OK.. I've done a lot of reading, research, investigation, and even tried out a few different companies that offer "pay per lead" advertising.. such as hostvoice.

They all suck. You only need to search as far as this forum (do a search for hostvoice) and you'll find that all the complaints are similar.

Too many advertisers. Lack of trust between advertiser and the company offering advertising. Not enough response from potential customers.. if any response at all... etc.. in other words there is little value for your advertising money.

---------------

So.. here is my list of things I need to see from any company who wants me to sign up for their "pay per lead" advertising system.

Please feel free to ad your own requirements and suggestions, too.

1) Ability to sign up not just for leads based on category, but also based on options within that category. (ie: I only want leads from customes looking for Unix shared hosting, who select cpanel as the CP, who specify they want pricing between $10 - $15 per month.

In this way, my leads will be VERY focused and targeted.

2) Ability to see all the key info from responses from other advertisers. This will prove that you haven't oversold your lead system and that they aren't offering $1 packages to customers looking to spend $15/month.

I don't know what is the best way to do this, but here's what I'm thinking:

Customers fill out the request for quote form. The notification email is sent to the people paying for the leads, based on their desired parameters (see #1 above). There is a link they must click on if they want to respond to the lead. This link brings them to a page on your company website where they can post their response. The response is then sent to the customer AND is made available to all the other advertisers who paid for that lead. (not via email.. the other responses are simply listed one after the other below the request for quote lead.) To make it better, you could simply post the name of the companies that responded, and the average price given. No need to divulge the entire reply since that is private info and competitive. But I DO want to see how many responses were sent and the average price of the companies who responded to that lead. Otherwise I have no way to verify that you are indeed limiting the leads to only XYZ companies and that there is some measure of control over the prices being offered to the customer.

Until these things are implemented, I will never use a pay per lead system, because they are nothing more then a rip-off.. unless you are willing to undercut everyone else on the system.

As usual.. only the "low cost / budget" hosts win the customers. These are the hosts who offer $1/month plans to every customer who requests a quote even though the customer might have selected the $15-$20 budget range.

Your quote/lead system needs to have accountability built into it for the advertisers.. and then I will sign up. I would even be willing to pay more for it!

Show me value and I'll show you my money.

Greetings,

First of all, thank you for your suggestions. You do bring up a few interesting ideas - especially, in terms of lead targeting (your point #1).

However, you need to understand that advertising is not always a guaranteed way to get clients. Very rarely, you can put in $200 and get $200 in immediate return.

There are a lot of factors involved when it comes down to converting the leads into customers and pricing is only one of them. The way you get in touch with the client (phone, instant messenger, eMail); the way you present yourself; whether or not your company instills trust in the prospect; the fact that you're willing to go an extra step and find out about the clients' specific needs in order to offer him a package that firs his requirements; and so on.

Competition is unavoidable - if you take payperclick search engine or hosting directory, you will be forced to compete with 100s of other companies. Lead systems, on the other hand, limit the amount of responses each prospect gets to 8-10.

Furthermore, you're actually given an opportunity to show what your company actually has to offer, without solely competing on price.

I am sorry to hear that you did not receive satisfactory results for your money - however, did you ever contact us (or any other lead systems) for advice on what you can do in order to convert the leads better, when you saw that it's not working out very well?

I don't think it's fair to generalize all of the lead systems as a "rip-off", as it does bring prospects and hosts together. However, it's up to the host to actually convert the leads into sales.

In spite of all of this, I do appreciate the idea you presented about targeting leads on several factors, other than just the category. I think it has quite a bit of potential in it.

Boris

Originally posted by hvoice-boris
However, you need to understand that advertising is not always a guaranteed way to get clients. Very rarely, you can put in $200 and get $200 in immediate return. I do not expect this. Any advertiser who makes such a claim is offering nothing except fraud.

Originally posted by hvoice-boris
There are a lot of factors involved when it comes down to converting the leads into customers and pricing is only one of them. That may be true in other industries, but from experience it is most often how web hosting customers will make their decision.

