the whole mortgage market has really taken a hammering and suffered slimming margins ever since.

A lot has therefore shifted towards debt, claims, insurance, property, unsecured and more niche type secured loans.

Hope that helps
Nick