Rent-A-Site Marketers - Trouble With Client Acquisition?

That's very smart!

What do you mean by redirecting the original to the new? URL redirect?

Do you leave the original content on the generic site (ie. your-generic-site.com/seattleroofer) and just add URL forwarding with a new domain?


Thomas

In 10 minutes I found

"furnace repair portland or"
"watch repair portland or"

These has plenty of promise.

Think services for home. Write a list of tradesmen that can do work at your home but then drill down to specific tasks that these guys do like my electrician example above.

This is totally genius! There is no way a business owner can no to leads. Either he/she takes up the offer or the leads go to his competitor.

And guess what? Just about any price you offer will be taken up.

Once again, pure genius.

Craig you have donated a shed load of helpful information on this thread. Thank you very much! But one question which I hope you dont mind me asking me, me but what type of information do you put on the website? Im a little confused at this part.


George

One site took me nearly 2 years to rent out as it was a micro local niche and tradies didnt want to traipse all over the city to quote for the service. It was only when I slpit the site into 4 smaller areas that I got guys to rent out each section.

All the others took between 1 month and 8 months to rent. I contact the businesses offering free leads until I can rent the site out **hint hint Mr Businessman** (I rented out 9 doing this) another couple took me a few months and different businesses to rent them out.

I guess it shifted for me when I stopped looking for generic terms like

"CITY electrician" and started focusing on "Cost to install 6 downlights CITY"

People looking for "cost" or "price" or "quote" will gladly fill out a form or phone a number to get that information

Once a site starts getting leads I will contact 4-5 contractors and say this. (This is the actual email I send word for word and I have rented out 9 sites doing this)

Hi,
My name is Craig.

I developed an electrician website, www .mywebsite.com. as a test case for a course I am doing and this site currently gets XX leads a month for electrical work such as blah blah blah to be carried out around YOUR-CITY.

My question is this. Could I forward those quote requests on to you until such times as I find a reputable electrician to rent it off me? These are 100% free of charge as you are doing me a favour by accepting the extra work.

I look forward to your response and only ask that you reply within 48 hours as I have sent this email out to 4 other electricians in YOUR-CITY.

Of course, if you have too much work on to handle the extra xx leads per month, I will certainly understand.

I wish you and your business continued success.

Craig

ps: I have included 2 of the quote requests below as a sample.

This is a powerful email for a few reasons.

I have gained credibility straight away without mentioning the words "web designer". I "developed" a site and I am furthering myself by doing a "course"

The XX figure "should" blow them away and by listing the job types being ask for sets off the Ka-Chings in his head

"Hang on" the electrician says to himself, "I'm reputable". Why cant I have it?

Free is good and extra work sounds great

Create scarcity

Some will have too much work on but most would love more work

"Hmmm He thinks my business is a success. He's a nice fellow"

Also, I put my phone number** on the website until I rent it out. Any calls that come in, I answer saying that my name is Craig and I am taking the phone calls as the sparky is out on a job. I will then forward the details on to the 4 electrician in an email. Doing this gives me a hard copy of EVERY lead coming in.

*** I do not put my phone number in text as Google will cache it and I will get calls for ever. I make a graphic with my number on it and when I rent it out, simply make a new graphic with the electricians phone number on it.

HTH

You mean, none of those leads converted to paid patients? Because they were not targeted to his suburb?

Have you asked him, if they were interested in leads targeted for their area? They already know you're capable of generating leads, so offer them creating a system for their needs on pre-paid basis...

Oh, and you should absolutely stop sending them your leads.


Thomas

That's how I first started with mortgage brokers!
It was for lead generation though not for site rental...


Thomas

If they aren't interested, then send them leads for a week or so which you track and then send them a note that you sent them x number of leads last week/month but since they don't need the extra leads you've found another (Dentist, Contractor - whatever) nearby who has expressed an interest so you won't bother them anymore by sending them leads. And thank them for allowing you to send them the leads while you were learning in the course.

