Compulife's Term4Sale Web Site Counter Hits 1.5 Million

[Robert Barney]

Today Compulife's www.term4sale.com website counter ticked over 1,500,000. That's how many quotes the site has done since Compulife first added a counter to the site on January 1, 2002. The site has been in service since 1988. You can see its evolution here:

Internet Archive Wayback Machine​

Compulife does not sell life insurance. Compulife provides life insurance comparison software to thousands of subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. The purpose of the www.term4sale.com website is to give consumers the ability to do free life insurance comparisons and to obtain list of agents who use Compulife's comparison software to shop for their clients.

Subscribers to Compulife are entitled to 1 to 3 free zip code listings on the website, depending on the software license that they have purchased. Most subscribers can also purchase additional zip code listings for a nominal fee.

You can read about what our subscribers think of the listing at Term4Sale here:

http://www.compulife.com/agents.php​

And now subscribers to Compulife's comparison software can add their own personalized and customized version of Compulife's online quote system to their website for only $99 per year. You can read about that here:

Website Quotes​

If you are a subscriber to Compulife, and have not had our quote system on your website before, you can do so for FREE for 4 months. There is no obligation to purchase the online option at the end of 4 months. If you do purchase, the cost is only $99 per year. You have complete control over which companies your version of the software quotes on your website. You can read about that here:​

Monthly Bulletin​

If you are not a subscriber, you can get a 4 month FREE subscription to Compulife, and 4 months of our online quote system for FREE by obtaining a 30 day FREE trial and doing a tutorial. There is no obligation to buy anything after 4 months. You can read about that here:​

Compulife - 4 Months Free​

 

[Guest]

SPAM

Robert's advertisement should have been posted in the Offers section.

Also... who cares how many hits any website gets? Really! What a waste of perfectly good electrons.

Al3

 

[Robert Barney]

who cares how many hits any website gets?

This section is about Internet Web Sites and you telling me that "hits" are not an issue.

As to the information being spam, I am happy to move the posting to the other section if that is where others think it is more appropriate.

It seemed relevant to me. After all, would the ability to add term quotes to your web site be of interest to agents, and wouldn't the ability to try it for 4 months for free be news worthy to agents?

 

[Guest]

This section is about Internet Web Sites and you telling me that "hits" are not an issue.

Hits are not important. What is important is conversions. And as everyone knows any "hit counter" can be easily compromised. I can program a "bot" that will create a zillion hits on any website. Any 9th grader can do the same thing.

As to the information being spam, I am happy to move the posting to the other section if that is where others think it is more appropriate.

That is where your advertisement belongs. There was no "content" in your post beyond an attempt to sell us on the service. Why you didn't see that BEFORE you posted is beyond me. Or perhaps the intent was to SPAM the board? You are the only one who knows the answer. The rest of us can only speculate... as I just have.

It seemed relevant to me. After all, would the ability to add term quotes to your web site be of interest to agents, and wouldn't the ability to try it for 4 months for free be news worthy to agents?

The problem is that you were not just reporting about hits, you were engaged in SELLING us the Compulife service. Whether your "deal" is good or bad is not the issue. The issue is that you purposely tried to SPAM this board by NOT putting your post where you knew it should have been... probably figuring that due to your longevity and prestige in this industry, no one would have the courage to call you on it.

I'm not afraid to speak truth to power.

Your post was SPAM in my opinion, no matter how you try to spin it.

Al3

 

[Robert Barney]

Hits are not important. What is important is conversions. And as everyone knows any "hit counter" can be easily compromised. I can program a "bot" that will create a zillion hits on any website. Any 9th grader can do the same thing.

That is where your advertisement belongs. There was no "content" in your post beyond an attempt to sell us on the service. Why you didn't see that BEFORE you posted is beyond me. Or perhaps the intent was to SPAM the board? You are the only one who knows the answer. The rest of us can only speculate... as I just have.

