This is a question that gets asked quite often.

Can I make money selling leads to businesses and which businesses are the most likely to buy leads?

First be aware that regardless of the service you sell there’s going to be some work in turning a prospect into a paying client.

The more you’re willing to put in that work and effort at building a real relationship the more money you’re likely to make in the short, medium AND long term.

Regardless of the service you provide your business will rise or fall based on your ability to build relationships with prospects, clients and referral sources…

Which businesses are the most likely to buy leads?
Generally speaking look for businesses with large transaction sizes.

The leads are worth more and if they’re industrial businesses they’re often not too difficult to generate.

One way to find businesses is to go to the industrial area of your town and just take a walk.

When you find a business that’s buzzing with activity find out who they are and what they do.

You’ll find there are many business types in industrial areas that you’ve never even heard of.

And many are making some real money with clients paying them…

Tens of thousands…even hundreds of thousands of dollars
for just one contract…

Also businesses like these are rarely approached by any kind of marketer so you’ll often be the first really skilled internet marketer they talk to.

No competition, high profits, big transaction sizes = good clients for you.

And when you find a niche that’s working for you, you can expand across the country…even across the world.

But if you want to get paid seriously consider this…

Selling leads is great but it can be hard to get paid by ANYONE who hasn’t paid you a substantial sum of money before.

I’d strongly recommend that you charge an upfront fee to help them set upsome kind of system to help convert their leads or you charge them a substantial upfront fee to begin generating leads for them.

So many people seem to think they should give a business a risk free proposal to get them on board as clients.

That’s such B.S. because it means your new “risk free” client has nothing at risk…he has no motivation to help you get leads, to handle the leads well or to get them to convert.

When you charge a client a substantial upfront fee it’s amazing how much harder they work to ensure their investment gets a return.

And that brings us full circle to the first point I made…

Regardless of the service you provide your business will rise or fall based on your ability to build relationships with prospects, clients and referral sources…

To get a client to pay you for those leads and put in the effort to convert them effectively you’re probably going to have to charge them some kind of substantial upfront fee so they’re committed to really working with you.

And to get them to pay a substantial upfront fee you’re going to have to build some rapport and trust…you’re going to have to build a relationship with your prospect.

When you embrace that this business gets a whole lot easier.

There are multiple ways you can open and build a relationship with a business owner. Ideally you get face to face in a situation where you’re asking questions and listening and they’re talking a lot.

But you can also automate parts of the process and set up systems that help to build you up as a genuine expert.

There are several methods you can use in the report 25 Different ways To Get Paying Clients and one system in the Offline Gold Army that you might consider.

Ultimately it’s not that complicated. You build a relationship…you get a paying client or a source of referrals.

This business doesn’t have to be complex.

In the first article on The Most Profitable Niches we talked about transaction size, profit per transaction and looking at niches most marketers ignore.

In the second Profitable Niches article we talked about why you might target a niche and some strategies for getting new clients.

In this article I’ll reveal some of the services you might sell to your clients in a niche.

First the golden rule applies. If you already have a service you can provide yourself that you’re good at or a service you know you can outsource easily that’s a great place to start.

Beyond that selling services to clients in a single niche can get really exciting because once you come up with a service that works for one client you’ve already done most of the work required.

You can sell that same service with only tiny adjustments
to all your other clients…

And chances are they’ll be making good profits with each new service you provide because you’ve already gone through the process of testing what works and tweaking with someone else in the same industry.

And as you start rolling out a service to multiple clients you’re going to get a wealth of feedback on how to improve what you’re offering and how to get even better results for your clients.

So servicing a specific niche makes it easier for you to deliver more profits to your clients.

And more profits for your clients means your service is worth more to them. And when your service is worth more you can charge more!

Better still, because the work you do for each client is largely the same (with a few tweaks changing business names and city names) it’s very easy to do the work yourself or outsource it.

What Services Can You Sell…?

When you’re first thinking about what services you might sell to your clients (or potential clients) in a specific niche it’s worth going back to the ebook Online Gold For The Offline Business.

Read through the whole book thinking “can I apply THIS strategy to my clients in this niche? Is this a service I can sell? Is this a service I can outsource?”

Also think of your overall strategy.

Are you looking to make a large ongoing income or do you just want to work with each client for a high paying project then cut your ties?

Generally speaking it’s better to think of long term ongoing income and that means focusing on charging ongoing fees.

Charging Ongoing Fees Gives You Income Stability…

If you have 10 clients paying you $1,000 a month you start out each month knowing you have an income.

That gives you breathing room. There’s not so much pressure on you to get new clients and you can focus a lot of attention on really making serious profits for the clients you have.

Also, while it might be difficult to get some clients to pay you $12,000 for a project it’s often not so difficult to get them to pay you $1,000 a month.