Period. 99% of new hosting customers do not understand the difference between a $1 host who offers "the world" and a host with "realistic" plans and pricing.

This is why I am making my suggestions here. If you want to attract quality advertisors and make yourself known as a pay per lead system that works... then you will need to develop a system that is better able to target the leads and provide value and accountability to the advertisers.

Yes, I realize that we have a chance to contact the customes and explain why we are better, etc... but in the VAST majority of cases, this is exactly the same as every other web host who is responding.

They all say the same thing. gauranteed uptime, lots of bw/disk, 24x7 support, blah blah blah.

In reality, you need to understand that the majority of the customers who are submitting a request through your system very likely do not understand how to "find" a good host. The only differentiating factor between the many quotes they will receive is the price.

Therefor.. there MUST be some way that the advertisers can confirm that their "competition" is not bidding lower then the price stated by the customer.

For example.

Let's say that Mr. Customer submits a quote request through hostvoice. They choose the $10-$20 option for monthly budget.

So now, I can gaurantee you, that the majority of people who are responding to this lead will be showing them pricing between $5 and $10. Try it now.

How is this acceptable to you? What is the point of even asking the customer what is their budget unless you have some way to prove to the advertisers that all the other people who are submitting quotes aren't going to simply put their lowest prices?

You need some way to control this.

My suggestion is to restrict the contact/response to the customer to a form submitted from your website.

If the customer chooses the $10 - $20 monthly budget range, then the PRICE form field submitted by the advertiser will fail if they specify a price lower then this amount.

Also, the other advertisors must be able to see the average price that was quoted, so that they can evaluate to see if the system is working and how their pricing stacks up. Your form submission must also do keyword search in the main text area so that the advertisor can't "slip in" hidden pricing, etc...

Does this make sense to you?

Without accountability and controls in place, the only people who are going to find your system successful are the advertisers who are offering low-cost super-cheap hosting to every lead that is given.

I agree with MrZippy completely. I have yet to sign up for a "lead" service that didn't generate:

1. Tons of useless leads (kids submitting bogus quote requests, people submitting outrageous requests for very little money)

2. Cut throat competition from bottom of the barrel hosts. Since we actually provide decent support to our customers, we can't afford to give away the world for peanuts. :P

3. Once you refine what you will accept leads for, hardly any leads come in. I've limited my lead request to strictly "colocation" at hostvoice and I'm getting only a couple of requests a week now.

--Tina

If leads from hostvoice were only worthwhile for the one company that always bids the lowest, then eventually everyone else will stop buying them. From my experience with leads (and lead buyers), I highly doubt that only the low bidder is being successful. If you don't like having to "work" the leads hard, then don't buy them because they won't be worth your money.

Are you calling the leads? Are you following up on the leads that were undecided? Do you contact them in several ways? Do you hound the heck out of them to the point of being annoying? If you can't do these things or don't want to....don't buy leads.

I've dealt with lead buyers and lead sellers for the past 3 years. Not in hosting leads, but in industries like mortgage, insurance, debt consolidation, and home improvements. The people I know that are very successful with leads are persistent to the point of being obnoxious. These lead buyers generally don't care if the leads are exclusive or non-exclusive b/c they feel they can out sell the other lead buyers.

On the other hand, if you can't or won't "work" the leads and you are going up against several other hosts, then buying a non-exclusive lead is probably not smart.

You can't compare those markets with hosting since the ones you mention have industry standards. There are no set standards for the hosting industry.

Its not about "working" the leads. Its about the sharks that come in and WAY underbid and the people asking for bids requesting ALOT of service for not much money. We WON'T work those leads. Its not worth it.

--Tina

bjseiler, I am simply providing suggestions and my opinion to anyone who operates a "pay per lead" service.

I did not say it is impossible... I said that I will not personally purchase such a service until it meets the minimum criteria for any form of advertising I purchase.

It would be brain-dead simple for hostvoice to fine-tune their system to give the ability for advertisers to select only leads for a sepcific price range. It would provide huge value to the advertisers, because they can filter out the "low-cost" budget customers who aren't worth the time/effort.

