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Method #1: You send cute E-card to your mother wishing her a happy birthday. You fill out name, e-mail and click send. Your name and e-mail are captured. If site is a lead harvester masquerading as an e-card site, you will now be e-mailed by people looking to sell you annuities, business opportunity offers, etc.
Method #2: Leads site buys huge database, often just regional phone book listings. They sell these ‘leads’, which are nothing more than names and numbers picked from phonebook. Some of these people may even be on Do Not Call list, which could land you in hot water.
Method #3: Harvesting leads from search engines. Often these leads are quality, but are expensive to capture, so leads companies will sell leads over and over. By time you buy lead, it could have been sold twenty times. Sometimes you’re first to buy and you will find some quality prospects, more often you’re not.
Method #4: Internet robots crawl web sites hunting for e-mail addresses associated with insurance and annuity content. Somebody might be inquiring about annuities on a newsgroup or forum, next thing they know they’re getting offers from annuity companies. The Annuity Lead companies don’t let you in on how they’ve harvested leads. It’s called spam and you could get in serious trouble for contacting these people unsolicited.
My contact did say there are decent leads sites. She said to check their policy to see if they guarantee leads. Keep in mind, just because they have a guarantee doesn’t mean you’ll get your money back if leads fail to produce results. But often sites with some kind of guarantee are sites that harvest only quality leads and only sell them once.
If you’re still of mind to try internet leads my advice is to try just a few. Don’t buy into a huge program that requires a minimum monthly or a large upfront purchase. Experiment a little with a cross-section of sites. Who knows, you may find one that’s legit that’ll help you make some money.
Bill Broich is the founder of The Broich Approach, an annuity selling and marketing system based in Olympia, Washington. You can find more information about him and his system at: http://www.broichapproach.com