The Finder's Fee Model Generates Leads

Monetization

The finder's fee model is as classic as business itself... get paid for referrers or a finder's fee by finding customers (or "leads"). In other words, you become the key intermediary between surfers looking for information/solutions and business owners (especially those ones offline) who provide the products or services these surfers are seeking.

It's a worthwhile monetization option for your SBI! site because...

1) A huge number of offline businesses have no idea how to use the Net -- even if they have a Web site, they get no traffic. So have them pay you for referrers from your traffic-generating site.

2) Most businesses, especially offline ones, do not need, and will never use, an affiliate program. You can help spread the word about their products or services both locally and globally.

How can you make sure that a partner doesn't just take your lead/referrers, make the sale and leave you out of the picture? Use the following safeguards to protect your business...

1) If you are charging on a pay-per-lead basis, that's easy. Send a "cc" to yourself and make sure that your partner knows about it. Keep in mind that each incoming form has the IP of the sender at the bottom. Since both of you get the same number of forms, it's not difficult to keep track of them.

2) If you are charging per sale, do a spot-check every 20 leads or so. Just ask the selected contact how they got along with "such and such a boat charter" and did they treat them well, and how was the tour, etc. If they send back a similar response to this "We never took the tour," that's fine. But if they had a wonderful tour, it's time to have a frank conversation with your partner if he didn't pay you a commission for this lead-to-sale.

It's important that you lay out clearly the ground rules ahead of time so that the relationship is beneficial for both parties right from the start. If you have any doubts whatsoever, drop a partner immediately.

Don't waste your time... go for quality. Only a fool would try to cheat you out of a commission (the golden egg) if they know that the goose that lays them will move over to a competitor as soon as s/he feels cheated.