Etc.... this is just MY opinion. I'm sure as a professional in the industry you have your own experience and opinion.

Keep in mind however, that the hosting industry is rather unique in that 99% of customers who are looking for web hosting have no skills to properly evaluate a web host company except based on price.

Therefore, in the vast majority of cases... the lowest cost supplier will always win.

Is it worth my time to compete against $1 web host companies for a customer who pays $2 a month? No. My time is more valuable then that, and I prefer to spend my advertising $$ elsewhere.

I am simply providing suggestions that I believe will make hostvoice and other payperlead suppliers a better service.

:)

Originally posted by bjseiler
If leads from hostvoice were only worthwhile for the one company that always bids the lowest, then eventually everyone else will stop buying them. This is simply not true. There is literally no end to the number of "bottom feeder" web hosts who will purchase advertising from pay per lead companies like hostvoice.

I would challenge ANY pay per lead company (who has not yet implemented the suggestions I made above) to publicly post the name of even one advertising customer who offers "realistic" pricing that has used their ad service for more then 6 months and is happy with the service and level of conversion they receive.

Originally posted by mrzippy
This is simply not true. There is literally no end to the number of "bottom feeder" web hosts who will purchase advertising from pay per lead companies like hostvoice.

All I have to say is... :beer:

mrzippy (and Tina) I'd like to thank both of you.
you made some good suggestions and this thread really gave me an insight to a few things.


*scribbles down notes*

Originally posted by mrzippy
I would challenge ANY pay per lead company (who has not yet implemented the suggestions I made above) to publicly post the name of even one advertising customer who offers "realistic" pricing that has used their ad service for more then 6 months and is happy with the service and level of conversion they receive.

In response to your statement, here's just a small list of companies that have been with us for months and have been very satisfied with our service (I don't want to limit the list to just one company). Please note that none of them offer rock bottom prices and yet they still managed to succeed.

Reseller
HostGator.com

Dedicated
Inetu.com

Colocation
www.rocketcolo.net

Unix
www.fastactionhosting.com

Ecommerce
www.hostdepot.com

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
In response to your statement, here's just a small list of companies that have been with us for months and have been very satisfied with our service (I don't want to limit the list to just one company). Please note that none of them offer rock bottom prices and yet they still managed to succeed.

http://hostvoice.net/?privacy

What are you trying to say?

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
In response to your statement, here's just a small list of companies that have been with us for months and have been very satisfied with our service

Unix
www.fastactionhosting.com


Would you please ask the owner of this company to post into this thread to verify? I would like them to publicly comment on:

1) How long they have used hostvoice pay per lead advertising services.

2) Confirmation that their use of hostvoice advertising services has resulted in a positive inflow of customers to their shared unix hosting plans. In other words, that, under the UNIX (shared hosting) category, they are happy with the value they receive for their time and money.

3) An honest general opinion on hostvoice.

:)

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
What are you trying to say?

I for one would not be pleased having words put in my mouth about your service. I'm assuming you have testimonials for these companies available to be using them as public referrals?

Otherwise you're contradicting your own privacy policy.

Of course. The testimonials are available on our website.

Originally posted by Amdac
Otherwise you're contradicting your own privacy policy.

We would never share any information of the potential customers who use our service to find hosting. The information about our advertisers is public and anybody can get it by simply submitting a request (Please do not submit the requests unless you're actually looking for hosting)

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
Of course. The testimonials are available on our website.

I see testimonials from 2 of the 5 mentioned.

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
Of course. The testimonials are available on our website. I'm sure, then, that fastaction will have no problem posting in response to my earlier post for verification?

Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
We would never share any information of the potential customers who use our service to find hosting. The information about our advertisers is public and anybody can get it by simply submitting a request (Please do not submit the requests unless you're actually looking for hosting)

Just because they use your service doesn't give you the right to put words in their mouth.

..here's just a small list of companies that have been with us for months and have been very satisfied with our service...

Originally posted by AH-Tina
You can't compare those markets with hosting since the ones you mention have industry standards. There are no set standards for the hosting industry.

