Web Rental - How I Land Clients

Hi Rande,

Great post, thanks for the tips. Seems like the things that work are the most common sense.

Yeah it is all pretty straight forward and really easy to do.

My first webrental cost me $10 for my domain and I rent out 5 pages for $100 each so ROI is rockin'

Good solid strategy to get offline clients.

This here is also applicable when you want to provide other services like SEO.

Good work Rande, you're great

Can i see same example of your work?

Thank you

So you're getting people to agree to a 60-month lease where they are legally bound to pay you $15,000 to $90,000?

I like the web site rental model and have been working at it for some time. I've put together a number of WP blog sites that have first page (1, 2 or 3) rankings. These are showing up mostly in smaller cities with under 100,000 population and some with under 10,000 population. However, I've been a bit disappointed with the response (phone calls by prospective clients-I do legal work so I was testing this with my own services first). My pages are in the legal arena and my intent was to get feedback or a feel for the type of response a web customer who rents my site could expect with respect to phone calls and contacts coming from the site. I thought that would make a good selling point.

However, as stated above, I'm only getting a few sporadic phone calls from my good ranking sites. A few sporadic calls would likely not be too exciting to a prospective web customer and I doubt they would stay with the web rental too long without better results.

So I'm wondering what type of results are realistic to expect in the form of calls or contacts from end customers with top of the page Google rankings. (I 'm sure this depends a lot on the niche and the keywords, etc.)

In addition, I'm wondering what people are doing to make their WP pages (which, as you all know, are good for SEO and rankings but maybe not as customer friendly as other web pages) more enticing to attract the end cusomers. Without the end cutomers calling or contacting us, its hard to satisfy the web customers who rent the sites. Afterall, its results (calls and contacts from potential customers) that web rental customers are after.

Hope I'm not rambling too much but I assume there are a lot of other people out there with similar questions.

Any helpful comments or suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thanks - Bob M

Bob,

A few phone calls a month could be just fine depending on the business. It's always about the ROI. If they only get a few phone calls but each phone call is potentially worth thousands of dollars of income it would be worth it.

I have a client that is paying me $200 a month. Only gets 1 to 2 calls a month. But each phone call is worth $20,000+. Even if he only got one new customer in a year he is getting a 10 to 1 ROI.

By the way he is stoked with those numbers. He was running a 1/4 page ad in the classified ad paper and had not received a call in a year and a half. The first month the site was up he received 3 phone calls.

Very good post here. I've been in advertising for many years and I can say that you are taking a correct approach. For those prospects that don't seem to chatty as you mentioned, a way around that is to ask a few questions that gets them talking about their business and when they start talking/bragging, just let em keep talking and don't interrupt. Once a business owners opens up to you talking about their business you get on their good side.

Hello Rande, Great post!! I am just getting into local marketing and although my main focus was not to rent sites, I did buy dr. dans wso last week so this is another path I may take. My question is would you (or any other warriors here) mind putting up a link to one of your sites?

I would love to see some real life examples not just samples in a wso.

Thanks in advance.
Dwayne

Marcos,

I am starting to make website investments with my Roth IRA.

Do you have any tips about agreements that work within the Roth rules and working with your custodian?

Thanks.

so making money on the website not only from adsense or affiliate product sales, but they can in a way that you use also.

imagine if you have 3 websites in that way.

Super interesting post. As someone about to set off into offline marketing, this is supremely helpful.

Hi Rande,
Thanks for sharing your info with us.
A couple of questions:
a) Do you use Wordpress for this?
b) Are you using any special custom SEO plugin to rank the other pages?

Thank you, Marcos! I've got more questions :-)

Do you link those sites in Bellevue, Tacoma to the main Seattle site or between each other? Do you even build a site for Seattle?

Are those niches related or whatever brings easier and more money? And do you get domains for all of those 200 sites?

Thomas

Wow, I just finished moving house and got my internet switched on - thank god I could get emails on my mobile!!!

I see there are a number of questions and I will do my best to answer them.