Over the course of a year $1,000 a month is $12,000. Those monthly fees add up.

So it helps if you offer services the require ongoing work…preferably work you can perform easily yourself or that you can outsource easily.

Here’s A Short List Of Services Along Those Lines…

SEO
Email marketing
Blog posts
Facebook management (including regular facebook posts)
Linkedin promotion and management
Reputation management
Google Places promotion, optimization and management
Marketing with online video (adding videos to sites like youtube and other optimization)
Marketing on ebay
Marketing on Amazon FBA
Article marketing and other content marketing
Marketing with press releases (online and/or offline)
And much much more.

Also, if you have the skill (or you know someone who does) you can offer services that are delivered primarily offline like sales training for staff, in business marketing or merchandising, marketing consulting, marketing with direct mail, marketing with telemarketers etc etc.

And remember this…

You Don’t Have To Deliver A Service Yourself To Offer It To Your Clients…

You can capitalize on contacts you make and do joint ventures with excellent service providers delivering services you never will…

And take a percentage of all the business you send their way.

This is an amazing way to leverage the trust you’ve built with your clients and it can be VERY profitable. How profitable…?

I know of some marketers where referring businesses to other service providers and taking a commission has become their primary income!

I know of one who has made a high six figure income with just this strategy.

What To Do Now…?

Choosing a niche, deciding on services to market to that niche, creating a marketing campaign to get clients in that niche can bring up a bewildering array of options and it can help if you get some basic advice to help you simplify things down to something you can get a handle on.

If you’re deadly serious about making a high six figure income by targeting a niche then you should consider my service to help you do that (which includes writing lead generating reports and sales letters to bring clients to you).

But like most things what’s really important is that you take some kind of action.

At a minimum you can simply talk to a prospect or a client you have in the niche you’re considering.

You don’t even have to be clever about it…just straight up and honest.

“I specialize in helping businesses make more sales and profits using the internet and I’m seriously considering specializing in helping xxxx businesses across the country. I’m wondering if I could ask you a few questions. In return I might be able to give you some useful suggestions for your marketing.”

Anything that gets the ball rolling for you is worth doing.

In the first article on The Most Profitable Niches we talked about transaction size, profit per transaction and looking at niches most marketers ignore.

Now let’s talk about why you might consider targeting a specific niche and how you might go about it.

First consider the power of targeting a niche.

Being seen as the marketing expert for boat sales yards, or commercial painters or commercial real estate agents (or any niche) gets the immediate attention of your prospects.

It’s simple human nature…

If you’re talking the owner of a used car yard and you tell him you specialize in helping used car yards market themselves more effectively so they can sell more cars at higher prices you’ve immediately positioned yourself as someone who can specifically help THEM and THEIR business.

The statement “that marketing stuff doesn’t work in my industry” is meaningless because obviously it does…you specialize in it.

And when you have a service niched to a specific industry you can often charge more for the same reason…the service is already perceived as being customized to THEIR business and their industry.

But here’s the best part…

Once you’ve created a strategy that works in a particular niche you can sell it to other businesses in the same niche (but other parts of the country or the world).

You can do most of the work once and license it over and over to other businesses with some tweaks and customization.

That means more money for you and because a lot of the work becomes highly repetitive it becomes much easier to outsource.

And it’s also good news for your clients in that niche because you’ll get very savvy at marketing for that industry.

You’ll know what’s happening in the niche, what’s working now, what’s stopped working and by implementing strategies for multiple clients you’ll come up with innovations that you never would have discovered working with just one client in an industry.

Some of your best ideas will actually come from your clients.

You’ll take those, tweak them, expand on them and turn them into something powerful so ALL your clients benefit.

Marketing To A Specific Niche Also Becomes Easier…

I’ll be honest with you. When you first start marketing to a niche it can be hard work. You need to work out what marketing methods work to bring you in paying clients.

You’ll want to create marketing pieces that work and if you can’t write sales copy these might be quite an investment.

To give you an idea I’ve charged $20,000+ to write the different pieces of copy for a niched service and the copy and advice that went with it was well worth the fee.

For marketers already making a serious income I currently charge $6,000 plus $1,000 a month for 6 months for this service where I help you niche yourself.

Good sales copy that sells is not cheap.

That’s another reason it’s a great idea to get some ongoing advice from someone who can help you avoid land mines and create marketing strategies for getting paying clients that have an excellent chance of success.

The good news is once you have a system for getting clients that is profitable you can roll it out on a larger and larger scale.

Combined with intelligently designed service packages and outsourcing of a lot of the physical work and you can create a business with a VERY substantial income.

It’s this approach that can lead to high six figure incomes and even seven figure incomes.

