Marketing Credit Card & Financial Products: The Pros & Cons

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Mike, who wrote this guest post, is the creator of CreditCardForum.com.

A patriarch of a famous political family, Joseph Kennedy once said “If you want to make money, go where the money is.” Well, if you’re a blogger looking to make money I will tell you where it is… in the banking industry!  If you’re good at it, banks will pay you top dollar for the marketing of mortgages, credit cards, loans, etc. As someone who started a leading forum for credit card reviews, I will let you in on the pros and cons of making money in this niche.

Pro: You have plenty of options (and they work for most sites)

Even if you don’t have a blog about personal finance, I see no reason why you can’t advantage of these opportunities. Simply put, there are such a wide array of financial products available on the affiliate channels, I’m sure you can find at least a few that will work for your site, regardless of the niche you are in.

Let me give you an example: I know someone that has a website for plastic surgery message boards. Now you’re probably asking “How on earth can plastic surgery be related to financial services?” Well those cosmetic surgeries cost money and people need a way to pay for them, right? So what that webmaster did was setup a page to promote 0% credit card offers. Then when someone posted on the message board asking “how can I pay for my nose job?” or “where can I get a loan for my tummy tuck?” she would direct them to the page that featured the 0% cards.

Want more examples? Well if you have a blog about cooking, throw up a banner ad in your sidebar for a credit card that gives extra rewards at grocery stores. Do you write about travel? Then promote hotel and airline credit cards. In fact, if you have a popular travel-oriented site, banks may actually pay you an extra monthly fee for that banner, on top of the commissions you earn. Case in point- Chase pays me an extra monthly fee for featured placement of the Continental Airlines credit card on the forum.

The bottom line is regardless of the niche you’re in, there’s a good chance you can find a way to weave in financial products/services for some extra income. Here are several great ideas for how to present your affiliate links to readers.

Con: Banks are picky about the accuracy of their products/services

Probably the biggest drawback of promoting financial products is that you have to constantly keep the offers and details up-to-date. For example if the interest rate, signup offer, or rewards program changes for a given credit card, you are expected to update it immediately. And of course those things do change all the time, so you have to constantly make updates.

However this site is about “passive income” so I would like to share with you a strategy for marketing financial products in a more passive manner. First of all, if you don’t want to have the hassle of updates all the time then don’t write mortgage, loan, or credit card reviews. Instead, just slap up some banner ads for them. Why? Because banner ads usually don’t mention the nitty-gritty details like APRs, reward program details, etc. so you won’t have to change them nearly as often.

Pro: The commissions on financial products are usually high

More often than not, the amount of money you can make on converting traffic is quite high. For example, many credit cards will pay $50 or more per approved application. Those geared towards travelers like that Continental Airlines credit card I mentioned pay even higher. For credit score monitoring services, from my experience the payouts typically range from around $10 to $30 per conversion. In today’s post-recession era, I don’t personally know anyone currently marketing mortgages or car loans so I can’t tell you the numbers on those, but you can bet they aren’t too shabby either.

So let’s say you have a banner for a credit card that pays $50 per signup. If 1 out of every 20 clicks convert, then that’s $2.50 per click… probably more than the average amount you would be earning per click with Adsense, right? Of course I’m not claiming that route will always beat the ad networks but you should experiment, because sometimes it does and ultimately that means more money in your pocket.

Con: Due to the economy, credit and loan approval doesn’t come easy

Back during the heyday of say, 2007, banks would approve anyone with a pulse! Obviously that all changed with the financial crash and now in order to get approved for most credit/loans, you need to have stellar credit. For example, back in the day I remember people with score in the mid 600’s getting approved for credit cards like the Chase Freedom and now, I hear stories of people with relatively high scores in the mid 700’s that get denied. So nowadays the conversion rate is definitely lower than it used to be.

Pro: There are products/services not dependent on creditworthiness

Okay, so it’s probably not the best time in the world for me to be operating a site for credit card reviews, but luckily, there are other products/services I can market that are not dependent on having good credit. I’m talking about all the offers out there for credit scores, credit reports, credit rebuilding, and debt management. These are great alternatives to explore during economic times such as these.

The bottom line

Don’t get angry at the banks for getting all that bailout money during the recession. Instead, why not profit a little bit from it yourself? As long as your site isn’t in a sketchy niche (where the banks don’t want their ads) I bet there’s a good chance you could incorporate offers for one or more of the financial products I’ve mentioned on your blog for some extra income.

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