The best place to market your lending services is directly on the Web site where users congregate to research their purchase. That’s why it’s so powerful to be an exclusive lender at Auto-By-Tel or the sponsor of the real estate section of Yahoo.

Some may prefer the do-it-yourself approach. Instead of paying $30 per thousand times your banner is shown to those searching on mortgages, develop the definitive mortgage resource for users in your target markets. If you’re in New Jersey, you could call it the New Jersey Mortgage Center at www.njmortgagecenter.com . Stock it with every article, payment calculator, and link you can find. Include real estate listings, a real estate agent finder, and census data for every neighborhood in NJ.

We aren’t necessarily against this strategy. It seems to be working for Salem Five through its innovative homelistings.com www.homelistings.com , which carries nearly 3,500 home listings in greater New England. Though even Salem Five outsourced site maintenance to the Lara Consulting Group, www.lara.com . The problem with the do-it-yourself approach, is the resource commitment to staying state-of-the-art in a content area tangential to your main strength, originating loans.

We think most financial institutions would be better off partnering with other companies that run mortgage Web sites. Perhaps working with them to create a completely private-branded version. Let someone else concentrate on cgi scripts and firewalls while you put together the best mortgage programs for online users.