James Stone and Ralph Martin launched Lead Gusher in 2009 as a lead generation platform for multilevel marketing. The system, created by the two internet marketers, claims to advertise over 9,400 home-based business opportunities, primarily through search engine placement tactics.
Both Stone and Martin have backgrounds in internet marketing and present themselves as experts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Lead Gusher aims to help MLM marketers promote their businesses via search engines. This creates an "organic lead," where a prospect finds the business through advertising efforts rather than the other way around.
Lead Gusher generates leads for MLM businesses by integrating an autoblog into a capture page. An autoblog is a content generation strategy. It scrapes material from other websites and publishes excerpts to create "new" content on an existing site.
Content scraping occurs either directly from a website or through a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. An RSS feed lists website updates that can be read or scraped for new material. Search engines favor new content. A simple capture page with an advertising pitch often ranks poorly for targeted search queries. Lead Gusher aims to boost capture page rankings. It recycles content from other websites to make its capture pages appear dynamic and frequently updated.
The Lead Gusher program operates as an affiliate system. Members pay $49 to upgrade their membership. Upgraded members then qualify for a one-time $22.50 commission for each new member they sign up. This $22.50 commission applies only when recruited members also upgrade their own memberships. Free sign-ups do not generate commissions. Basic Lead Gusher membership is free. Upgraded members receive advertising rotation through the company's private advertising efforts. Lead Gusher also states they will personally rev