Its not about "working" the leads. Its about the sharks that come in and WAY underbid and the people asking for bids requesting ALOT of service for not much money. We WON'T work those leads. Its not worth it.



There are virtually no standards in the mortgage business. One broker might make $7500 on your mortgage and the next might only make $1500. Each of which makes there money playing with points, rates, fees, etc., depending on what they think they can get away with on you. It is a dirty business and that is not even talking about the brokers that prey on poor people and people with bad credit. The industries are comparable. A host offering unlimited everything and a mortgage broker springing some last minute fees on you a day before closing on your house are very similar.

If the web hosting leads are all people that buy into the bottom feeders sale pitch then I think you should express to the leads that you are a quality web host and you should follow up with those people 3, 6, 9, and 12 months down the road (until they tell you not to contact them again). If these "bottom feeders" are not providing a good service, then your services should be an easy sell when these sub par hosts prove to be unfit.

The people that are requesting everything for nothing....I totally agree with you. These are worthless leads who will always look for the cheapest route. I am more referring to "general public" generated leads who really do not know that $1 hosts even exist. Those are more the leads that I have experience with and these are the people that can be convinced that quality matters.

Originally posted by bjseiler

The people that are requesting everything for nothing....I totally agree with you. These are worthless leads who will always look for the cheapest route.

I don't have exact numbers, but probably 99% of the leads I've received were asking for pricing lower than I would consider acceptable.

--Tina

Just a quick note on this subject.

I relize we do not focus on the same categories offered by hostvoice, ie Unix Hosting, however I can commit on the leads quality and the ROI that we recieve.

First let me say I do agree on the focused leads, more options would be nice.

In any service such as this there has to be an acceptable ROI, and that will of course differ between companies. You need to be realistic and have a RESONABLE expectaion, as with any advertiseing.

If you go into a service like this and expected to have a high rate of return out of the gate, well you could get lucky, but in most cases its just not going to happen. Stiff competetion, over sellers, and SFN Syndrome (Something For Nothing) are all factors.

Now in our case we went into this for a couple reasons, the obvious one being Leads, but secondly to that we went into this knowing that we would not get every customer, however it did get our name in front of every customer. (This has been our biggest assest)

Do we get new customers with HostVoice? Yes!
Do we expect to get every customer that comes along? No Way.

But history tells us that weeks, maybe months later we have new customers signing up that rememer our name from a HostVoice response. Maybe they went with the cheaper guy and it didn't work out, or who konws, but they do remember names and come back.

We have also found that by being consistent in our suggested packages to customers from lead services that we have a much better ROI as well. It never fails that if we start trying to MAKE a deal happen it never does.

HostVoice as a company is also very accomodating. If you get a bad lead, tell them and you will get credit. They have always been very far in that regards, and we have never felt "taken" in dealing with them.

Lead services "in my opionion" are not quick solutions. Instead of spending $300.00 in a month on leads, try and spend $50.00 over the next 6 months, and see what happens. You might be pleasently supprised!

Every month is different and your mileage may vary, but we have been with HostVoice for quite some time and I can honestly say it works for us.

Originally posted by Rocketcolo
You need to be realistic and have a RESONABLE expectaion, as with any advertiseing.

If you go into a service like this and expected to have a high rate of return out of the gate, well you could get lucky, but in most cases its just not going to happen. Stiff competetion, over sellers, and SFN Syndrome (Something For Nothing) are all factors.

This is exactly my point. I have never stated I wanted an unreasonable result. In fact, I believe my expectations are pretty reasonable. I am supposed to have a 1/8 chance of getting each lead.. minus the "dingaling" factor, which is when the lead is just a bogus submission.

However, I do not believe this is accurate, or even close, for the unix shared hosting category.

My questions and comments about the pay per lead companies (specifically hostvoice) are targeted mostly at the UNIX shared hosting categories.. and the other categories that are very saturated with low-cost providers.. yet hostvoice claims to have successful advertisors who don't just offer bottome-barrel pricing.

