Thank you, WF! Just picked up a check for $2,917!

That's awesome dude! I myself am moving to the pay for lead model. I'm just tired of dealing with clients unless they want to really pay me what it's worth to help their business.

I'm getting pretty anti-client, as well. I'd originally intended on starting up an SEO/SEM firm, but just don't want the hassle of finding, dealing with, and keeping clients happy in the world of snake oil salesman. This is turning out to be a fairly hands off way of benefiting both of us. I'll eventually hire a call girl to handle the followup calls, if not take incoming calls too.

Pretty cool. It sounds like the business model redshifted (a forum member) uses. You may want to read up on some of his posts.

A full service contractor with high closing rates and a high hourly rate. Tempting!

misterme: I'm going to check out his posts now.

I've gotten a couple requests to share the site, and have to decline. I know it's the easiest way to show what I'm doing, but what I did isn't groundbreaking at all. I've lost a lot of money from sharing my sites, so I just can't do it anymore.

The site is very basic. Has a junk header I threw together (looks like a blind guy did it), sitting on the basic Genesis framework child theme (whatever comes with it when you activate it). Every page is laid out like:

-----------------------------------------------

IS YOUR ROOF LEAKING OR IN NEED OF REPAIR?
CALL NOW (904) ### ####
Company Name, Keyword

Picture Of Roofing

Residential and Commercial Services Provided
- List of Services

CALL NOW (904) ### ####
Company Name, Another Keyword

How To Hire A Roofing Contractor
- 400 Words on hiring a contractor.

CALL NOW (904) ### ####
Company Name, Another Keyword

-----------------------------------------------

The homepage is a static page, with a list of all the different contractors and a small blurb for each. The internal pages don't link to each other at all, so navigation is pretty minimal.

It's a basic directory setup. All of the links are from guest posting (PostRunner). It is actually embarrassing to show the site to people I'm calling, but it is designed to do one thing: generate phone calls. I'm not a web or graphic designer, and am not some marketing genius. I just ran with an idea and it shot me down twice, then finally paid off.

How do you verify the amount the client is making from the job? for example you say he made 30,000 from a job... how do you verify he didn't make more then that? or that he will even tell you when he is getting jobs to avoid paying you all together?

I'm basically wondering how you know how much the client is really making, you can track the calls so you know leads are coming to him, but how do you know when he closes a deal and or how much that deal is worth to calculate your 10% or do you just hope and wish they keep their word and actually pay you?

I just answered this in a PM, too. Pretty much, I'm working on a handshake. I'm not dealing with fly by night operations, these guys have been in business in this city for a long time. I'm also building personal relationships with them, so we're operating on trust for the time being.

I am hoping that the contractors aren't going to risk their reputation over a referral fee. It's also a long term goal, getting known in my city as the guy to go to for new customers. As long as the information I have matches what the customers and contractors are giving me, and the contractors are profiting I don't foresee any issues.

I haven't had to do it yet, but the possibility of calling customers and using my site name, asking how their service with xx contractor was, and whether work was performed on time, if they were professional, etc. is always there. I've also made it very well known that I can follow up with leads at any time.

If I start feeling like the contractor isn't 100% I'll dig in. Like I said, though, I'm thinking long term with this so if a contractor wants to tarnish their name in this city, it's on them. I'd rather leave greed out of the equation (after all, I'm only in this $10) and keep things on a personal level. The way I'm working can't really be scaled, but there are other ways to handle calls, though.

I dig what you're saying, and I'd be lying if I didn't have some of the same thoughts. I hadn't thought about changing them over to CPL after it's proven, though. Hmm.

I like the idea of commissions for big sales, like roofing, remodeling jobs, etc. The cost per call I can see working better for pest control, pool cleaners, lawn maintenance, where the monthly payments are smaller. And then using cost per lead for professionals like dentists, chiropractors, cosmetic surgeons.

I'll mull it over. I'm going to put together an agreement for now. I definitely see what you're saying, though.

Edit: I just thought about it, and this guy didn't make $30,000. He has to buy the materials, pay his crew of 8, pay for getting rid of the materials, and pay me. He's going to be bringing home about $5,000 off the job.