Here Are Some Strategies To Get You Thinking…

When you’re targeting a niche you want to think through these basic questions…”How do I get my prospect from where he is now to the point where he’ll hire me and pay me month after month for my services?”

“With his mindset, experience and knowledge what is the first step in the process of getting him excited about hiring me and working with me?”

My favorite two strategies would be a series of letters talking about the benefits of working with you…one benefit at a time and a lead generating report educating your prospect on the benefits of working with you.

The series of letters would need to be geared to get attention and early in the series they need to be about that business owner, his business, his advertising…focusing specifically on him.

I explain how to do this in the report 25 Different Ways To Get Paying Clients. Specifically from pages 50 to 66.

When you’re targeting a niche other marketers have ignored and you use multiple contacts, well thought through to appeal to your prospects the response rate can be astonishingly high.

And Here’s Another Powerful Strategy…

Many industries have trade associations. They often have newsletters.

You can write articles for the newsletter of the niche you’re targeting or you can pay to advertise in their newsletter.

If no other marketers are actively working in your niche you may be PAID to speak when their associations meets in person.

Imagine being PAID to get in front of your best prospects and speak to them about marketing their businesses more effectively.

With even the simplest call to action in your talk you’re going to pick up some serious paying clients.

It all starts with choosing a niche and thinking through how to market to that niche effectively.

Click on this link to read Profitable Niches Part Three

Today I was asked: “I have a client who has spent thousands of dollars on other marketers without any results. What can I do to put ALL the risk on myself so he’ll hire me?”

First the smartest thing you can do is talk to prospects who are willing to invest some money to get results rather than beating yourself to death with people who want to nickle and dime you.

But even in your question there are some clues.

“He’s spent tens of thousands on other marketers without any results”.

So you’re going to provide your services and you’re going to keep working till you get him results but you’re not going to charge him upfront?

Are you crazy?

You’re not running a charity.

Does it work like that in other businesses?

If I’ve bought chicken for 3 weeks and I haven’t cooked a decent dinner from that
chicken do I look for a grocery store that will give me chicken free?

If I’ve bought two cars that were lemons from other dealers do I expect the next
car dealer to give me a car free?

YOU NEED TO CHARGE FOR YOUR SERVICES!

And if you charge upfront you force your prospect to put value on your skills and your
expertise.

If a prospect is not willing to pay you upfront then find another prospect.

The people who don’t pay you upfront and try to force you into some commission only deal
have no skin in the game.

They lose nothing if they don’t work to make sure the strategies you implement are followed up on.

I know of people who’ve produced a pile of leads for businesses and the staff and owner
of the business simply didn’t follow up with those qualified leads in any kind of timely
manner (“I’ll get to them next week when I’m not so busy”).

Then they blame the marketer for not giving them good leads because the prospect, tired
of waiting has taken his business elsewhere.

I’ve seen marketers who need an interview or vital pieces of information or some kind
of co-operation from their client wait weeks, even months to get the most basic things
done.

SCREW THAT!

Your skills and your time are valuable.

Charge your clients for them and they’ll respect
you and your time.

Selling your internet marketing services to brick and mortar businesses is a great way to make a living.

You have almost no overheads, you can charge substantial fees and if you choose to you can outsource most or all of the physical work. You can even outsource getting clients if you’re willing to find the right people.

But some people get stuck…just not making money or not making the money they know they should.

When I do my email coaching I help marketers like you over these roadblocks and get them moving towards making some money quickly.

From years of coaching here are a few of the reasons you might get stuck and how to push through them fast…

# 1: Trying To Get Everything Perfect

It’s human nature to want to get all your ducks in a row before you take action but if you’re trying to think through everything that might happen you’re going to be paralyzed with fears and uncertainties.

Most of the things you worry about will never happen and most of the problems that arise you could never have anticipated!

Worse still all these mental gyrations are exhausting.

You’re not actually getting any closer to your income goals but your mind is working nearly every waking hour…trying to think through one imaginary problem or another.

The fastest way to get over those it to take some action immediately
that puts you in contact with business owners…

You can start sending letters or emails, you can go to a business networking meeting, you can start calling people you know and ask them who they might be kind enough to introduce to you.

You could even walk into businesses and start talking to the owners (or whoever talks to you).

Anything that gets you moving and gives you the chance of communicating with someone who can hire you.

Understand that you don’t need ANY skills to talk to a business owner. You can just ask questions and listen.

You’re not offering anything to begin with so there’s really no pressure on you or them.

But it is VITAL that you get yourself into the game by making those contacts and having those discussions. That’s where you learn how this business really works.

# 2: Coming Across As Needy Or Pushy

Business owners put up with sales people every day. You really want to avoid coming across as a pushy, hard sell sales person.

