After a lot of hard work, we are very happy to introduce Matchpoint to the world. Matchpoint is a new way for consumers to connect with providers of products and services. We’ve been busy creating Matchpoint in response to a few trends that we are seeing on the Internet today:

The explosion of web content makes it easy to find products but not service providers

If you have recently had to find a service provider then you know that it’s a time consuming (and frustrating) experience. We’ve all been there having to wade through endless search results and web sites only to make a bunch of phone calls that may or may not ever get returned.

After all that work, most people quickly give up on the dream of being able to sit back and choose between multiple providers and proposals and are lucky if they find a single qualified provider.

It’s not safe to provide your personal information when filling out most web forms

There are a lot of web sites that claim they can help you “get a quote” or “find a provider.” What these sites don’t tell you is that they make their money by selling your personal information off to all manner of direct marketing companies who in turn subscribe you to to an endless barrage of unwanted e-mails and phone calls.

It takes a lot of “know-how” to convert clicks into leads

If you are a business looking for new customers you are probably buying clicks for various keywords on major search engines like Google or Yahoo. Many businesses have realized that it takes a lot of work to convert those clicks into valid sales leads because not every click is made by a qualified consumer. You need to have a well designed web site, optimize your bidding strategies, and then there is all that click fraud to deal with. With the cost per click rising on engines like Google, businesses need to put more effort than ever before into converting clicks to leads that their sales force can actually use.

Display advertising doesn’t work for every publisher

Most web sites and publishers rely heavily on Google AdSense or banner ad networks to generate income for their web sites. These advertising solutions work great for some web publishers but just do not generate enough revenue for others. Many publishers are looking for other ways to monetize their web sites but can’t afford to invest huge amounts of time or resources.

Introducing Matchpoint

Matchpoint solves a lot of these problems:

• It’s a quick, easy, and safe way for consumers to connect with providers of products and services that they need.
• It is a revolutionary new way for service providers to get introduced to consumers that meet their exact target new customer profiles.

As a consumer who is looking to find someone that can provide a service, all you have to do to get introduced to up to five service providers is fill out one of our short qualification web forms and confirm your interest.

The Matchpoint marketplace protects everyone’s privacy by facilitating these introductions via our proprietary “proxy e-mail” system. This allows us to guarantee that your personally identifiable information is never shared with providers, and keeps you in control of who has the ability to contact you.

The anonymous nature of our introductions also helps providers close new business because we guarantee introductions to the most qualified, interested, and happy consumers on the Internet. For providers, there is nothing worse that contacting someone who is angry or annoyed because they are being flooded with spam or phone calls.

Speaking of providers, it doesn’t matter if you are a Yoga studio, a real estate broker or a major insurance company. Any kind of provider can use Matchpoint to get introduced to new customers. All you have to do is set up an account, define your target new customer profile and set the maximum price you are willing to pay for an introduction. If you are interested in setting up an account, let us know. We can usually get your account setup the same day.

Publishers can participate in the Matchpoint marketplace as well by adding Matchpoint qualification forms to their web sites. Just choose the provider keywords/categories that think compliment your content, cut and past our widget into your web page, and we’ll serve up the right form and do the rest. Try it out by signing up for a publisher account.

What’s Next?

We’ve rolled out the base marketplace but are not yet enabling a consumer to get matched with providers at Matchpoint.com. instead, our qualification forms can only be found on our publishers’ web sites. As more and more providers sign up for accounts you’ll be seeing a wider variety of qualification forms all over the Internet.

Also, we haven’t yet enabled the self-service sign up process, so you’ll have to actually speak with one of us in order to get started. Don’t worry, we won’t keep you on the phone all day.

We have a whole lot of things planned, so subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date as we roll out more features in the coming weeks.