Years ago, email and zip submits used to be a great way for people just starting out in affiliate/internet marketing to learn. Unfortunately over the years, they have drastically changed into something that you should most likely stay far away from.
This might offend some, there are still some decent email submit companies, unfortunately the bad ones dramatically outnumber the good ones. Keep in mind, when I say this – affiliate networks have no control over this, this is strictly the email submit merchants.
Let’s start by actually looking at an email submit. Most people know the basics – if a visitor fill out your email, a lead should show up for the affiliate that generated the lead. So what happens with the visitor now? Typically after they fill out their email, they move on to the next page of a very long funnel and are asked to fill out the rest of their information such as name, address, phone number, etc. After this they are normally hit with a large funnel of different affiliate offers and eventually follow up emails as well. For the visitor to actually get the prize/product mentioned on the first page of the email submit, they need to complete a certain amount of offers in the back-end. As you can imagine, now many people will fill out all of the offers. Most will likely fill out none, which makes it difficult for the email submit merchant to make money.
It is very difficult for an email submit merchant to make money these days. People browsing the internet are typically more educated than years ago, the days of re-bills have helped ruin the trust of these people/visitors. The easiest way to increase profits from an email submit merchant is to only pay for a portion of the leads generated, I’m not saying all do this, but some definitely do. This is why you may or may not see a valid lead generate if someone fills out their email address. Keep in mind there are other reasons, if someone has already filled out an email submit from the same company (it might have a different landing page, different reward, etc) then they will not award a lead either. If someone comes from the same IP address or already has a cookie set, chances are that a lead will not be rewarded.
When you move away from email and zip submit to other offers that typically pay more money (and usually require more information), this type of behavior stops. You are more likely get get leads on an offer that pays $5+ than an email submit. Unfortunately it is also more difficult to get someone to complete these offers are they require more information.
If you are just starting out, I highly recommend staying as far away from email submits as possible. Focus on other offers, look for offers that pay $5+, they might be harder to convert, but at least if you get an actual lead, you are more likely to get credited for it.
