Conor
Elite Member
- Nov 7, 2012
- 3,621
- 6,217
I posted a thread a year or two ago about generating leads for online work, and having them delivered to you on a regular basis. So, I've decided to elaborate on the method a little, and post a couple of tricks I've come up with, since the original post.
I'm going to use a broad niche as an example here: SEO service
The general idea here is to find relevant RSS feeds, and have an email sent to us, every time they're updated, giving us a chance to contact whoever posted the job, and pitch our services to them. So, let's get started.
First, we need to make a list.
This will require a bit of creativity with our footprints.
Here's what we don't want:
Sites that require you to create a profile, and do unnecessary crap like submitting proposals, writing an exam, etc. We want to contact people directly. A contact form or email address will be first prize here.
The footprint would look something like this:
You'll notice I've excluded a lot of sites with this footprint. These are "unnecessary waste of time" sites. You'll be undercut by 100 other dirt cheap workers, they really aren't worth the effort in my opinion.
You'll want to find only the most recent jobs, so click on "Search Tools" and change the search date to "Past 24 hours". (You can use "Past Week" too, if you like.)
Open a bunch of sites that look promising (We want sites that have a bunch of recent jobs in our niche listed nicely on a single page).
On each site, look for an RSS Feed icon, or use "View Source" and do a search for the feed URL, if it's not visible on the page (Using CTRL F and typing "RSS" usually works).
You can go ahead and copy this URL into a txt document.
Tip: Some sites don't always have a feed URL, but they do allow you to subscribe to specific search results. This will work just as well. I'd recommend creating a dedicated email address for receiving leads on, and just using that to subscribe to their notification when necessary.
Second, we need to set up an automatic notification system.
In the original thread, I suggested we use blogtrottr.com for this. And it'll work great for most RSS feeds. However, there's a better way: IfThisThenThat - https://ifttt.com
Why is this site better?
Because not only does it support some feeds that blogtrottr doesn't (*cough craigslist cough*), it also has a whole other range of notification options. If you don't want to receive an email, you can have it play a specific song on your phone, or send an SMS, or edit a Google drive spreadsheet, or a thousand other things. Whatever you prefer.
We'll stick with the basic feed to email strategy for now, because I've created a simple iMacros script to create a recipe for each of your feeds.
Go ahead and sign up to ifttt.com.
If you have a basic understanding of how imacros work, the script should be pretty simple to figure out.
If not, you're going to need to save your list of feeds (One feed per line) in a txt document.
Name it Scrape.txt and save it to iMacros/DataSources (Usually in your Documents folder).
Set iMacros to loop, according to however many feeds you've added to your document.
It probably needs some tweaking, according to your needs, or internet speed, but you get the idea.
Third (finally) wait for the leads to come in, and sell sell sell.
Ok, we can probably do a couple of things while we wait:
And that's about it. I've gotten some good work with this method, and I hope I've managed to explain everything clearly enough.
I'm going to use a broad niche as an example here: SEO service
The general idea here is to find relevant RSS feeds, and have an email sent to us, every time they're updated, giving us a chance to contact whoever posted the job, and pitch our services to them. So, let's get started.
First, we need to make a list.
This will require a bit of creativity with our footprints.
Here's what we don't want:
Sites that require you to create a profile, and do unnecessary crap like submitting proposals, writing an exam, etc. We want to contact people directly. A contact form or email address will be first prize here.
The footprint would look something like this:
Code:
inurl:"work OR hire OR jobs" "SEO service" -inurl:"indeed OR guru OR peopleperhour OR designcrowd OR upwork OR odesk"You'll notice I've excluded a lot of sites with this footprint. These are "unnecessary waste of time" sites. You'll be undercut by 100 other dirt cheap workers, they really aren't worth the effort in my opinion.
You'll want to find only the most recent jobs, so click on "Search Tools" and change the search date to "Past 24 hours". (You can use "Past Week" too, if you like.)
Open a bunch of sites that look promising (We want sites that have a bunch of recent jobs in our niche listed nicely on a single page).
On each site, look for an RSS Feed icon, or use "View Source" and do a search for the feed URL, if it's not visible on the page (Using CTRL F and typing "RSS" usually works).
You can go ahead and copy this URL into a txt document.
Tip: Some sites don't always have a feed URL, but they do allow you to subscribe to specific search results. This will work just as well. I'd recommend creating a dedicated email address for receiving leads on, and just using that to subscribe to their notification when necessary.
Second, we need to set up an automatic notification system.
In the original thread, I suggested we use blogtrottr.com for this. And it'll work great for most RSS feeds. However, there's a better way: IfThisThenThat - https://ifttt.com
Why is this site better?
Because not only does it support some feeds that blogtrottr doesn't (*cough craigslist cough*), it also has a whole other range of notification options. If you don't want to receive an email, you can have it play a specific song on your phone, or send an SMS, or edit a Google drive spreadsheet, or a thousand other things. Whatever you prefer.
We'll stick with the basic feed to email strategy for now, because I've created a simple iMacros script to create a recipe for each of your feeds.
Go ahead and sign up to ifttt.com.
If you have a basic understanding of how imacros work, the script should be pretty simple to figure out.
If not, you're going to need to save your list of feeds (One feed per line) in a txt document.
Name it Scrape.txt and save it to iMacros/DataSources (Usually in your Documents folder).
Set iMacros to loop, according to however many feeds you've added to your document.
Code:
VERSION BUILD=8350307 RECORDER=CR
SET !DATASOURCE Scrape.txt
SET !DATASOURCE_LINE {{!LOOP}}
URL GOTO=https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Create<SP>a<SP>Recipe
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:this
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=IMG ATTR=ID:channel_4
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=P ATTR=TXT:This<SP>Trigger<SP>fires<SP>every<SP>time<SP>a<SP>new<SP>ite*
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:TEXT FORM=ID:new_statement ATTR=ID:statement_live_trigger_attributes_live_trigger_fields_attributes_0_string_value CONTENT={{!COL1}}
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT FORM=ID:new_statement ATTR=ID:validate_trigger_btn
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:that
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=2 TYPE=IMG ATTR=ID:channel_6
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=P ATTR=TXT:This<SP>Action<SP>will<SP>send<SP>you<SP>an<SP>HTML<SP>based*
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT FORM=ID:new_statement ATTR=ID:validate_action_btn
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT FORM=ID:new_statement ATTR=ID:statement_create_task_submit
WAIT SECONDS=5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Back<SP>to<SP>My<SP>Recipes
WAIT SECONDS=5It probably needs some tweaking, according to your needs, or internet speed, but you get the idea.
Third (finally) wait for the leads to come in, and sell sell sell.
Ok, we can probably do a couple of things while we wait:
- Create some email filters. Even though we should have some pretty targeted leads coming in now, there will always be some unnecessary ones we'll want to weed out. In Gmail, I'd create something along the lines of this:
- Work on our pitch. This varies according to the job I'm responding to. But it's usually something like:
I'd recommend coming up with something of your own, but the important part is to make sure the client knows you're not another generic spammer. You want to prove that you know what you're talking about, and you are specifically interested in his project.
And that's about it. I've gotten some good work with this method, and I hope I've managed to explain everything clearly enough.
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