How I made $5000/month online with a lead gen business

After my last post, I’ve been getting DMs about the lead gen business. So I thought i’d share how i did it.

I dabbled in car rentals, and car insurance. I’ll get into car insurance in this post because it’s easier to get into. plus I had a passion for cars so I wanted to do something in this space.

1. I chose car insurance because where i’m from, there wasn’t a dominant player in the space to get car insurance quotes or to renew car insurance.

   1. does this mean you shouldn’t go into a niche with a dominant player? Not exactly. look at these companies, is there anything they are lacking? look for areas where you can do better. remember that most people are busy, they just wanna get things done fast, and if possible - a one stop shop for everything.

   2. you can attract customers just by being better than the incumbents. if you have frustrations getting something done, others most likely have them too.

   3. in my case, customers would have to :

      1. fill up long ass forms on websites that look like they’re still stuck in 1999

      2. call up the company to get a quote (which takes time, and not everyone, especially the younger gen wants to talk on the phone)

      3. no social proof

      4. no clear indication of what to expect after calling/contacting them. no timeline of when they can get a quote etc.

2. all the above reasons are areas in which I could easily improve on. how?

   1. build a fast, modern looking website that conveys trust , and gave the impression that I was running a reputable company with an office & staff (but in reality, it was just me creating several custom email domains to make it look like I had a team of staff. just create a few emails like andrew@carinsurance.com, lisa@carinsurance.com etc etc. address used was just a mailing address)

   2. shorten the time to which customers can get what they want. give them speed, give them the info they want as fast as possible. instead of calling/filling up a 15 field form, i shortened it to just a few essential fields (name, number, etc). and ensure the form captures the important data first (i.e email, number) so that you can retarget or contact the customer if they drop off halfway

   3. use guarantees like “we’ll get you a quote in 24 hours” or “lowest insurance prices guaranteed”.

   4. i also had a whatsapp link for users to contact me directly. so customers could choose to email me, fill up a form or whatsapp to get a quote. see? convenience.

   5. social proof. i got my friends/family to try it out and give their feedback. put the good feedback on the website. bad feedback? improve on it until it turns into a positive review

3. look up small car insurance companies in your area/country. reach out to them and tell them you have leads (even when you don’t), and if they are interested. most will say yes, but not all will actually fork out money for it. i also reached out to car dealers since they can also provide car insurance services, and they were more receptive to cold calls/emails.

   1. what worked for me was to guarantee them a number of leads per week/month. so I started with 60 leads a month. meaning 2 customers a day.

   2. I knew this was doable even with a $7/day budget. at $7/day - each email would cost me $3.5, which is a very conservative estimate. you can get emails for about $1 - $2 with good creatives/copy. so i knew i had to run ads at at least $7/day to meet the guarantee. (test some ads first to see your cost per email, and tweak the copy/creatives to bring the cost down as much as possible)

   3. sell the results. when talking to these companies, always start with “i have more customers than i can handle. would you like some more customers?” or “i have 30 customers asking for car insurance quotes. can i send them your way?” . any business owner in their right mind would say yes, i mean who wouldn’t want more money?

   4. i give them a few leads for free, as a hook to get them, well, hooked (lol). in my case, i gave 10 free leads which cost me $20 - $25 at most. out of 10 warm leads, it’s very likely they can close at least 1 to 3 of them. and i know that each customer they close will make them about 15% - 20% commission. so if the insurance cost $1200, they made $180 - $240.

   5. plus, if they do a good job, those customers are likely to return every year to renew their insurance. LTV is high, just for a $2 - $3 cost per email. not bad, huh? this is a strong selling point as well

   6. at this point, most insurers would say yes and would gladly accept your offer of more customers. my deal was to sell them each lead at $20 to $30. this is where we have to reverse engineer to find out how much to sell the leads for.

      1. assuming they can close 3 out of every 10 leads, at $20 a lead, it costs them $66 per customer. $200 spent/3 customers = $66.

      2. but they make back $120 to $300+ per customer. this is a 80% - 300% ROI for them. but it costs almost nothing to service, since insurance is intangible. and for car dealers, the risk is on the car insurance companies, not them. they would gladly accept more customers.

4. now that the website was ready and we have people to sell the leads to, it’s time to run ads. BUT, we have to build trust first. how?

   1. social proof. since I needed an fb page to start running ads, and I was starting a new fb page from scratch, I published some posts just to show it’s an active fb page, and ran a fb page likes campaign. tip : run this campaign in low cost countries (e.g india/pakistan/nigeria etc.) because we just wanna get the page likes up. where they come from don’t matter (for now). you can get page likes from as low as 10 - 15 cents in these geos

   2. once I have about a thousand likes and some reviews (from family/friends) , I ran a lead gen ad on fb to capture name, email and number. that’s it. this is to capture as many people as possible because its a numbers game. and these people gave their info to you, meaning they are already interested. they are warm leads. you just have to show them why they have to choose you

   3. my ad creative was a picture of a guy smiling and his car, with a big text over it that says “$1400” and “$800” “Dan saved $600 on his car insurance with us, and you can too!” . ideally have 5 - 10 creatives so we can test.

      1. tip : use actual people in your ads. it helps conversion rates (its a psychology thing)

   4. headline : “we get you the lowest car insurance quotes from the top insurers in the market within 24 hours. Whatsapp us directly for a quote” or something along these lines. headline has to stand out and get people to stop scrolling . again, 5 - 10 headlines is best to test the best combination

   5. customers would think “wow i get the lowest quotes, I can save money like Dan, and i can whatsapp them directly (which saves me time)!” → if you were them, wouldn’t you also wanna find out more?

5. at this point, you’re running ads, and you can set up an automation on zapier so that the leads from facebook get added to a google sheet, and that sheet is shared with the person you’re selling leads to so you don’t have to manually update it. as long as the ads are running, leads will come in, and you get paid.

that’s my process for passive income. if there's any side hustle etc that you want me to share on, do comment below! i also write more about passive income & online businesses on my website if you wanna learn more.