Thanks Buddy, might try rewording Craig's magic email a little.

My clients are always telling me that they are getting bombarded by emails and phone calls telling them that their site isn't ranked anywhere on Google and that they can get their site on the 1st page of Google for $100. So businesses are very suspicious because of the Amateurs annoying the crap out of them and lying to them.

Hi Zoro,
You may have to build trust initially by offering some of your leads for free initially, so that you can demonstrate what you can offer.
Thanks

First off, big shout out to Craig, very valuable information you have provided in this thread. 30% conversions is no joke, and you should be proud. I'm usually around 20-30% but it takes a ton of work. So while you casually throw that out there, there are so many who will never approach that number. The information you've given out in this thread is better than most WSO's on the subject(I buy everything that comes out to get even the smallest edge).

Zoro: My recommendation would be to specialize in ONE field. Talk to them, interview them, get curious about their business. You have to learn HOW they talk, so you can talk like them. For instance, if you're dealing with electricians like Craig talks about, if you know what their highest profit transactions are and optimize for THAT. That's what they want, they could give a crap less about being #1 for Electrician Portland. But "upgrading fusebox Portland", if that's their #1 profit point, they are all about that, even if it gets 10% of the traffic that Electrician searches do.

Look finding clients is not the easiest thing on the planet we all get that. But there are people out there who will do it, you have to be willing to do what it takes to get them. If you have a site that literally brings in 50 leads a month, I GUARANTEE there is someone that will take it, if you market enough times. You can't send one email and get dejected if they say no. Send emails, send postcards, have a telemarketer call them, cold call, send a stack of leads, fed ex them a package, whatever you must do to get someone to rent it. They all rent out eventually, even if it takes a month or two.

Think of it like this. You have a home you want to sell. You stick it on the internet, list it on the MLS. After it gets 10 hits on Realtor.com, you tell the Realtor forget it, it's obviously not going to sell? Is that what you do? Or do you keep marketing it, adjusting the price, the staging, etc until it sells? Renting websites is virtual real estate.

For your first five properties, they need to be less about your income and more about your initial success. My recommendation would be to rent them out VERY cheaply. Let's say $99/mo or even $50/mo. But tell the new tenants than in exchange for the very cheap rent which should rent for $300-500/mo you want the option to give out their contact information to new prospective tenants for referrals, as long as they never mention how cheaply you are renting it.

Give them a few months of getting the benefits of the new site, and now you can get access to fantastic testimonials. When you have a letter from someone in their niche who is making an extra $30k a month from the site and have gone from thinking about closing their business for good to hiring 2 new crews and buying brand new trucks. THAT speaks volumes. Send them that letter, give them the phone number to that owner, and you'll find it SUPER easy to close your deals.

Some fields are easier to close than others. Mortgage brokers, insurance agents, they all are pretty easy to close, as many of them already buy leads. Look for fields like that. Look for companies that are already buying leads from other sites, they are your prime prospects.

Marcos

I've just started up an offline service busines, Stone. Tile, and Concrete Care and these are my thoughts,

One problem you might have is because you have no inside knowledge of the businesses you are trying to sell to you might be overestimating the value of the leads. That's an instant credibility killer.

The second thing is they probably dislike you as they probably see you as an intruder in their territory, a superfluous middleman .After all if you didnt exist where would the leads have ended up. Their websites.

Personally, I"d want proof, by way of a free trail, before I'd pay out for any leads. If they turned out to be good ones and I got a couple of jobs a month out of them I'd definitely pay 300 bucks a month for the site.



Cheers Don

Appreciate your suggestion, thank you

email - jotform.com
phone - callfire.com

Hi Dan,

I do get specific. ElectricianMyCity .com is to general.
I go for terms like

OverheadFanInstallationMyCity.com
PowerpointInstallMyCity .com
LowVoltageDownlights .com

In one case a client took all 3 sites from me but silly me basically gave them away but we live and learn.

Pick the fruit you can reach.

