I've done rev share since 2006 and here's my advice:
I've been doing this online thing full-time since 2005 and have found that if you're good enough then
fuck having, CLIENTS, SMALL partners, or SMALL lead buyers.
I always start in an industry with partners, knowing I'll eventually start my own business or sell my site to a more prominent firm.
- Did mortgage rev share = I got fucked out of about 30 leads (wasn't licensed, so had no recourse). I ended up switching to selling per lead, which worked MUCH better. But, looking back at it... I would have made 10x if I just set up a mortgage net branch instead.
- Did misc. personal finance products, as a partner--we had over 100 people on the floor working our leads, which came from TV, Radio, and media buys.
- Did insurance rev share = I got fucked so hard over about a mil USD in rev share that I ended up getting my own licenses and setting up a brokerage.
- Did casino rev share = Sold the website to my biggest advertiser. Made enough in BTC on that exit to literally expatriate from the USA, and travel the world in style for years before getting back to work (not in America of course).
My biggest advice to everybody looking to do this:
Don't deal with mom-and-pop shops. Their operations are trash, their mentalities are trash, and their budgets are too small for you to scale when you REALLY take off. Even selling leads to them on a CPL basis becomes a pain in the ass because they'll come back to you with some nonsense about why the lead wasn't filtered properly or something.
Stick to partners bigger than you. Can you get screwed by bigger buyers? Of course, but at least they can handle your scale and they'll be around for years. I once sent a small partner 30 organic search leads in a week for him to tell me that he couldn't get ahold of them (and I mean a shop with 20 people). Best case he was incompetent and in the worst case he was a thief. Mom-and-pop shops are small because they're new or shit, don't deal w/ them.
A buddy of mine went the other route, he used his agency to get proficient at learning new markets using client money, then he just bought out the clients and then scaled from there. I can't say anymore or it'll be pretty obvious who he is, to anybody who's really in the scene, but I can say he has over 20 brands and several offices now.
Having been in this space for nearly twenty years I can tell you the only ones who survived as long as me were the ones who:
A. Went from publisher > to advertiser or from publisher > to network/advertiser
B. Those who were white hats. EVERY blackhat is gone... and most of them never developed the business sense to be consistent. They never had the patience to even bother learning how to do things like recruit, manage, or develop operations.
In your example, you're talking about dealing w/ tree installers. That sounds like the 10th rung of Hell to me.
I'd rather sell the same lead 3 times to three different guys, then sell it to a similar service provider three times, then sell the lead as aged data.
A $20 lead (or whatever it is) would then end up being worth 6x and you don't have to chase around some guy to see if a lead REALLY closed.
You use a service that allows you to authorize their card upfront and just charge them when you deliver the lead.
If their card fails or if they complain, just cut them off and move on ASAP.
Also, if you were this good at your job you wouldn't be selling a course on it... Just saying.