The problem is that you were not just reporting about hits, you were engaged in SELLING us the Compulife service. Whether your "deal" is good or bad is not the issue. The issue is that you purposely tried to SPAM this board by NOT putting your post where you knew it should have been... probably figuring that due to your longevity and prestige in this industry, no one would have the courage to call you on it.

I'm not afraid to speak truth to power.

Your post was SPAM in my opinion, no matter how you try to spin it.

Al3

You never cease to amaze me. When you get a dislike on for someone, as you have for me, you just go over the top.

First of all, you speculate that I have manipulated the counter at www.term4sale.com.

Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. In the original posting I gave you two pieces of evidence that refutes that directly.

First, I gave you a link to archive.org which keeps a running history of our web site pages sampled at different times though the years. While the ealier versions of the counter do not register, the later ones do and you will see that the counter has gone up predictably during the years. We get about 800-1000 hits per day on average, modest for some sites, darn good for others. Try to remember, this is life insurance, not concert tickets.

NOTE: Try googling "term insurance" and see how www.term4sale.com comes up:

term insurance - Google Search

Try "life insurance comparisons":

life insurance comparisons - Google Search

Those are not paid results, they are in the free listings. Are you going to suggest that my grade 9 staff and I have fooled google?

Second, I gave you a link to my testimonial page where customers have shared their experiences, many having made sales as a result of calls from consumers who visited www.term4sale.com.

Assuming that you are not a complete neophyte about the insurance business, and I would never accuse you of that, you know that the idea that a consumer would call an agent to buy life insurance is a pretty rare event. And even so, agents listed at www.term4sale.com have gotten those calls and have made sales. And I can assure you we have been told about them by many more agents than will give us testimonials and the reason for that is simple. They don't want other agents getting listed and competing for the calls that they are getting.

Another bit of information I didn't share is that we have a lot of subscribers who have routinely paid for additional listings and who keep coming back year after year. We limit the number of listing that any one subscriber can purchase and I have a group of subscribers who would buy a lot more if we didn't limit them. Of course I can't prove the anecdotal information in this paragraph, so you will just have to take my word for it. You should be able to rely upon the information preceding this paragraph, as it is independently verifiable.

And it's a good thing I did provide that information because I needed it to address the accusation that you have made. I should note for those who are unaware, that Al3 feels the need to accuse me of many different things. Al3 simply does not like me, and has been honest enough to tell me so.

Yes, I do "sell" the Compulife service. But after 27 years of doing so, I think it is fair to say that the service must meet our customers expectations or we would have been out of business long ago.

While you may be quite prepared to wait for hours to have information provided to you by your GA, my subscribers generally want their information instantly and they want it from a source that is objective. When someone subscribes to Compulife they get an unbiased look at the market, not the view of the market that their GA wants them to have.

Now I don't fault a GA in tailoring their quotes to feature the companies that they market. After all, the GA is not in the business to send agents up the street. But Compulife has a different mission, we sell information, NOT life insurance. And some folks actually value the job that we do, even if Al3 doesn't.

And lots of GA's prefer Compulife to ipipeline because our web quotes can cost as little as $298 per year (that's our PC based software and web quotes combined), which I understand to be a whole lot cheaper. Al3 is not the only person on the planet that doesn't want to pay too much for something. I am a great ebayer, and around my house I am known as ebob. I too like to get a deal but I don't expect to get stuff for nothing.

And at the prices we charge any agent can afford to have quotes on his/her web site and we have a number of agents, who have been using Compulife on their web site, who make money because of it. So while GA's may be able to afford to pay much higher prices, agents do not have the same resources and can get the same bang for a much smaller buck.

And finally, if folks other than Al3 complain about the announcement that I have made, being in the wrong section, I am happy to pick it up and move it. But forgive me for thinking that Al3 has an axe to grind and others may be less concerned about whether or not my posting was/is spam.

What say the rest?

 

[somarco]

Complaints by others?

