What Is Your Cost Per Lead
A lot of affiliate marketers and product owners talk about how big is their list.
Or how many leads (contacts) they have.
But not many people talk about the cost per lead. How much they paid to build that big email list.
If you are in this game for the long run, you have to know your numbers and the cost per lead is one of the most important.
How to calculate your Cost per Lead
Normally if your tracking is properly setup, you should be able to see the CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) either in your tracking software or in your traffic source (more about that later on).
Let me give you a simple example in case your tracking is not setup properly.
If you spend $10 on ads and you get 5 leads (emails) then your cost per lead is $2 ($10 / 5 = $2).
Simple calculation anyone should be able to do.
I really hate it when people talk about CTR or CPC.
What really matters is the CPA. How much you have to spend to acquire a lead.
I wouldn't mind having a low CTR and/or a high CPC if my cost per lead is low.
Let me give you some more examples about how people usually get more leads into their list.
A lot of people rely on Solo Ads to increase their list size.
But…
How much is the cost per lead of a Solo Ad?
Buying a Solo Ad means paying someone else to send an email to his subscribers to send them to one of your squeeze pages.
I will take this table from soloadsx.com as a reference for conversion rates and cost per clicks.
On average when you buy 100 clicks from a Solo Ad seller you pay around $65 which means you have to pay $0.65 per click.
Some Solo Ad sellers are cheaper, others are more expensive.
The conversion rate of a squeeze page is usually around 40%. As before, sometimes higher, sometimes lower.
So let's do some math.
100 clicks at 40% CR means 40 new leads.
So the cost per lead is
$65 / 40 = $1.625 per lead.
What do you think about this?
You are paying $1.625 to get a lead.
Bear in mind some sellers are more expensive and some squeeze pages do not convert as high as 40%.
Is it worth it?
It depends I would say.
You have to keep in mind that people who are on Solo Ads lists are being hammered all day long to click on links in their emails and sent to squeeze pages.
If you want to buy and sell clicks, maybe this is something you should consider.
I am not a big fan of Solo Ads.
Bing Ads Cost Per Lead
As for me, I have been getting some consistent results with many ad platforms at cheaper costs than Solo Ads.
Here is an example of a Bing Ads campaign I am running.
As you can see, my cost per lead or CPA is just $1.5 and I am just getting started with this Bing Ads campaign.
I am split testing two squeeze pages and two ads per ad group. As I always recommend.
So with optimization I should get a lower cost per lead over time.
I am only targeting tier 1 countries with my ads.
And the best part of all, these fresh new leads are most probably not in a Solo Ad list :).
Conclusion
I'd recommend you get your own traffic and leads whenever possible.
Don't rely on others to get you leads.
It is not as complicated as it might seem and with the proper guidance I am sure you can also do the same.
Keep in that if you only buy Solo Ads, your leads will be hammered daily with new offers.