What you want to develop is a client/consultant relationship and ideally you want your prospects and clients coming to you.

So you need to use strategies that make that possible. I talk about multiple strategies to achieve that in the report 25 Different Ways To Get Paying Clients.

Another area where almost everyone messes up to one degree or another at some time is in looking needy.

In everything you say or do you need to be aware of
what you look like in your prospect’s eyes…

When you’re booking an appointment make sure you’re making YOUR time highly valuable.

In other words you don’t say things like “I can see you any time this week!”

That makes you look needy and in low demand.

If you say “I can make it on Wednesday but it will have to be later in the afternoon” that makes you look like an in demand busy business person.

Also you’re educating your prospects and clients on how to treat you with every interaction.

There are a pile of subtleties in everything you say and do and you want all of them to be pointing to the idea that you’re an in demand expert with a ton of valuable knowledge and skills.

This is an area where coaching can help. It’s amazing the things you miss.

But just being aware of it in the language you use and the way you interact with people can make a HUGE difference.

Finally there’s the cardinal sin…

# 3: Not Charging Enough

 If you’re talking to prospects who can afford to pay reasonable fees or premium fees then you should be charging them.

If you charge too little or even worse, if the first price you quote is too low, you’re going to make your service look cheap and your prospects are going to wonder “this is so cheap. What’s wrong with it?”

There are two major pricing strategies…charging fees for single projects and ongoing fees (in most cases you can and should use both if it’s at all possible).

If you’re charging fees for single projects you really need to making enough money so that you only need one client every month or two to make the income you need.

Ideally with that pricing model you want to charge enough so that you only need one client every 3 months to make the income you need.

Charging ongoing fees you can charge less…

But that’s not an excuse to get cheap either.

Yes those monthly fees add up but so does the maintenance of ongoing clients.

With your monthly fees ideally you should be charging enough that you only need to 1-6 clients to make your monthly income.

Charging more makes your service appear more valuable and it gives you the incentive to work harder for the clients who are paying you.

It also helps to get you off the treadmill where you’re constantly chasing after new, cheap prospects to make the income you need to live.

Business owners who pay you more will respect your service and your expertise more and they’ll generally be easier to work with.

If you really are stuck usually taking action
is a fast solution…

For most people who get stuck getting into action instead of getting caught in a trap of mental gyrations is usually the quickest way to get out of the mire.

If you get to the point where you just don’t seem to be able to make things happen the way you want you might consider coaching or you just might need to examine if what you’re doing matches your own personal moral code.

Just today I got a message from someone who purchased my report Offline Gold For The Online Marketer when it first came out (since then the report has been updated with over 20 pages of new content).

He wrote: “this report was the catalyst for me setting up an offline biz in the UK – which I’ve now been doing full time for the last 4 years – so a big thanks to you.”

In over 5 years of helping people just like you to start making real money out of selling internet marketing services of various kinds to brick and mortar businesses one question has come up probably more than any other.

“Should I work free?”

Should you work free to get experience? Should you work free so you can have testimonials so other business owners will be more comfortable hiring you.

Should you work free for referrals?

First I should say that if you’ve never had any kind of paying client there is value in working with a business owner at any price just so you get experience with the process of working with a client.

But here is a huge warning:
clients who don’t pay you a substantial fee upfront
tend to be problem clients…

Why?

When a business owner is making the decision to pay you in his mind he has to establish the potential value to him of the service you’re offering him.

If you’re smart you get very good at HELPING a business owner establish the potential value of your service before you even tell him the price but that’s another topic.

Here’s what’s important.

If a business owner pays you a substantial fee upfront then when he’s paying you he’s already established in his mind that your service is worth something substantial to him.

And that is going to flow through into all his interactions with you.

He’s committed to making your strategies work…

He know has his money on the line and he wants to get that money back.

When you need him to do something to make a strategy work it’s quite likely he’ll go out of his way to get it done.

The reverse side of this is not pretty.

When you work for someone free you’ll be amazed at the lack of respect many business owners have for your time, how they’ll mess you around, fail to follow through properly to make sure strategies are being implemented effectively by staff, call you at odd hours making stupid demands and generally be a pain in the rear end.

So even if you don’t charge a client you should ask for something substantial in return.

Give them the opportunity to establish the real value of your expertise and service in their minds before you start working with them.

One Final Tip…

One of the reasons many people have trouble charging clients and think it would be great to work free is because they don’t have any confidence in themselves and the genuine value of what they have to offer.

Really think about this.

You’re going to do something for a business owner that almost no one else is going to do for them.

You’re going to go to bat for them and help them make some real profits and you won’t stop working till they do.

In the business world that’s about as good a deal as they can get.

Be proud of what you’re doing and be proud enough to charge the people who are lucky enough to get your help.