What is an Advertising Co-op?

In short, a co-op is when a group of people who are in the same business or product get together and share the cost of an advertisement.

Usually, when people do co-ops, the price of the advertising is too expensive for them to pay for by themselves, so they take the total price and divide it into an affordable one amongst a group of team mates. Then you would ask if anyone is interested and reserve slots for those that are. Once all the slots are filled, you ask for the payment and then send it in to the company you are advertising with.

I don’t guarantee anyone a certain amount of leads. I take the requests and as soon as the co-op is filled, I tell everyone they can send me payment. First person to pay gets first lead, second to pay gets second lead, etc.

Example: I know someone who does a co-op in American Baby and she gets around 240 hits to her site per month. If you were to get that many and divide them up among, say 15 people you are doing a co-op with (including yourself), then everyone would get at least 14 leads. And then in the order they paid, the people who paid sooner would get the difference. You can also look into url rotators so you don’t have to forward leads. And again, they are all company specific leads.

But that’s just an example. Your results could be more or less…

I just want to make sure you do understand most have to pay for advertising in advance. For example, if you are doing a magazine co-op and the issue comes out in November - you would be paying for a slot in the November issue, which comes out the end of October, but you would probably have to make payment in September. So keep in mind you wouldn’t be receiving leads until November.