What Is Pay Per Lead? How Does It Works?

The Internet has changed out lives to an unimaginable degree. There are a number of interesting and novel ways we sell our goods over this medium. Pay Per Lead is one of them.

Actually Pay Per Lead is not exactly a method of selling something on a web site. It is a method of creating a lead. This lead in turn may or may not result in a sale. Pay Per Lead plays a very important role in internet advertising and marketing.

Let us take a detailed look at how Pay Per Lead works. As an owner of a web site you enter into an agreement with a search engine and host links to other sites. A visitor to your site may click on any of these hosted links. The visitor is then taken to the web site. The web site may be offering the download of a free software, signing up for a newsletter or filling out a survey form. The visitor may or may not perform the action. If he does, then in the process he is required to give personal details and information. This generates a Lead.

The web site is paid by the search engine for all such visitors to the advertiser's web site which carry out a given action. The price at which the web site is paid may vary from a minimum of US$0.50 to US$2.00.

In variations of the same payment structure the web site may be paid only for visitors that click on the links and visit the advertiser's web site. The visitor need not sign up a news letter or fill in a survey form. Just visiting the website is enough. This visit does not generate a lead. This payment model is known as Pay-Per-Click. Google Ad sense and Yahoo Publisher Network are examples of search engines which provide such ads. The price per click may vary from US$0.01 (up to US$0.50).

Another option the advertiser has is of setting a limit or budget in terms of maximum number of leads that can be accepted. Setting up such a budget helps the advertiser to control his costs. The interval for which the budget can be set is usually a calendar month. If the number of leads that are generated exceed the budget, then the advertiser does not receive. The leads are carried forward to the next month.

The advertiser is also refunded for bad leads where the phone number or email id or any such critical information is incorrect.

It is a win-win situation for the search engine, the web-site hosting the ad and the advertiser. Pay Per Lead is here to stay.