I fucking hate payday loans. Been trying to enter the market for years. Nobody at the networks want to speak on how the fuck to make it fly whilst paying in excess of $5 per click.
You can run the same exact positions and keywords as the guys running @ the top now and you will get eaten alive unless you are monetizing the absolute fuck out of the leads and especially the "not leads" - and then you better make sure you are getting a remotely competitive payout.
I've spent a good deal trying to break in. There's a good ol boys club that pretty much has the industry on lock and they don't seem to want to make new friends.
The metrics are completely fucked and the whole time you'll have AM's at these payday companies telling you to just push push push.. we gotta figure out where your lead quality is...etc etc - The problem is that it doesn't fucking matter. You can do anything you want, bid as high as you want - replicate and/or even replace the top site and you leads will still sell for $2 while some other asshole is getting $100.
This has been my experience with LeadFlash and PartnerWeekly both - I've worked personally with Chipmunk off and on for 3 years and he's a stand up guy but there is another layer to payday that the AM's and networks don't seem to be aware of. It's the unknown combined with the "known" fact that some guys get $70 average leads while others get $2 leads and the traffic comes from the same place.
It's seems to barely even be about providing a lead now - it's more about making sure your form is setup in a manner as such to massage the lead into being worth more than it typically would be by making some fields required and some not, defaulting the fields to the best case scenario, etc. Then you can cram a bunch of green dot upsale garbage directly up the consumer's asshole for another few bucks if you're feeling lucky.
.... and you'll probably still only make half your money back.
/rant
