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Pay Per Click advertising is an easy, quick way to monetize a domain. However, lead capture is a monetization strategy with bigger payoffs often overlooked by domainers.

Why Lead Capture is Valuable

Two words: targeted eyeballs. Anyone who understands why targeted traffic is valuable in the domain industry will understand why companies value targeted leads. Lead capture is a method to target individuals who have a specific interest such as mortgage refinance or anything else an advertiser specifically wants. The good news for domainers is there are several ways to do this and many, many different niches that any advertiser could seek. In addition, the pay outs are usually better than PPC and easier than generating sales as the advertiser will usually take care of the upselling process.

Outgoing Lead Capture

The most common type of lead capture is outgoing for lead brokers or affiliates. Dave Pelligrinelli of AFX owns and operates a series of networked domains for outgoing and incoming lead capture. One of his outgoing lead  names: MortgageOffers.com is designed to capture leads for individuals wanting to refinance or purchase a home.

Another great example is a network owned by Steve Lombardi; ExpertHub.com. Expert Hub uses several generic domains to capture leads such as PlasticSurgeons.com, LawFirms.com and Dentists.org (full list) for Legal, Plastic Surgeon, Dental and Chiropractor clients.

Incoming Lead Capture

Incoming lead capture has to do with capturing leads for your use. These leads can either be for a product, service or a type of partner you want to work with. Suppose you have a computer store that can ship parts anywhere in the United States. For incoming product leads, you can SEO the names: ComputerRepairParts.com , ComputerDirectory.com, etc. Suppose you want to capture leads of people who are interested in affiliating with a computer store. ComputerAffiliate.com, ComputerBusiness.com and even ComputerTechnicianBusiness.com are great names to promote and SEO.

Another site in Dave Pelligrinelli's network involves incoming lead capture for his business: Abstractors.com. He uses this one word generic to help find title abstractors based around the United States that he can hire to perform certain tasks for his company.

Data Mining

Data mining is difficult to explain but can be used for lead capture. There are many public resources available to data mine leads for specific information. However, you must be EXTREMELY careful not to infringe on someone else's copyright. Just because the information is public does not mean it's available for free use. Always read the TOS before mining for data that is not yours. There are many tools to help you do this and there are many methods. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to list them because the lines are fragile and I do not want to be responsible for anyone's mischievous actions. Think of data mining as how a search engine indexes a webpage. It's basically the same concept but even they respect the site owner's request with robots.txt and meta tags (most of them). If you do go this route, please make sure you know what you are doing.

Sometimes you may need to data mine your own captured lead database to compile statistics, information or edit certain aspects of the information for a lead buyer. Learning how to do this is very useful.

Domains for Lead Capture

The type of domain you choose for lead capture depends on several factors:

• Will it be used for incoming or outgoing lead capture?
• Will you need to sell leads as a combined database or on an individual basis?
• Is the domain short, clear and easy to remember?
• How much competition is there for the lead type?

One or two keyword generics work best for lead capture monetization. Brandable domains are not out of the question but the farther away you get from one/two word generic, the harder you will have to work to develop the domain.

Developing for Lead Capture

When you develop your domain: the less distraction you place on the page, the better. Adsense and links are a major distraction. The goal is to capture the lead, not deter the visitor to another page. A basic effective lead capture site includes: a few images, a paragraph or two of sales information and a form. That's it. An exception to this is if you're creating a database of some kind like Abstractors.com or developing a site in a highly competitive category such as adult domains.

As for the form: the less information you attempt to collect, the better. Only collect what is necessary. In most cases, that may only be a name and email address. However, only add other fields if this information is mandatory.

Tweaking Domain Development

You may need to experiment with your domains to find out what works and what doesn't for each particular type of name and lead. Sometimes a visitor needs  information before they will request more information. Sometimes, all you need is a simple search form like on Expert Hub's sites. The best advice I have ever received about promotion that rings true in development: if it works, it will work right away. Do not let six months go by before you try something new.

Lead Buyers: Affiliate or Broker?

There are different types of companies who purchase leads from individuals. Lead brokers usually want large lists of leads and include companies such as Leads.com and LeadPile. However, they are the easiest lead buyer to find. On the other hand, affiliate lead buyers can be any company interested in your lead type. For instance, if you have TampaLawyers.com, any law firm in the Tampa Bay area is a potential buyer for your lead captures. You can also develop Expert Hub's method of bringing the lead buyers to you with a network site.

More Information: Resources

• Marketing Secrets from salesforce: Step 2. Capturing Leads
• Stop Driving Traffic, Start Capturing Leads
• Five Lead Capture Tools & How They Work
• Ideas for Best Lead Capture Strategies
• Lead Capture Page Tips - the Money Starts Here
• MortgageLeadsGuide.com

More Information: Lead Capture Tools

• Salesforce
• (Unfortunately, this was all I could find. A lot of spam sites. If you know of a quality tool, please comment below)

More Information: Lead Brokers

• Leads.com
• LeadPile
• GoLeads.com
• infoUSA
• GoodLeads.com

Your Thoughts

 Have you developed domains specifically for lead capture? I'm happy to hear your thoughts below or other lead resources, articles or sites you know about. You can also follow me on Twitter.

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