Website for Lead Generation

[Justin Bilyj]

With as many plugin crashes, and backdoor holes in a lot of templates out there, I'd rather stick with my site... than have to deal with another one of these...
http://www.insurance-forums.net/forum/insurance-websites/wordpress-site-hacked-t42950.html
There is literally no difference between wordpress sites and a vistaprint except this:
-customization is better with wordpress, but I see a TON of unfinished sites out there that look like crap
-you can't alter the template code (but knowing it's vistaprint, I would assume they maintain it)

you can still put the stuff that matters seo wise up there, makes no difference...

 

[Alston]

For starters, I am surprised you got leads from a website on day one. How did you manage that?

Round numbers, 40%,

Don't answer phone or respond to voicemail, another 30 - 40%.

I get as many or more "don't answers" but I have code that validates addresses. If someone is not willing to give up their address, they might not be a viable prospect.

I think because I have this code, I get very few leads that are outright bogus.

I validate the address and email in real time while the consumer is completing my form. The address is validated to make sure that it is an address that the post office serves.

The software isn't perfect so I made a modification. If they enter the same address three times, it isn't validated the third time and they are allowed to complete the form.

It cost me less than a penny to validate each address. The drawbacks are:

You have to deposit $1000 or more up front to get the cost per validation down to under a penny.

You need someone who can program to make it work on your site.​

Data quality and compliance solutions | Intelligent Search Technology

I mail quotes. This costs me about a dollar each when you include labor (my ten-year-old earns his spending money stuffing my envelopes for 20 cents a pop), the inserts (business cards, magnet and rack card) and the postage, so sending fewer letters to bogus addresses saves me a lot of money over the course of the year.

Sending the quotes lowers my CPA. I lot of people who leave bogus phone numbers wind up calling me. My guess is that these people left bogus phone numbers on all the other sites they visited so I am not competing with other brokers.

I'd rather pay $11 per lead and sell one out of 10 than "save" a dollar, pay $10 per lead and sell one out of 20. ($10 per PPC conversion + $1.00 for the letter.) These are not my actual numbers; I'm just trying to make a point.

My form asks for but doesn't require phone numbers, but most people provide them anyway.

Email is validated to make sure that there are enough characters and that the at sign and period are in the right places.

 

[somarco]

Yes Justin, my site was hacked big time a few years ago. Had nothing to do with WP per se, but rather a plugin that used timthumb coding. Turns out this was a vulnerability with a lot of sites but with WP having the lions share of sites they were the ones that got hacked.

Since consolidating my sites and using WPEngine for hosting I have not had a problem.

 

[luxent]

Yes Justin, my site was hacked big time a few years ago. Had nothing to do with WP per se, but rather a plugin that used timthumb coding. Turns out this was a vulnerability with a lot of sites but with WP having the lions share of sites they were the ones that got hacked.

Since consolidating my sites and using WPEngine for hosting I have not had a problem.

I can still freshly remember the timthumb security fiasco! We were still using WooThemes back then and it was using timthumb. They were fast on patching it though. One advantage of using a paid theme. If there's a security issue, they have a team to fix it which usually takes a day or two.

 

[somarco]

In this case it wasn't the theme, which was a paid theme. Combination of the hosting service that did not monitor for malicious attacks, numerous sites with vulnerabilties on the same shared server and a lack up updated WP, plugins or both.

The way htacess was set up on most (all?) of the sites allowed the hackers to move freely from one site to the next.

It was a mess that required custom programming to block the hackers once they were booted. Kicking them out was no easy task since they were monitoring any change in the login password and would change it back within seconds of detecting the change.

 

[Bevo]

With as many plugin crashes, and backdoor holes in a lot of templates out there, I'd rather stick with my site... than have to deal with another one of these...
http://www.insurance-forums.net/forum/insurance-websites/wordpress-site-hacked-t42950.html
There is literally no difference between wordpress sites and a vistaprint except this:
-customization is better with wordpress, but I see a TON of unfinished sites out there that look like crap
-you can't alter the template code (but knowing it's vistaprint, I would assume they maintain it)

you can still put the stuff that matters seo wise up there, makes no difference...

Not exactly Champ, you're wrong on so many levels. And SEO wise stuff makes no difference?? Haha....it does while we outrank you all day long.

Ohio Medicare Plans....you're NO WHERE on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. I could build and rank a site within a week beating you.

Cheers buddy. You don't know what you're talking about and giving bad advice.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

I feel like the ghost of Dave Miller has arrived to haunt this thread just in time for Halloween.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

Not exactly Champ, you're wrong on so many levels. And SEO wise stuff makes no difference?? Haha....it does while we outrank you all day long.

Ohio Medicare Plans....you're NO WHERE on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. I could build and rank a site within a week beating you.

Cheers buddy. You don't know what you're talking about and giving bad advice.

A. Just started the site a couple of months ago, I don't plan on ranking for awhile champ

B. What does a wordpress site have that any other template site doesn't have with regards to SEO options besides robot txts.? NOTHING!

But I see you have built up a good following here on the site, many people can vouch for your sites. I must defer to Dave's Troll I guess....

 

[Floyd Arthur]

lol now I'm really confused. Isn't the whole idea of an ad to sell? Why would I want a "non-selling" ad? That just sounds counter-intuitive.

Forgive me for my ignorance. I am new to building websites, and advertising online.

Facebook Ads offers ad placements with different target actions like leading the users to your website or inviting them to like your page.

I think that is what he meant in "Non-selling" ads.

~ Floyd Arthur

 

[thecommercialguy]

Vistaprint (and/or squarespace, wix, weebly, etc) vs. Wordpress

Wordpress is going to let you customize your site later down the road once our industry figures out that a well customized site to qualify our target audiences with an automated sales funnel will eradicate our need to ever buy leads. Vista's capabilities will most likely limit you in these regards. However, since you're just getting started and familiarizing yourself with the environment, it might be more important to just get your ball rolling on building an online presence than not

Wishing you the best.

Hayato
closingcommercial dot com