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Get paid 300% more per lead - Send API leads like a boss! (23)

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In recent years, API leads have become more popular and more widely accepted amongst advertisers. Smart affiliates are taking advantage of API’s for years to monetize their leads over and over again.
Before I got into detail why API leads are so important, you need to understand what an API actually is first:

API means nothing else but “Application Programing Interface” – that probably still doesn’t mean anything to you but let me give you a real word example:

Your standard dating campaign looks like this:

Ad -> Landing Page -> Offer

With an API your structure would be like that:

Ad -> Landing Page -> API -> Multiple Offers

To simplify things even more, the only thing an API really does for you is to capture your leads on your own backend and send the data to multiple offers. Without an API you won’t get any details out of the leads you sent to an offer. You don’t know their name, their age, their email, their gender… nothing!
With an API you can capture all this information and can monetize it over and over again.

Instead of getting paid $3,50 for your lead you will now be getting $10 – $20 combined from multiple offers. All while paying the same amount for your traffic like before. That does not only give you a HUGE advantage over other affiliate who don’t capitalize on API leads, but it also grows your own database of users.

At a certain point you might run into quality issues with a couple of advertisers and they will ask you to stop sending API leads, but that’s just the nature of this business.

Lets summarize the benefits of API leads:

• grow your own database of users
• monetize them for years to come
• huge advantage over your competiton
• ability to outbid your completion since you are getting paid 3-4x more
• a lot more money in your pocket

If those few bullet points aren’t convincing enough you might as well just stop being an affiliate

As of right now there aren’t a lot of API providers and most work on an invite only basis.
Personally I had my staff build my own backend, but if you want to keep a low overhead and an adult friendly solution, you can try your luck at places like LeadWrench.com
They have a decent reputation amongst many adult affiliates and offer an affordable solution for any kind of business.

Lemme know if you need help setting things up. Its damn easy though.

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This sounds very nice

Can you maybe explain a bit more how this interfaces with affiliate offers?

Which API's are you referring to?

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Are you basically talking about API submission of user data (e.g. email, name) to multiple offers that pay for just that data, and then monetise/convert the user themselves with followup emails? I can see the benefits of splitting to multiple offers like this but how is the user worth anything significant to the advertiser if they have no idea their details are even going to said offer?

I.e. clicks dating advert -> your lander for Be2 -> they fill out details -> you capture lead data and also send host-and-post style to multiple offers -> user gets email about registration from Be2 but also from multiple other offers they have never seen? If that's the general process I'd think you'd get kicked for quality pretty quickly on a lot of the side offers...

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The guys at LeadWrench are solid. The biggest problem with sending via API is that not many (if any) programs will offer a PPL.

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Well how do spammers make money? They blast your inbox with stuff you didn't sign up and some of those people reading those emails will go ahead, click the link and confirm their subscription. Its ALMOST the same with an API lead.
If it makes you sleep better at night you can always argue that you give your lead not only the choice of 100k girls on 1 dating site but the choice of 500k girls on 5 dating sites

You got that right and i think i mentioned the quality part in my post. There is no benefit in sending one lead to 10 sites in a single day, but if you do your API leads with an actual strategy/plan, you will stay on most of your offers and your quality will be good enough to stay on. Like everything else, its a lot of trial and error but at the end of the day its more money in your pocket

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Word. I am sure sharky from lw will help to refer offers for his clients.

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I can see some advantages here especially with capturing data yourself first. But spamming them with different offers is definitely something I would stay out but that's probably just me. I would rather use host and post instead of the API method ...

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It's like transparent coreg , main issue would be getting PPL like tical said, for PPS no problem i guess everyone would take your leads

Quality issues will also happen for sure, since some advertisers are better (and/or more aggressive) at monetizing leads than other, the less performing will get less value.



Mehdi

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Interesting! Sorry guys may I know what is PPS?

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PPS = Pay Per Sale

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Makes a lot more sense if on a PPS basis. If you stagger the API submissions of their data would it not make more sense to just use their initial info submit as an opt-in to a list and then have autoresponders set up? That way you could have a pre-selling email so you at least get higher lead quality than with the straight up registration email they'd get. I guess that's just typical list building whereas what you're talking about is more of a spammy/coreg like approach with less effort and overhead. To each it's own.

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Interesting stuff.

Can I just confirm I'm understanding?

What it sounds like you're doing is

Ad -> LP. The LP, rather than having the usual "CLICK HERE TO MEET 5 GIRLS IN 5 MINUTES RIGHT NOW LIMITED TIME OFFER!", has an actual signup form. When the user fills that out, you do two things:

1) Submit that information to Be2, say, just like their own signup form would - so probably a POST request to the dating site. Obviously, you'll need to have their permission to do that on all but the most naive sites.
2) Also sign the user up for your own email list.

From there, you can email once every 5 days or so, presumably with dating tips, then other dating site offers, then a bit of adult, then some PUA advice, then more dating sites...

Am I about right in all that?

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Yeah sounds like Co-Reg on the sly! Now! I am no Angel so will look at this though :-)

BUT! I think you have to be careful to supply quality or the folk will very quickly not trust you!

Do most platforms have an API?

Are most platforms OK with you doing this?

Has anybody tried this with an honest approach on the Lander? ie: Let us send you the best dating offers straight to your inbox! Select from <list of dating types>

Could work for Biz Op too!

