We do quite a bit of online marketing for both our internal products as well as affiliate products. A common affiliate offer and online marketing product is “Cash for Gold”. You fill in a lead form and you are contacted by a gold liquidator. These offers are directed towards people who are in a cash crunch and need to liquidate their assets in order to survive. The worse the economy gets the better this offer will probably convert. Below are screen shots of the banner and landing page creative:

The above creatives are very very good. The landing page is very attractive with only a few fields to fill out and is somewhat generic. They truly emphasized “less is more” The banner creative is simple and to the point, but could probably use a more attractive female and the color scheme should match the landing page.

I was recently in Florida visiting some family and picking up a new convertible. My aunt and uncle have a few friends that are senior citizens and I was amazed at how many of them live month to month on social security and other fixed income cash flow; and boy do they love the race track. It was sad to see so many poor senior citizens at the race track gambling away their rent and food money. Anyhow, I was amazed to see how many of them had gold, diamonds, and other vintage jewelry that could probably be converted into cash. The company running the “cash to gold” offer is most likely Right Media/Yahoo and they get paid a CPA (cost per action) of probably $5 - $10 per lead filled out. I didn’t fill out the form, but I would imagine the user is immediately sent an email follow up and a phone call to close the deal. I think most people that mail in their gold are probably ripped off by the company and given an unfair price for their gold/valuables. If you try and dispute the amount given I would bet you have to pay for return shipping, handling, and insurance - which can be quite expensive.

It’s sad to see so many seniors, middle-class, and even poor people truly suffering from the recession the US is going through. I recently read a statistic that over 20 million Americans are using food stamps to help them eat. It’s even worse to see ruthless companies buying up their gold for pennies on the dollar.