Emma

Hey Rande, these are some solid strategies, and are things that i currently use in my business. Thanks for the post. Good tips and reinforcements even for experts.

SEO services will help in a big way in promoting websites, right? But, sometimes they are regarded as spam. How can it be prevented?

Are you monitoring the leads that the clients are getting when they rent the page? Are they getting calls from those that land on that page? Is there something you do with your WordPress setup and the content that put there with the clients info that makes people call the client more often?

Emma, this inspiring to me! Your twist on the local rental model is something I really have to look in to.

I sent you a pm

Hi Emma,

I had mentioned in an earlier post how inspiring this is to me, and I will re-read everything to see how to best incorporate the way you do things. I know you can only divulge so much information though, so as not to spoil things for your system. I would love to see an example, even if you could pm me a sample of something that looks "similar" to what you are doing site-wise - it doesn't have to be yours.

The reason it inspires me though, is that several of us warriors (about 50) bought into a local site method wso earlier this year. We backlinked our little hearts out, got most of the sites on page one - most in the top three for the keywords too. But the system was completely dependent on the wso poster's "team" to get the sites main ad block sold, and/or sites rented. It all made perfect sense originally, and we all thought for sure it would work, but not one site got rented. No one made a dime. We all just lost a lot of money.

I think having no control over the actual site rental process is where it fell apart - and was the most frustrating. We are about to have all the domains ownership handed to us to do with what we will. That means I will have some first page sites to work with out of the gate, so I'm just trying to decide how best to go about monetizing them. I was originally thinking more directory-type, but your method seems more intriguing.

I will have to read through again to make sure I understand better, but if I were to use Driving Schools Albuquerque as an example, I don't quite understand which business would get the home page, page one, two, etc. In other words, how the site would get structured so that clients would actually "want" to be on the site. Forgive me if I'm overlooking something simple - or as is often the case with me, over-thinking it ;-)

-Michael

Thanks for an interesting post!

This is an interesting topic and I can think of a few issues to question :-)

1. Whilst I do understand that prospective clients will be excited about the opportunity to be found on a site near the top of Google (where they currently don't rank anywhere near), but do they have any issues that other companies, namely their rivals, are also featured on the site also?

2. With the structure you have in place:

Keyword 1 Big town
Keyword 1 suburb 1 of big town
Keyword 1 suburb 2 of big town
etc etc

What if more than 1 of the interested clients reside in the same suburb and so would want to lease that page? And alternatively, what if you don't get any takers on certain suburbs?

3. Are clients not too fussed that they don't get listed on the home/main page of the site? I know you can give them this option for a higher fee, but some people expect somethin for nothin.

4. What's stopping the home/front page targetting "Keyword 1 Big Town" just being a directory like page with all the businesses listed on there?

Thanks Emma! While a visual would be helpful of course, your explanation helps a lot.

Wondering if you would get better results if you had the domain:

- city keyword
- keyword city

Ellen, in those cases, what is to stop you form offering Google Places to those clients?

I have an website too which i bought and built some time ago and it ranks on first page for his keyword.
For some reason Google showed me around 500 exact searches per month but my site doesn't get any visitors. I only got 1 lead once and i tried to offer it for free, but no one seem interested at that time.
I am doing little research to find some close keywords to rank to get some traffic and leads.
The thing is how you close the clients, what do you say over the phone, how do you engage them?
I live in Europe and they are in US? this can be done right?

Thanks for all the ideas in this thread.

Any other layouts that is working for you guys that you could share?

Hiya!

Thought I would pop back for an update.....

My husband used to be a Tiler, his site was the first one that I ever built, not the most flash but it gets the job done!!! I never even added pictures into the gallery!

The website is Tilers Brisbane

It cost me $10 to build - $5 for the header and $5 for the customization on the theme....

$10 in $5000 out
OR
$200pm passively for as long as I rank

Now that is what I call SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The google places listing when searching for the KW - Tilers Brisbane or Brisbane Tiler. Page 1 position 1 for those juicy KWs - which is where the true action is

We have moved from Brisbane now and still get calls for this business, so I decided to rent it out..... I had to call 4 Tilers before I landed 1 who was KEEN AS to take it on!