I think 10% is what made it such as easy sale for them. They know they're not out any money if they're having a bad day. That part of it does suck, for me, but I feel like the honor system builds my reputation and keeps anyone from doubting me, or what I do.

@InsuranceGuy - Congratulations!, Yup...the lead gen model with zero risk for the customer works nicely, and as you've discovered, if you drop the "what ifs" and just deal with reputable folks, you'll find you don't have to stress about that too much.

If a client finds a honey hole...they sure as hell don't want you wanderin' off and given your precious leads to someone else.

I'd recommend incorporating the flat free up front (call it an admin fee or whatever) PLUS the monthly.

If a guy gets $30,000 from your efforts...you're worth it.

Only thing I don't like about that model is building the marketing collateral upfront, which I've also done in the past, and am in no way above, however...I just don't like it.

Now...about getting a "call girl" to do your bidding....let me know how that works out...that could be the next big thing, lol.

Ever heard of "Uncensored Sales Strategies" by Dan Kennedy and Barrows?

Just randomly popped into mind after your post, lol.

Great job, congratulations and best of luck on your entrepreneurial journey.

Regards

Los

I don't know if ya'll are being sarcastic or not..? lol, either way though, I wasn't talking about escorts! My girl wouldn't be too fond of an escort managing my phone lines.

I don't really care for building the collateral up front either, but circumstances over the last 6 months dictated my situation, and the work over the last 2-3 is finally showing some fruit. I had to do what I had to do. This was one of those projects where I figured I didn't have anything to lose but time, and I have plenty of it to spare.

I got a couple PMs too, I guess I wasn't completely clear. I only used SEO to build the traffic up. I used PostRunner to build the links I've built so far. I don't have the funds for PPC, and haven't figured out how to approach this type of site from a social angle, so it's all strictly G, Yahoo and Bing so far.

P.S. I'm not pimping PostRunner. I got grandfathered in for free from a program I used 5 years ago, and it still works for ranking so I still use it. I'm not here to pawn off affiliate links or write WSOs.

Hey buddy, congrat's to your check but I think that you have to change some or the roofer will go out of business very fast and you have no client anymore :-)

I'm in Offline and frankly, I couldn't pay a commission of 10% for a referral sales.

Margins are not allowing that, even if the sale is send by you, the biz has overhead costs etc. which let you pay usually 5 % for a sales rep which ACTIVELY work on closing the sale.

Referral business would pay somehwere between 2 - 3%.

I'm in the flooring business, related to contractor stuff.

Would you still do this is you would get 2 - 3%. still 600.- out of that 30k sale.

And how you track if he is closing the sale? Did you got the commission after he got paid or before?

I generate 80% of my new offline sales over my website, so I know that this is powerful.

G.

bwh1: Yeah I mentioned that above. I think he probably only profited $5k off this job after material, labor, and expenses. We're operating on trust right now, so I can't 100% verify whether or not he made a sale unless I call up the leads I've generated. I don't have a problem doing it. I got paid my commission after he got paid.

As far as whether I would still do it for 2%-3%... it depends on how many times a month that 2%-3% happened. Like I said, I'm only in this project $10 and a hundred hours or so, so everything is profit to me.

Thanks. Great posts and a nice read, insuranceguy.

Excellent Results!

Congratulations man! I'm happy for you.

Well done buddy.

We moved to the Lead Gen model over a year ago and have not looked back. We however charge per lead as opposed to per sale.

Now all we provide is Training and Lead Gen services. Only have to deal with the current clients that we had on monthly retainers prior to moving solely into Training and Lead Gen.

Dealing with client headaches was always a nightmare. Lead Gen puts us a lot more in charge and builds our asset base.

Keep up the good work.....and don't slow down.

Riz

What type of training are you talking about? I have been considering offering SEO/SEM/PPC consulting, instead of doing the actual work on the client's websites. Is this what you're talking about? I feel like lead gen + consulting go together well, unless I'm missing something?

Thanks ya'll! I've been putting together different ways to make it more hands off, easy to track, and remain profitable for both of us. I'm going to be investing a portion of this check back into the site, I just haven't figured out where at, yet.

