Pay Per Cal or How to Steal Traffic

Pay Per Call Affiliate programs are not new. Basically it means an affiliate gets paid when a consumer calls a given number. At least that is what is implied with it. The truth is that the affiliate gets paid whenever the advertiser feels like it. At least that is the impression you can get when you look at the numbers.

[caption id="attachment_4931" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Pay Per Call on cj.ringrevenue.com"][/caption]

Now, lets pick an example from the image above:Allstate Pay Per Call. The payout is $10 per call. BUT, there are a few restrictions: The duration of the call has to be 2 minutes and 30 seconds. That's pretty long for a call. Also the call has to be Mon-Sun between 7:00 am to 11:59 pm (Eastern Time).

That these restrictions are pretty tight is evidenced by the average earnings per 100 calls figure: $168.21. Now, my math tells me that a payout of $10 per call should yield somewhere in the range of $1,000, if 100 calls take place. But obviously that is false. 100 call result only in $168 revenue. Or to put it in different words: Over 80 % of the calls are not paid for by the advertiser.

From an advertiser standpoint this looks good, but that is a rather short sighted approach. Paying per call is a brilliant idea, but with these foul results, webmasters will soon realize that this is a borderline stealing scheme and stay away from it.

Despite these rather bad looking numbers, I'll give it a shot. It might very well be that my own results look far better.