I have decided to rent it out for the next 3 weeks free of charge so that the Tiler can see first hand the searches and calls he will get, then he has the option to buy for $5000 or rent for $200 pm.

I think I am a little personally attached to this site and niche as this was our business and not one of my normal web rentals......

Thought you guys who were following this thread may have liked the update

Emma

Need more customers as subject sound spammy to me even i need more customers.
But i will likely to ignore those subject which earn big money , earn more money , get more traffic and so on .
Because i think it need something to prove rather than show the result in subjects.

Years ago, when lead generation companies (construction) started to pop up here in the great Northwest (US), they had a simple and very successful opening line. Something like this:

"Hey Tom, you're a tile setter right? We have jobs for you. Are you interested in more work?"

Then, they'd invite you to their office to "explain" how it works... The point I'm trying to make is that "language matters".

If you don't like "more customers", try something else like "potential project for a tile setter..." or "potential bid request", "tile work available", "potential tile project"

Try to approach this from what the service is about, rather than "growing business or customers'. It's all about opening initial email.

Hope this helps,

Thomas

Hey All,

Not trying to jack this thread from Rande, just wanted to share my recent experience.

So, I finally landed my first web rental client. My expertise is in SEO and Video Marketing, so I thought this might be a good route for some residual income. Since I've never done this before, I decided to start small just to see if I could make it work. So, here are some insights and take-aways.

1. Keyword research: I decided to start with a local niche {keyword phrase + city}. The primary keyword only has 36 Exact Matches searches/month and the other 4 secondary keywords get less than that.

2. Domain: Bought the ".net" version of my Exact Match Domain

3. Website: Think leadgen website. I used the Twenty-Ten WP theme and threw up 5 pages of relevant content - which I literally copied/pasted from other websites....(Yes, besides plagiarism, I would call that duplicate content, wouldn't you?) Lesson: Don't believe everything you read about "duplicate content" b.s. - Listen, if it's RELEVANT, then it's all good.

4. Once content was on each page along with proper optimization of Title and H1/H2 tags, I decided to use the right sidebar area for the "call to action". I put the call tracking phone number at the top, and used a Wufoo form for the contact/leadgen submission. In the Wufoo form, I required name, address, phone, "commercial" or "residential", and also required the prospective clients to check at least one type of service (within this specific niche). Now I can see how many calls and how many leads this site gets for future purposes.

That's it for on-page stuff. Now, let's take a look at off-page:

1. Created image, video, and picture sitemaps using some wp plugins.

2. Submitted these sitemaps to Google webmaster tools.

3. Created some videos and optimized them. Specifically, these videos were all the same. Basically, I took a single image and added some music. The reason for the single image is because it allows me to control the thumbnail that appears in Google SERPS (it's always the same eye-catching image). Then I optimized each video title for each of the five main keywords I wanted to target and then started to focus on other cities in the surround area. I think I have about 28 videos now. They all look the same, they are just optimized for different cities and are all just different lengths (I add 1 second to each video still - that's how I can upload the same video over and over)

4. Hopped on over to fiverr, and grabbed a few gigs for backlinks. I recommend you grab a few that give you 100-200 backlinks to high from High PR websites. Focus on QUALITY not quantity. And point them to every page on your site - not just the home page. Also, throw some gigs at your videos.

5. Less than 2 weeks, my site and videos are now ranking on 1st page of Google.

So, how did I get a client?

1. I first made a video using screen-o-matic outlining the ranking results and the benefits to potential clients who would want to rent the site.

2. Then I put up an ad on Craigslist....actually, it took about 2 weeks of ads on Craigslist (believe me, it was a chore).

Finally someone called. I ended up meeting at a StarSchmucks to close the client. Got them on a 4 month contract at $99/month. Oh and when I asked the client HOW he found me, it was from YouTube. He said my videos because he was looking at his competition. I had an overlay on my video that said: "Attn: {contractor niche} - Rent this video listing for YOUR business and get more customers!"