I've spent the last 15 hours putting together videos for all of the different contractors on the site. It's the same keyword the pages on my site are targeting. I'm going to write up some decent descriptions and upload them all tomorrow. The video captions are generic, but I'll edit them when I get more contractors on board with the pay-per-lead program.

I'm also going to put together a Facebook page tomorrow, and get the content shared for later. I also want to implement a Maps widget onto each page, as well as scraped reviews (good idea? bad idea?)

Is there any other methods to generate some free traffic, until I get money flowing enough to use PPC? I'm still building links, but ranking the site isn't going to happen overnight, and ranking YouTube videos is new to me so I don't know what I'm getting into with that.

Just an update. I'm taking the next few days to put some more hours into this project, and am going back to the 9x12 at the beginning of next week.

I just built links to the site. I don't really care who the competition is. It's hard to outrank those types of sites but it isn't impossible. Also, you don't need to be #1 to get traffic. I'll be using paid traffic once I get the call forwarding and tracking implemented properly.

If every keyword you target is eaten up by a big competitor then you may be right that it is too difficult to go after / not worth the time to do SEO. In the city I'm working, they only rank for probably 10% of the keywords I'm going after, and even those don't really matter. The pages they're on don't have any links usually, so you can outrank them in time and with enough QUALITY, SINGLE, HAND BUILT inbound links.

I think I should clarify the type of SEO I am doing since I've been asked a few times. I spent 3 years spamming. Any software that built links had it's own box, I had 22 virtual assistants spamming links to 450 sites, and steadily bought fiverr gigs. That's not what I'm doing anymore.

I am building single links from guest posting on high authority, high quality sites. The network I'm using is PostRunner, but you can use any network you want to. Check the sites that you're posting to, if they have any content on there where it shows they just didn't care that it was keyword stuffed, poor grammar, or linking with heavy keywords to heavy SEOd sites then I don't want a link from it.

Those sites may be good now, but they won't be forever. A single link from a site that someone loves, and takes care of is worth more than 100 of the same links from sites that have loose guidelines on content they allow, and 1 of those lower quality links is worth more than 1,000 of the junk Fiverr gigs you can find. Whether you do this using one of the public networks (harder to find these types of sites) a semi-private network that has truly limited access, or building your own personal network, it doesn't matter.

I've only built 26 links to this site, with -1- exact match keyword to the homepage. The rest are click here, URL, post title, random blurb, with 4 partial match keywords. Again, all links have gone to the homepage. I also just added 16 YouTube videos with links back to each page on the site. I don't know if it will tank the rankings or not, but I have the funds for PPC now so if it does it isn't a huge issue. The site is ranking #3 and #4 on Bing and Yahoo for the main keywords, with a bunch more page 1 listings already. Google is still being iffy about it so it just broke into the top 100 for the main keyword. The rest aren't even in the top 500 yet.

The goal is to get this as automated as possible, and milk it for as long as possible. I don't want algo updates stressing me out every 6 months. Even building links this way carries some level of risk, but it's easier to manage than knowing the bucket will get tipped and wondering when it's going to happen. I got a lot of grey hairs at age 25 because of that the last time. I'd like to not repeat the same mistakes this time.

Congrats to you sir amazing thread.

Good job man! Happy that you have found conversions in such a quick time

Question though, how did you know he made a sale? Did he call you or you asked for an update?

JosephSu: He called me and told me he made the sale. That model isn't very dependable, you can probably see..

Devilfish: Stick at it. The only thing you fail at is the thing you give up on trying to make work. Don't keep running in circles, though. If what you're doing to the site(s) isn't working, find out why and pivot.

Analytics is all but useless these days. 90% of my traffic is (not provided). It seems like they're even filtering the traffic from Bing and Yahoo through their BS. I'm putting ad campaigns together with the same keywords I'm using on the sites, and then the general keyword itself.. ie: roofing, roofer, roofers, roof repair. All the ads are geo-targeted to my specific cities. I'm hoping that by paying for traffic, I'll be able to better track my SEO results. It may not be 100% accurate, but it's better than 90% not provided. :/

Glad I can help!