It only takes a year if you don't know what you're doing or aren't trying. Its's not all that much harder to rent out a site than to get a web design client. Let's put it at twice as hard(which honestly is probably about right). But even if it's four times as hard or even ten times as hard. Meaning two telemarketers in a room, one selling web design and the other selling pre-made, pre-ranked websites as monthly rentals. If you're selling a website for $1,000 a piece vs renting a website for $300 a month. Which would you rather have? Let's say in a day telemarketing they can either sell 10 website designs or one site rental. It seems like the no brainer is the web design right? Let's take a look at that presumption.

Assuming you've got 20 working days a month, that means selling the websites would bring you $240,000 a year from that work. Good stuff right? However we're only adding an additional $300/mo or $3,600 a year by renting the websites. Now how long are you going to be able to rent the websites? According to my attorney I can will these to my heirs. I've had some of them rented for over five years. Not to mention that the value of the websites rental rate should at least keep pace with inflation. Meaning $300 in todays money as rent will probably equate to $300 in rent twenty years from now even if that means $2-3k a month or more. If I keep one rented for twenty years at $300 a month assuming a 3% inflation increase yearly. That means over 20 years it should bring in roughly $96,733. That's a lot of $1k websites your telemarketer would have to sell to keep up with the single rental.

One of the main reasons why site rentals are so freaking awesome in my eyes is how passive they are. During my illness I was totally out of pocket for about five months, I lost almost none of my site rentals. They all kept paying as usual. It's passive income. It's like having a free and clear rental house without the smelly tenants or eviction issues.

It's fairly difficult to do funky stuff like I do with my Roth IRA with a business like designing websites, but much easier with site rentals. For instance I can purchase a website with my Roth IRA and now have my rental agreements in the name of the IRA. So that my clients pay the IRA directly. You can quite easily start an IRA with $500 and grow it to 100's of thousands in just a few short years if you are smart. Educational trusts, etc.

I know from the other people I know that have worked with this type of business the main benefit is the predictability of it with the passiveness. If I'm a web designer, I have to constantly be on the lookout for more clients. But in the site rental business, you can decide what nut you want to hit and fairly easily calculate what it will take to get there. Let's say my goal is to have $10k a month passive income. If I'm going to be charging $300/mo that means I need 33 clients. That's a good number to work from. Maybe that number takes me a year to get to but I know once I hit it I'm good. I have $10k/mo income for pretty much ever(remember it keeps pace with inflation).

There are just a few good reasons why they are fairly superior to just being a telemarketer who does web design.

Almost anyone can do web design, but very few people can actually get a website ranked #1 in Google.

I've never had a problem renting sites out, in fact, I've never even had to contact someone to rent them, they all came to me because my #1 rankings pretty much snapped their heads back lol.

I will say this though...you need to have people/persuasion and selling skills. This isn't the kind of thing you should be doing if you don't like interacting with other business people.

Exactly Madison.

All my domains except one has MYCITY on the end to distinguish it.
The one without has no location to it as he told from early on he is expanding nationally so I wanted people from all over the country to see us. He now sells his product to resellers all the way up the east coast of Australia now.

I do like people from out of town emailing me though as it gives me ideas for content to add to the site. What I mean is that the questions that people ask me through email becomes the title of my next post on the site.

I got this idea from a guy named Marcus Sheridan (The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan) and it works gangbusters. Do this.

I wrote a post about the "Best Fence Builders in MyCity". I listed 5 other fencing companies and wrote a glowing testimonial about them. Sounds crazy I know but the thing is this. 4 of them do not build the metal fences my site is about. They build timber fences so there is no competition from them. The 5th fencer has no web presence whatsoever so he is not a danger either but this does is gets me to #1 for terms like

Acme fence company review
review of John doe fencing
etc etc

Most people looking for these 5 companies land on my site.
What is better is that 2 of them actually link back to this post from their website. lol

I could go on but really, visit Marcus' website for more great ideas for dominating a niche.

HTH