Take Aways:

1. Don't go for seasonal niches. Next time, I'm going for something that's gonna be paying me year round. True, at the end of the contract I could simply sell this client the website or just wait till next year and rent it out again.

2. Understand the cost-per-client for the niche you want to work. After I put in some work on the site/videos I discovered that these particular type of contractors prefer commercial work (most of the time) rather than residential customers.

3. I practically GAVE this site away for only $99/month. I probably put a total of 10 hrs of work into this so far. But, I have to chalk it up as a learning experience. And who knows, once it prooves itself, I will better able to determine the real value.

So that's it. Good luck!

- Shockwave

Awesome Shockwave!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing - web rentals is def a great way to earn passive income while continuing to grow your online business

This sounds like a great strategy. I never considered renting individual pages since I usually build an entire site around 1 location based search term. I'll definitely give this a try. Thanks for sharing.

Owning a phone number is good so that when you backlink, post in classifieds or video market you can include the phone number in the title so that the phone number comes up in the searches so that even if a customer doesn't open your site they can see the number ..... afterall the most important component of these types of websites is a clear CALL TO ACTION!!

If you own the number even when clients leave you, all your BL remain the same, all your efforts still remain, client after client....

Very interesting discussion.

I have not done web rental myself the way OP describes but need to try it with some of offline clients...

Thanks.

This is so perfect... I am just getting into this field as part of my offline strategy! Picked up the idea from not one but a few WSOs. I'm just working on laying it out now. I also have a similar method of deciding who to contact... PPC, Yellow pages (spending money), and/or not on the first page.

Love the thread, thanks. Hope I can pop in with some questions in the next few days.

Awesome tips. A. find people who need what your selling B. are already spending money C. come up with some type of continuity so you can get paid longer.

This is a good solid method that works. All business owners want more business so if you can show them that you can provide them with the opportunity to get more clients then they will be all ears!

This is one of the methods we have used for ages and it works. Once you have your approach down solid you will find that getting business is the least of your worries, keeping up with the work becomes the problem!

Yep, it totally works and as I keep saying, its passive income

I started off making websites for offliners and also offering SEO .... but web rentals is a far better business model to get into!

Anyone have a recommendation for WP themes used in these types of sites?

thanks!

Lots of good info here! I like the idea of renting out pages.

Rande, have you tried any pricing based on how much a lead could make them? Have you tried renting to multiple businesses on the same page?

this is great stuff!

Has anyone attempted this using LPN?

landing page ninja

I am in the process of creating some local lead generation sites. I now have a concern for what kind of traffic I may get if my sites sit below 3 paid ads and then 7 Google Places.

how do you find out which businesses are advertising on adwords? Except the ads that we see on google search, is there any other way to find out? thanks!

I've been looking at sites in my local area and there are more than a few of these type of sites being rented out. The thing I noticed is that the ones that are in the top position are owned by the more well known companies. I've seen it on about 8 sites now.

Does that mean that the bigger guys just want to maintain their dominance or that they are just easier to sell to?

Okay. I have my site set up and I have my first client already. I'm actually selling him all the leads off the site for the first month. It's performance based, so I'm getting paid for each lead I deliver. He knows that as the ranking goes up I'll be selling individual pages but this way I earn something while I optimize the page and get it out there.

I'm doing a 4 page site for my region, there are only 3 major areas here and my site name covers this entire region. I'm seoing each page for its location and then I'm selling a Featured Listing on the front page as well. I'm doing some video marketing to help promote the page, I set up a google places, a youtube channel and a facebook fan page with 10 fans already. I plan on spending the next few weeks pushing it online with seo, video marketing and facebook marketing.

Very good information. Thanks for sharing it with us.

hi i have a questions for y'all :

i have a website that ranked on page one google.com, but when i try to search with google USA, it doesn't have a good rank. why it happens ? the keyword is (city)attorney. and how i can land a client but i live outside us ? thanks

What is a good script to use? I too believe that a natural conversation works best but my telemarketer insists that I use a script.