Hmmmmmm. . . .

The silence is deafening.

 

[Newby]

You will not want to argrue with AL#3!
he is highly educated and vastly superior to all the Neo-cons.
Your software will be reported to the proper government authorities or possibly ACORN!

 

[GreenSky]

I make about one sale a year from that worthless consumer site. Don't know what to do with the average $400 commission.

I think I've posted this before, but my guess is that the total commission I have already received will pay for Compulife until the end of time (or at least the end of Al's time).

Rick

 

[Guest]

And finally, if folks other than Al3 complain about the announcement that I have made, being in the wrong section, I am happy to pick it up and move it. But forgive me for thinking that Al3 has an axe to grind and others may be less concerned about whether or not my posting was/is spam.

OK. I understand now. The rules and conventions of this venue do not apply to everyone. Robert did what so many others in the past has done here, which is to post an advertisement about his product... but it's OK?

Compulife is a good product and those who like it, like it. I tried it. I thought it was OK. I don't think it was worth the price but if others do, fine with me.

My complaint here is that his announcement and his subsequent follow-up was and is SPAM. A couple of years ago STI would have posted an apropos graphic for us to enjoy but he stopped doing that.

Robert's problem as I see it is that his service/product is just too important for it to be "buried" in the Offers section. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe because he is Robert Barney and that should be, as they say in court, "asked and answered."

Yeah, it's true I don't much like Robert. But that is not the issue here. He basically spammed this venue and gets away with it because (my guess) everyone else here thinks of him as some kind of "god."

Let's face it, if had been Oleg or one of the lead vendors or someone from iPipe or someone else with a software product, you folks would go postal dumping your vehemence on them.

So I guess we can look forward to postings here with titles like:

Compulife's Web Site Re-Designed
Compulife Gets 100 New Hits Today
Compulife Endorsed By GreenSky
Compulife Owner Goes Shopping at WalMart
Compulife Site Gets 200 New Hits Today

Rationalize it any way you want... and if you wish to buy off on Robert's rationalization for spamming the venue, fine. But I believe that spam is spam and that all this crap about Compulife getting web hits is just a ploy on the part of Robert to post a long-winded commercial advertising message.

If you folks want to cut him a special deal, knock yourself out. But like I say, spam is spam and if you think that his post was anything other than an advertisement then either he is a greater communicator than I give him credit for... or you folks are pretty gullible.

Robert can play the "Al's out to get me" card and that will play well with many of you... but all I ask is that you read his original post and tell me that it is not spam... and that had it not been posted by Mr. Robert Barney, that you all wouldn't have protested.

If I stand alone, I stand alone. I'm not afraid of Robert Barney. In my opinion he has spammed the board. His post should have been in the Offers section. He should post "You know folks, I think maybe I see what Al means. Please pardon the post and I'll move it to the Offers section."

But that won't happen.



Al3

 

[Newby]

Exactly!

Give it to him AL#3 !

How dare someone accuse AL#3 of having a chip on his shoulder against anyone.

He just doesn't like people who:

1. Have less formal education than him, ESPECIALLY if they are still smarter then him

2. Have different political views then him (which leaves everyone except Oprah, Hillary, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Mahre)

3. Make money through hard work or smart work or employ people and make a profit off of their labor or think that people should work for a living IF they are able-bodied.

4. Have inherited less money than AL#3 (AL#3 will have you know that he has made WISE investments through his Edward Jones full service broker.)

5. Doesn't use a MAC

6. Likes Frank's YIO program (Opps! I just gave Frank some free advertising!)

7. Thinks that the government has no business being in business against their private citizens who are in business and generating taxes.

8. People who call Older-Americans "seniors" because AL#3 speaks for all and they don't like senior.

9. Christians

10. Every successful insurance agent (because AL#3 thinks they MUST be screwing people.)

Other than these few mentioned, AL#3 is a very fun loving guy and just has a need to keep this forum in order. He is just trying to help.