Rank & Rent - a newby's plan for success

[matvey]

Hello dwellers of BHW.

Long-time lurker here, just took the plunge and registered on the forum. Looking forward to getting more active in the community
To make a long story short, I'm looking to make a little more supplementary income for myself. In a years time, I would be extremely happy with 1,500-2,000$ in addition to my salary. Roast me if that's an unrealistic goal.

I've been reading up on local lead-gen. I quite like the business model, but I'm still not 100% clear on some certain aspects. Anyways, here's my short plan on how I anticipate this going:

1. Choose a niche, currently have something in mind in home-servicing. Did some research on a UK city and the volumes look promising, together with some low competition.
2. Put together a website, dense with those specific keywords.
3. Produce some content in order to rank for the chosen keywords.
4. Sell the leads.

The questions I have are:
- I have realised that GMB is vital for success in local SEO, can I purchase a virtual office address in the city I'm targeting and register my business there?
- For my first project I'm not too focussed on optimising profits, so I don't want to sell directly to contractors / service providers. I would rather sell to an 'affiliate network'. However I'm not too clear on what these are - can somebody provide examples of how to sell leads to these networks in the UK?

@Holzr I've been told you're the master of local SEO and rank & rent Any input from you hugely appreciated.

Peace.

 

[Holzr]

UK is great because competition is lower for the most part, selling the leads is trickier though which is why I deal with US exclusively.

Nope, virtual addresses wont work. I suggest either posting on classifieds etc. to do the postcard method (Google it and look here on BHW people talk about it, you essentially find people online and pay them to recieve the post card for verification, althoug getting harder now with video verification becoming more and more popuilar).

I wouldn't bother selling to a UK network, the one I've tried isn't great tbh. They don't take call leads, they're payouts are low, conversions even lower. In the US I get paid a lot better, can sell leads even in really rural areas and usually convert a good 60% or so. I can share the UK network if you DM.

$1,500-2,000 on one site a month is doable but harder when selling to a network, you'll need to target a combination of a larger population and or higher cost job that pays higher.

 

[matvey]

UK is great because competition is lower for the most part, selling the leads is trickier though which is why I deal with US exclusively.

Nope, virtual addresses wont work. I suggest either posting on classifieds etc. to do the postcard method (Google it and look here on BHW people talk about it, you essentially find people online and pay them to recieve the post card for verification, althoug getting harder now with video verification becoming more and more popuilar).

I wouldn't bother selling to a UK network, the one I've tried isn't great tbh. They don't take call leads, they're payouts are low, conversions even lower. In the US I get paid a lot better, can sell leads even in really rural areas and usually convert a good 60% or so. I can share the UK network if you DM.

$1,500-2,000 on one site a month is doable but harder when selling to a network, you'll need to target a combination of a larger population and or higher cost job that pays higher.

That's awesome, thanks @Holzr. Makes sense - I'll start exploring the US market then. The revenue range ($1,500 - $2,000) I gave initially was under the assumption that this would be a wild success I'm aiming to build up a single site up to $300-$500 per month as an initial goal. I'm a software engineer by day, so technically I'm OK with building websites. Do you reckon there is value in building the site from scratch to make it as fast and Google-friendly as possible, as opposed to just buying an existing Wordpress theme?

By the way, are you aware of any mentoring services / courses I can take a look at. Happy to pay for anyones time who is experienced in the field to give me some coaching / mentoring.

Thanks again bud.

 

[omer1777]

If your business is a local business you must have GMB/GBP there is diffrent black methods on how to create a GMB without having a real location. Its also depends on the niche. If its a spammy niche like locksmith its a problem.

 

[Holzr]

That's awesome, thanks @Holzr. Makes sense - I'll start exploring the US market then. The revenue range ($1,500 - $2,000) I gave initially was under the assumption that this would be a wild success I'm aiming to build up a single site up to $300-$500 per month as an initial goal. I'm a software engineer by day, so technically I'm OK with building websites. Do you reckon there is value in building the site from scratch to make it as fast and Google-friendly as possible, as opposed to just buying an existing Wordpress theme?

By the way, are you aware of any mentoring services / courses I can take a look at. Happy to pay for anyones time who is experienced in the field to give me some coaching / mentoring.

Thanks again bud.

It depends on your resources and time available. I'd say there's some solid WP themes out there nowadays and plugins to optimize servers and sites for speed, so I'm not sure I see value in doing something from scratch unless it's really not an issue and quick for you and you want more customizations.

I honestly tell people to avoid courses. There are so many free resources online, even for rank and rent, etc., and FB Groups, etc. The thousands you spend on a course you could just build and rank a site.

The best money spent in my opinion is just experimenting. If money is tight write the content yourself if not outsource it and get solid backlinks and see what works. You can take inspiration from other best performing websites.

 

[matvey]

It depends on your resources and time available. I'd say there's some solid WP themes out there nowadays and plugins to optimize servers and sites for speed, so I'm not sure I see value in doing something from scratch unless it's really not an issue and quick for you and you want more customizations.

I honestly tell people to avoid courses. There are so many free resources online, even for rank and rent, etc., and FB Groups, etc. The thousands you spend on a course you could just build and rank a site.

The best money spent in my opinion is just experimenting. If money is tight write the content yourself if not outsource it and get solid backlinks and see what works. You can take inspiration from other best performing websites.

Roger that. Would you mind sending me a PM? Apparently I'm too new to the site to do that yet
Reason I ask is I noticed you provide a service of the initial build of the website and identifying a niche to get started. Wanted to chat about that, if possible.

Cheers

 

[amr00t]

UK is great because competition is lower for the most part, selling the leads is trickier though which is why I deal with US exclusively.

Have you had any success renting a website in the UK? I just started mine and I'm working in UK only because I think UK would pay more.

 

[Holzr]

Have you had any success renting a website in the UK? I just started mine and I'm working in UK only because I think UK would pay more.

No I have not. I might revisit at some point though.

 

[Addybaddybee]

I love this idea. I started a website few months back that's doing well but been thinking on how to leverage it and move on this could be the idea.

 

[amr00t]

It depends on your resources and time available. I'd say there's some solid WP themes out there nowadays and plugins to optimize servers and sites for speed, so I'm not sure I see value in doing something from scratch unless it's really not an issue and quick for you and you want more customizations.

I honestly tell people to avoid courses. There are so many free resources online, even for rank and rent, etc., and FB Groups, etc. The thousands you spend on a course you could just build and rank a site.

The best money spent in my opinion is just experimenting. If money is tight write the content yourself if not outsource it and get solid backlinks and see what works. You can take inspiration from other best performing websites.

Please how do one get solid backlinks - It seems local citation doesn't do much at all, After spending for a 100, my site recorded just 8 backlinks with a DA of 6. Meanwhile, number 1 results has 18 referring domains with 150 backlinks.

Do I need to get 150 backlinks or just get 18 referring domains?