The other categories, such as co-location, are likely still pretty decent.. because the market is not AS saturated and there aren't AS MANY low-cost budget wannabe companies to compete with. (I'm not saying there are none.. I'm saying that compared with the unix shared hosting companies...)

Hostvoice has now publicly stated the name of one such company who apparently offers "reasonable" pricing in the unix shared hosting category and is suposedly "very satisfied" with their advertising $$ being spend at hostvoice.

[quote]Originally posted by HVoice-Eugene
In response to your statement, here's just a small list of companies that have been with us for months and have been very satisfied with our service

Unix
www.fastactionhosting.com/[quote]

As I stated previously, I would like this company.. who has given hostvoice permission to use them as a public example, to come to this forum and confirm this claim. See my last post for the three questions I would like aswered as verification.

Cheers!

I'm not going to name any of the Pay-for-Leads companies I've used in the past but I did my own informal survey concerning them. Over the course of the past year I have used about 400 leads. I did not receive a single account as a result.

Now before we start saying how it's all in the way I contacted the leads, I've spent hours making each contact personal and highly detailed. No results. So then I switched tactics and tried something different. I sent out a single line to the leads asking them if they would be interested in buying 30 gigs of bandwidth with 1 gig of space for $2.00 per month. I got 6 responses out of 10 people contacted.

Both Mr. Zippy and Tina made valid points. Personally I see no value in Pay-for-Leads unless you chose to co-mingle with the $1 hosts. That's something we just don't need to consider since local and state-wide advertising campaigns bring in a much higher conversion rate without people expecting the world for a buck...

we used hostvoice for one of our sister companies, and where very impressed with the service that we received.

the option to contact potential clients via the messenger address they have the option to include pulled in a large amount of customers for us

well done guys

Originally posted by mrzippy
As I stated previously, I would like this company.. who has given hostvoice permission to use them as a public example...

For some reason I don't think they have. ;)

Originally posted by SubReseller
the option to contact potential clients via the messenger address they have the option to include pulled in a large amount of customers for us

1) What category did you advertise in? (shared unix hostin?

2) what was your conversion ratio?

Originally posted by mrzippy
I'm sure, then, that fastaction will have no problem posting in response to my earlier post for verification?

From the WHT rules:

Participants may not solicit any external source to post on this forum regarding their company, services, or products; or any company, services, or products they are or may be associated with.

What if permission was given for a testimonial that didn't end up getting used on hvoice's website? If you don't think they're a satisfied customer, HVoice has given you all the information you need to follow up on that. Even if it weren't against the rules, I would never ask one of my customers to come to my defense here, and it's wrong of a WHT member to demand that of another WHT member. If they didn't have any satisfied customers, that surely would be noticeable on WHT search, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Indifference, as opposed to positive or negative opinions, was the impression I got from reviewing HVoice threads. I didn't get the impression it was a rip-off, the prevailing attitude is you get exactly what they claim to sell, with no guarantees.

I've also noticed some good ideas/suggestions in this thread. There are some things here definitely worthy of consideration by the part of quote-request companies.

The spirit of the rule you quoted (imho) is that hostvoice may not ask fastaction to post here in support of their claims.

However, I don't see why it would be against the rules for me to ask fastaction to come here and verify hostvoices claims.

I am not associated with hostvoice.. I just want to see if the company they say is happy with them is actually happy with them.. as claimed. (unix shared hosting category)

Originally posted by mrzippy
1) What category did you advertise in? (shared unix hostin?



2) what was your conversion ratio?

shared unix hosting

we here getting roughly 3 customers for every 10 quotes

we put a hell of a lot of work into the emails, and they where a really professional design and although this took a long time it was worth it.

Wow, 3 out of 10! For a lead that is going to 8 people, that is really good. I would actually say that is amazing.

For other types of leads we have worked with, customers generally close 10-30% of exclusive leads. If you make the lead non-exclusive, and assuming all things are equal, you can cut that percentage by the number of people the lead is going to. eg - a non-exclusive lead going to 5 people would close 2-6%. Despite what somebody else posted here, if a lead goes to 8 people, you do not have a legitimate 1 in 8 chance of succeeding (all things being equal and tossing out bogus leads). A good number of people fill out request forms and then find services somewhere else, just change their mind, or decide that none of the quotes are what they wanted. That is just part of buying leads.