Hey Emma,
I would like to start a business just like yours in the near future. The one thing that's holding me back is the fact that i'm from the netherlands and calling prospects is difficult due to the time difference. I know how to get websites ranked on the first page of google, but my fear is that potential clients will not pay me $100 a site without even speaking to me first. Do you think it can be done by just emailing the pot. client or am i right and should I consider a different kind of business?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

can anyone recommend or share some information on the contract they are using for the rental agreement? I am at the point where i am approaching clients and have a couple of 2nd phone appointments that seem promising. when i get the deal, i have no idea or contract to offer to solidify the deal.
Any suggestions??

Hi Emma,

I'm new to this forum. I found your post through Google and was both inspired and proud of the Aussie doing well :-)

You're clearly a talented marketer, but I am however a bit confused. Are your pages really that easy to rent?

I was so impressed with your posts and curious about your site that I followed the link to your Facebook page and there found a link to your business page and so found your business site still with the dummy WP data only.

Your business FB page had a post on the page for your web rental site and also a link to it. When I looked at your rental site (with .org and layout as mentioned in your posts) I discovered that none of the 5 pages are currently rented.

I've also found the tiling site that you mentioned was the first site you set up for your husband which is now being rented out, but I notice that your husbands name is still on the site. Googling the mobile number on the site comes up with his business listing in local directories.

Googling the rental site shows a bunch of press releases for November 2011. Were these to boost rankings or to replace rental clients?

You started this thread in September 2011 and last posted in December, so I'm curious to know what happened to your renters between then and now. Likewise with the tiler page. Is it something to do with the holiday period? or has the pay by the month model turned out to be not as good as planned?

I hope you get those pages rented quickly with the new year - you really have inspired me with your posts, so I'm hoping you're as good as you say you are! :-)

Just wondering, how do you rent out the space? do you just put a banner up or do you actually change the page content? like how big of a banner do you give them?

a case study wold be great Emma!
thanks in advance.

Well done, thinking outside the box is always the best way to increase your sales. something that you could try as well is adding to your client pages, some social media links and buttons so they can like and share their own pages with friends and colleagues and your site at the same time!

Enjoy!

Great thread here, like Marcos, only a bit less complicated

About ten days ago, I purchased 13-15 exact match domains. Some of them are .coms, some are .orgs and a couple are .nets. Most are for dentists, though three are for electricians.

It's been about 10 days and now they are all indexed in Google (just manually checked Not ranking, mind you, because I like to give it 2-3 weeks before I start backlinking.

I do think (& hope!) that having these sites ranked on the first page alone will get me a good response when I approach prospects in February. These exact match domains include dentist + city and electrician + city (I am targeting multiple cities).

I think having something to show your client that is already ranking higher than their site will make them believe in what you can do for them. THe deal is right there anyway

Thanks for such a helpful thread

Hi Rande,

Those are terrific ideas for us newbies to marketing. Persistence and a quality product with great value.

Best,
Martin

Hello guys,
Just went through this thread from first page and sounds really intereting and motivating. Thanks Emma for this, i am a newbie and just tired of this damn WSO's always offering the moon with all the fake promises. (No more buying of WSOs )

(1) What is the best place to start learning SEO and what are the best tools to help..?:confused: .
(2)How long if everything is properly done wil take to get a new site on google 1st page.

If i was using all the money i have spent on WSO's to get websites and rank them i would done so much but hey they say its never too late...!. Thanks for the advice guys i was begining to lose hope till i bumped into this thread

Emma,
I have a bunch of rental sites in a great niche. Some are ranking on page 1 right now for great keywords and the rest will be soon. Would you have any interest in landing the clients for them for a recurring income on each one? You obviously have experience and are comfortable on the phone and that is what I really need. PM me for specific details if this is something you may be interested in.

Thanks,

Eric

Awesome information. thanks!

Thanks. That were good tips. You have just given me more ideas to work on