Plenty. But do not take my word for it. Mashable, a popular social networking news blog, reveals following information:
ePerks is a site that offers consumers cash-back incentives, and businesses with a way to get their products in front of potential customers.
Launched by Ben Behrouzi, who also founded Reply.com, ePerks was funded with his own venture fund.
I have to admit. Every time I read the above two sentences I can’t help but wonder if the coward who posted on Yahoo! Answers was paid and who paid him? I may never find answer… But then again, I may just get lucky. There are a lot of good people out there.
But the venture capital and the founder are not only things these to company have in common. They both shared good amount of criticism. One round of criticism took place on my blog. Which, as many of you know, lead to cease and desist notice which eventually misfired- my blog ranks #2 on Google for the term “eperks”.
Reply.comreceived a share of negative reviews as well. But it was almost two years ago. Reply.com just underwent a major “face lift”, and even embraced the new social media element into their new website- a blog, even though my comments did not stand a chance to survive there. But I don’t blame them. I might have deleted many comments by the “fans” leaving suspiciously positive comments on one of my posts. It this respect I can call it “fair enough”.
I have spoken, if you have anything “juicy” on either company- be my guest help yourself to the comment form below. Positive (if there is any) feedback is also welcomed.
UPDATE: I have had a pleasure of speaking with Mr. Payam Zamani, the Chairman and CEO of Relpy.com. Mr. Zamani had clarified to me that Reply.com has nothing to do with ePerks and that Benham Behrouzi had left the Reply.com back in 2006. I appreciate Mr. Zamani’s transparency, and felt it was my duty to update this post for my readers.
Disclosure: I do not pretend to be fair nor objective when I write about either company- they don’t deserve it as far as I am concerned. Everything written above is my sole opinion. Everything written above is for my own amusement and your entertainment- please don’t take me too seriously. Neither of the company had paid me to write this post- I made that mistake once. I fully reserve the right to pursue legal actions against either of the companies….. blah blah blah blah. You get the picture.
Today many people believe that search engine optimization is a waste of time. I think it is based on misunderstanding of what SEO really is. This misunderstanding is often a result of negative users experience as far as relevancy of the search results are concerned. If you practice SEO in an attempt to manipulate search result to get to the top at any cost, you are very short sighted.
I belong to a group of people who believe that SEO can be very useful. I am mindful of SEO every time I write a new post, trying to provide useful and relevant content to the user. I don’t think I am cheating my way to the top of the search engine results. Every time I write an article, I want it to come up in top 10 results for a keyword or set of keywords.
Why 10 top results? Most of the internet users using search engines do not change the default settings and, after submitting a query, each page produces 10 search results. The top 10 search results across the search engines receive anywhere from 70% to 95% or more of all clicks.
I have recently discovered 103bees (HT: ProBlogger). 103bees is a very good analytics tool, which every blogger should use. It helped me to visualize the distribution of click over the keywords used to find this blog. One need thing about 103bees, that it also reports what position of the search results your website was found at. Take a look at the results for this blog of last few days:
As you can see, the likelihood of user ending up visiting your website if it found among top 10 results is 7+ times more than if your website was found on the second page (results 11-20).
When creating new content for your blog or website, you should be mindful of good SEO practices. It can produce impressive results.
BidEup, a newly launched website, claims to bring innovation to real estate industry, through “patent-pending methodology” (or did they mean technology?). Only real estate agents are welcomed to list properties on the website- at a minimum rate of $120 per 30 day listing. If you would like to list your property with all possible bells and whistles, it will set you back by about $300.
The innovation apparently lies in, as claimed by the website, being “first legally binding virtual market place”. However it is not clear what exactly this “legally binding virtual marketplace” is.
It may very well be that bidEup.com has some outstanding marketing plan in place. However, from a quick glimpse it looks like another “lead generating” website.
The New Jersey Association of Realtors is opposing legislation that would allow real estate brokers and agents to provide cash rebates or other gifts to buyers and sellers.
Members of the state’s Real Estate Commission, a regulatory agency that enforces licensing law in the state, has considered the legislation but hasn’t yet announced a position….
….While officials at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division have taken action to oppose bans on rebates in several states, New Jersey Association of Realtors officials contend that the offer of rebates can actually be harmful to consumers.
One thing is clear, a crappy lead generating company will not be able to survive in the face of new social media. One day one blogger will write about your services and his blog will open a can of warms.
I can’t help myself but wonder if there is any good lead generating company out there. Or all they all full of it? Again, I am not talking about the crappy companies that promise to give you hundreds of leads each month, just to scam you out of your money without delivering on their promise.
What I have in mind are the companies that would not charge you a penny unless they provide you with a lead that eventually converts into sale. No sale would mean a not qualified lead and therefore you don’t have to pay a penny for it.
Many of my readers here are familiar that I am an affiliate marketer. While there are different business models within affiliate marketing, at the end of the day my pay is based on my performance. If I send a visitor to Amazon.com and he or she does not by anything, I do not get paid. If I send a visitor to Lending Tree and he or she does not fill out a certain form, I do not get pain. In other words in order for me to get paid, I need to perform- not just promise. What do you think would happen if I asked Amazon: “I promise to send 100 byers each month to your website. Would you pay me $10 per each buyer?” Well Amzon may agree to pay me $1000 the first month around, but I doubt they would go along with my crap month after month, unless I have sent them 100 buyers each month. Well, people at Amazon and other companies were smarter. You can make money with Amazon, but only if you deliver the goods.
I have heard plenty about one crappy lead generating company. But I also believe that not every lead generating company is worthless. If you have come across a good lead generating company, please share it in the comments. I would be more than happy to write about such companies.
Many of you know that I have been involved in a project 100 Top Real Estate Blogs. Again, 100- figuratively speaking. If you visited the listed lately you probably know that there are more than100 blogs on the list.
If you blog about real estate and related issues, feel free to submit your blog. I know that this list was criticized quiet a bit for using unreliable statistics. While we attempt to rank your blog, it is not the ranking that matters. It is an extra exposure your blog will get. By submitting your blog, you get a link and we ask nothing in return.
To “make in” for the next update, all blogs must be submitted by 6:00 PM (Eastern Time) tomorrow (April 13).
Thousands of people today are blogging, twittering, making friends on Facebook…
We may not fully appreciate this new emerging force on the internet, but we indeed have already embraced it and even gave it a name- “Social Media”.
This new force is changing the Internet and is writing new rules of engagement, if you wish, for a successful business. And the new rules are rather simple- transparency and honesty.
In my opinion today businesses and inviduals have three basic choices they can make:
Embrace thins new movement and follow the new rules. This some times will require to face and engage your worst critics. Most of the criticism out there can be reduced to “this item sucks” or “this is the worst wireless provider”? But if face your critics in an honorable and honest way, trying to improve your products, chances are you will disarm your critics and maybe even turn some of the them into your best allies. Just think about it, most of the times companies are criticized over the type of services or products they offer.
Do nothing about it. It looks like many companies out there are so afraid to step out of their shell. The fear is so great that it keeps them “frozen”. These are the companies that we will not remember two years from now.
And the of course you can chose to ignore the emerging social media or/and continue to be a complete asshole as far as transparency and honesty are concerned.
You are probably looking in between the lines trying to figure out if the next few paragraphs will follow with the examples. The answer is no. I had different goal in mind…
We have a golden opportunity today. With today technology and the Internet, we have an unprecedented opportunity for promoting our brand. On opportunity that was not available to many just short ten years ago. Unless you and I take on this opportunity and just do two things, be transparent and honest, we are wasting our time and other peoples patience.
April 18, 2008
Posted in Lead Generating 
content rss