Originally posted by SubReseller
we here getting roughly 3 customers for every 10 quotes

we put a hell of a lot of work into the emails, and they where a really professional design and although this took a long time it was worth it. :eek: 3 out ot 10? Doesn't it seem strange that several reputable and highly respected hosts have posted their experience of zero conversions here.. yet you have a 30% ratio?

Your post sounds like past tense. Are you still using them?

Originally posted by SubReseller
shared unix hosting

we here getting roughly 3 customers for every 10 quotes

we put a hell of a lot of work into the emails, and they where a really professional design and although this took a long time it was worth it.

You said that you used them for a sister concern. Which company did you use/are you using them for?

I used hostvoice for my web hosting business. My hosting plans start at $9.95 per month.

I received more than 100 sales leads from hostvoice and they are very prompt in receiving them. Never received any feedback or orders. It seems the lowest price host gets the sale.

During the time that I was using Hostvoice I contacted many of the users that I never heard from. Even though many of them specified they were looking for a host at a price of around $15 per month, they replied to me stating that they signed up for a $2.95 per month plan.

In order to be sucessfull in Hostvoice, you must have some really cheap plans (ie $2-$3) range.

Still no word from fastaction to substantiate the claim made by hostvoice of at least one happy customer with "realistic" pricing using the UNIX shared hosting category.

But several posts from previous unhappy customers who have substantiated the points I made in this thread.

A serious fix/change is needed to the pay per lead system if it is desired to appeal to any host who does not offer low-value low-cost bottome-barrel hosting.

Dear MrZippy,

Unfortunately, opinion is a thing that's very hard to change. No matter what we or anybody else will say, most likely you will not change your opinion.

In regards to your claims, we will not ask our clients to defend us on a public board. We stand behind everything that we said (in case you may not have noticed, we do have a testimonial on our site made by FastActionHosting a.k.a. E&K Enterprises, LLC).

We work with a fair amount of clients that offer quality services at reasonable pricing, many of which stayed with us for 6+ months. We do deliver results, however, as with any other form of advertising - it's not guaranteed.

I do appreciate your comments, as we are trying to evolve and offer our clients more value for their money, however, our system still works just fine for many of our clients the way it is.

Unfortunately, you must understand that even if we will target leads more to your liking, you will still not be able to convert them if your sales techniques aren't working.

If you ever use our services and have a problem in getting an ROI, we encourage you to contact us and we'd be more than happy to evaluate your site, your sales letter and techniques, etc. at no charge. However, if you chose not to contact us in spite of the fact that you have not received a fair return, there isn't much we can do about it.

I wish you the best of luck in all your business endevours.

Best Regards,
Boris

The problem is that I see more testimonials against using your services (for the unix category of shared web hosting) then I do see on your website.

My opinion is actually very easy to change...but of course you would need to show me proof of your claims. And having a testimonial on your website is something that does not prove anything. For all I know, those testimonials are over a year old...

I have tried to contact the fastaction webmaster/owner, but have not had any response.

Therefore, I remain unconvinced that using your services as they are now (without implementing the suggestions I made at the start of this thread) would do nothing for me but relieve me of my money.

If you ever do implement the suggestions I outlined, then please post back into this thread. I will be the FIRST person to sign up and test out the new system and see how it works out.

Cheers!

Originally posted by softstor
Never received any feedback or orders. It seems the lowest price host gets the sale.

I see a pattern :D

After all of the buzz going around I decided to check out hostvoice. 150$ out of my pocket isn't really a big deal, i'm going into this with low expectations so I can be surprised if it pans out.

I'd like to go into the colo catagory, but its full so I'm holding off for now.

I'll let you guys know if a slot becomes available and if I can make any conversions.

I'll drop out of the colo category so you can sign up. You're only going to get about 1 lead a week.

--Tina