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This is a great question... and in a perfect world the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

What the API join process allows you to ultimately do is take one user action (free join) and multiply it into multiple subsequent actions; each of which could be an additional opportunity to monetize that user. One of these subsequent actions could be an opt-in to an autoresponder email sequence, which mails the prospect with additional related offers, however under normal circumstances the user will have to fill out another form for each of the offers mailed out, if they want to take action again. This means more work on the user's part and unfortunately more opportunities for the user to NOT take action and walk away.

To frame this another way, does a car salesman send a potential customer away if the first car they show a prospect isn't what he or she is looking for? NO! They keep showing them additional cars, going on test drives, and talking about the benefits of owning that car until they close the sale.

So ideally you would use the initial user action to do what the user expects and/or wants, and then upsell or cross-sell them on additional offers without requiring the user to re-enter their information again, or do much else other then click YES. Whether this is done via sequential "thank you" page steps, or via an email autoresponder sequence, the point is don't make the user do more work than is necessary and do make it as easy as possible for them to keep saying 'Yes'. You already had the user fill out a form once...

In this particular use case, most of your dating sites which accept a free join via API are going to confirm the user's email before they do much else. So if you properly inform the user to expect subsequent offers, either before or after they initially click submit, a staggered submission over time may be good enough to maintain quality. However a potentially better scenario may be something which pre-sells the user on the benefits of being a member at a second site and then allows them to join by just clicking a button.

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All good points. Other than signup/conversion rates which will be starkly different between API submission and emails, I think the real difference will come in the backend lead quality for advertisers. If the advertiser was fine with looking at lead quality and tailoring payout for your API submitted leads then that route would be better. Put it this way, I wouldn't be confident I could stay on an offer with such leads without being kicked/payout dropped, so if you had that agreement with an advertiser in the first place then API leads would be preferable to follow up emails.

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I think it was mentioned earlier in the thread that most affiliates start sending API dating on a PPS basis, this way the advertiser is at less risk for paying for traffic which ultimately is not poised for performance (improper user expectations, deception, etc.). Also I think it should be pointed out that this (api) is a method only if you are going direct, and not via a CPA network, but I would hope that if anyone was thinking along these lines they would have already optimized out the need for a "middle man" from their process.

However, I have seen some other dating advertisers lately start to offer PPL (pay per free join) on API as long as the traffic is exclusive (not reposted to another dating site); this is still beneficial to the affiliate because you get to keep the data and further monetize it through email and non-competitive offers. And from your perspective this is probably ideal anyways.

Also don't think that running API dating traffic is inherently shady or underhanded; a vast majority of the adult dating companies out there already use these or similar methods to internally cross-post their non-converting joins to their competitors, in hopes they can monetize an otherwise useless free join. And some might consider this shady as the original affiliate that sent that original user doesn't get any credit for this. In other words, this user is going to get a inbox full of related offers anyways, no matter what you do in your own process.

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Not 100% sure I follow. Do you mean like whitelabeling offers? I've been thinking about doing something like that.

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This used to be huge about 3-4 years ago. There was a Copeac offer called Naughty or Nice and killed running as an affiliate. They posted mainly to True.com who is now bankrupt. They posted to singlesnet and mate1 for a while. But eventually it all died due to quality.

Still a probably good model.

But as a single affiliate with no brand or public presence I think you'll have a SUPER hard time getting any budget on an api feed. Most likely they're going to ask you to drive volume to their main form first. Then after a few months and seeing user retention and values they'll consider it. This is similar to our relationship with Mindspark the toolbar guys. Affiliates have to run on our main offers for a while and then when they prove quality we can build them out their own custom properties.

Problem with going this route is if you have good quality selling to 1 and then start running your own page and posting to 2 companies your quality is going to drop some pretty quickly. However it's always been to build a property and even post to 1 buyer just so you can get the data. If you have the data it's another asset in your business. Now you have 3 assets rather then 1. Data + campaign data + property you drive traffic to. Now you can take that property and turn it into a real site and create even more value. Then you can go out and promote you new offer as your own that's different from the others out there to affiliates.

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Whitelabeling is a bit different.

With a whitelabel you are usually taking an advertiser's website template and applying your own brand but the site and its functionality stays the same. What this means is you have no additional control over how the site functions (conversion funnel) or what is done with the data upon signup or during the sale.

With host-n-post and the use of API posting, you create and thus control the entire user experience, at least in the conversion funnel, and get to decide what to do with the user data and how to ultimately monetize it.

How this is useful to a dating affiliate can be multiple fold.

Have you ever considered what happens to a user you send to a dating site where they are already a member, or have at least already signed up for a free membership? You dont get credit for these referrals and/or subsequent sales. What if you could instead post them over to another dating program where you KNOW they are not a member already...

Have you ever wished to shorten or otherwise change the "join form" because you thought it was too long or too unwieldy? With API you get to design and tweak your own join process, with your own landing pages, and then decide what to ultimately do with that user. Perhaps you want to send them to a niche adult dating site after discovering they have a kink for black girls...

The only limitation here is your imagination and optimization skills.

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Anyone know of lead buyers for this sort of setup for job/edu traffic?

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You could go direct with one or several lead brokers (who will retail the lead themselves) and you could also check out the lead exchanges (such as Leadpoint.com, Integrate.com, or LeadN.com) to see if they have buyers to disposition these types of leads.

For job/edu traffic, you may be want to look at trying to qualify the lead for a credit, debt or high-risk loan type of product, as this generally will pay you more per lead and potentially allow you to sell it as a job/edu lead and a debt lead at the same time.

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Interesting idea!!!!

Would be sweet to hear your strategy on maintaining the highest quality possible with this method,
love the popunder idea you had as well.
Great creativity

If you can add my Skype; have some question bro!
Skype:
johnwaltonvi

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