by: paul jamesthumbtack to get leads (especially in the skilled trades niche) generic profile ideas...

Local Lead Arbitrage | Copyright © 2016 PaulJames.com 1

By: Paul Jameshttp://www.pauljames.com

http://www.pauljames.com/


Earnings Disclaimer

There is no promise or representation that you will make a certain amount of money, or any money, or not lose money, as a result of using our products and services. Any earnings, revenue, or income statements are based on actual individual results and/or estimates as may be stated. There is no guarantee that you will make these levels for yourself. If we know typical buyer results they are listed. Otherwise, we do not know typical buyer results and you should take that into consideration. As with any business, your results will vary and will be based on your personal abilities, experience, knowledge, capabilities, level of desire, and an infinite number of variables beyond our control, including variables we or you have not anticipated. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience. Each person’s results will vary. There are unknown risks in any business, particularly with the Internet where advances and changes can happen quickly. The use of our information, products and services should be based on your own due diligence and you agree that we are not liable for your success or failure.

Copyright © 2016 by Paul James | All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below. http://iampauljames.zendesk.com


Table of Contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….4The Site That Changed Everything………………………………………….6My Initial Testing…………………………………………………………………….7How They Get Their Leads…………………………………………………….10Setting Up Your Profile………………………………………………………….12The Process of Getting Leads For Yourself……………………………19Selling The Leads ..……………………………………………………………….26Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………28


Introduction

6 years ago I dropped out of college and started helping local business owners get more clients.

I used to work for a heating and cooling company before that and I would often answer the phones.

One thing I got used to was dealing with sales calls.

Solicitors constantly calling, trying to sell us something.

It was VERY rare that my boss would actually take one of these calls because they always started out the same way.

“Can I speak to the business owner or person in charge of making decisions for the company.”

Those kind of calls never got patched through.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I learned very quickly that my boss just wanted one thing and one thing only.

To make more money.

And to do that he’d have to get MORE customers.

Not that long after this I got laid off from that job because of lack of work and started going to college for nursing while working part time at walmart.

I was also in a band and became quite proficient at marketing.


That’s when I stumbled across SEO.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I eventually got creative and came up with a way to use SEO to generate leads for local business owners.

I started making a lot of money with it too!

But there’s a big problem with SEO.

It has a pretty big learning curve. (trust me I know I’ve been doing it for 6 years and it’s constantly changing)

AND

Even if you are doing SEO for a client it can take several weeks to get them ranked so that they start to actually generate leads.

This report is about a technique I’ve been using to generate leads for my clients not just while we wait for their site to rank, but also independently.

I love this method because it uses SES.

“Somebody Else’s Services” AKA Arbitrage.

You become simply the middle man.

So if that sounds interesting to you, keep on reading!


The Site That Changed Everything

I stumbled across thumbtack via a Facebook ad one day.

They are a site that offers to help you get your home project done by matching you up with a professional.

I hadn’t really thought much of it, I figured it was just another Angie’s List, big deal!

Until of course one of my clients mentioned to me that a landscaper friend of his was using Thumbtack to get work.

Not just get work, but almost ALL of his business was fueled by this site.

WOW!

I told my client to let me know if he too sees the same kind of results his landscaper buddy was seeing.

Sure enough a few days later I hear back from him and he’s really excited because he’s landed a couple jobs already.

Most local business owners don’t yet know about this site and even if they do most of them that I’ve come in contact with either don’t have any desire or time to try and learn how to use it efficiently or they are just plain not interested in tech stuff. (we’ve all come across anti-computer folks, right?)

That’s when I decided there was an opportunity for me here to start generating leads via this site for business owners that were hungry for work.


My Initial Testing

Now you can totally do this method and use the client you are working with’s name (if you have one yet) or you can start more of a “generic” Thumbtack profile.

But I also have several clients that I use their name, their business, etc.

They are far too busy running their company to worry about trying to manage Thumbtack to get leads (especially in the skilled trades niche)

Generic profile ideas for let’s say the plumbing industry:

Best PlumbersAffordable PlumbingProfessional Plumbing Pro’sReliable Plumbing Pro’s

Etc…

Hopefully you’re catching on.

My point is it’s generic enough that anyone you end up selling the lead to can take the lead without confusing the customer.

So that’s the route I decided to go initially and ended up landing a new flooring client with it.

Side note: If you want to be super legit, you could go as far as to register a D/B/A (doing business as) with your generic name.

Which allows you to create even bank accounts under that name if you so wished to do that. Just a little fun fact!


But anyway… Here’s what basically happens:

Again you basically are playing the middle man.

Doing the leg work for the business owner and then get paid a hefty amount per lead.

Business owners are usually willing to pay about 10% of the job’s billable amount.

So if my flooring guy sells a floor worth $1,500.

He should pay me $150.


You can choose to work it out that way or you can choose to sell your leads for a much cheaper amount, but under the understanding that you get paid whether they get the sale or not.

It all depends which route you want to go, but there is more money in the first scenario. (also more leg work)


How They Get Their Leads

From what I can tell, Thumbtack generates these leads through a lot of advertising.

I’ve seen them do quite a bit of Facebook PPC and to be honest I’m pretty impressed.

As a fellow marketer doing local lead generation I admire how fast they are growing and the different ways they are generating leads.

In order to get a chunk of those leads you have to spend Thumbtack credits on them.

You can get credits sometimes for free even by doing miscellaneous stuff.


If there is an opportunity to get free credits they will notify you on their site and you usually have to do something like post or share something in exchange to get the credits.

You can then use those credits in exchange for a lead.

Some leads cost 1 credit, some 3, etc…

It just depends on the demand really.

You can also pay for credits.

Which is totally worth it, because you’ll be making money selling these leads.

Credits run you a little more than $1 per credit and they never expire.

If the lead doesn’t respond to you within (I think) 3 days they also will refund your credits.

I’ve found them to be really fair.

So in essence you’re trading sometimes a few bucks for a hundred bucks when you sell that lead to your client.

That’s what I call LEVERAGE.


Setting Up Your Profile

Head over to Thumbtack’s site now and join it as a “pro.”

Then start typing in the niche you want to generate leads for and click get started.

You can select even more services on the next page.


Then select your travel preferences.

When I’m selling leads I always choose niches that require the local business owner to travel to the customer’s home.


I normally select about a 20-30 mile radius from my target location.

The rest of the sign-up process is pretty self-explanatory.

So you’re signed up, now all you need to do is fill out your profile details.

You’re going to need a thumbnail/profile picture.

You can either A. use your own B. if you have a client use there’s or C. create a logo

To create a logo you can hire someone on Fiverr.com – go there and type in logo design.

Or you can also use canva.com or use stock photos.

I get my stock photos from http://depositphotos.com, but you could always try a free stock image site like http://pixabay.com too.

http://depositphotos.com/

http://pixabay.com/


Fill everything out and make your profile look good!

Use stock photos for job examples, etc..

One of the tabs will ask you for reviews.


You can go about this a couple different ways.

Attempt to get leads first without any reviews and then focus on gathering those once you have a happy client. (IE. Get those people to fill out reviews after the work has been performed)

OR use your imagination and come up with an alternative way to get reviews.

Ask friends, family, or whatever you feel is ethical.

I chose to go the route of starting with no reviews and got decent results with it still because I was persistent in my follow-up routine.

Here’s the process of getting reviews in the following set of screenshots:


The Process of Getting Leads For Yourself

In Thumbtack you will have a quote tab and a request tab.

The request tab will be customers that are requesting a quote for your services.

The quote tab will be the customers that you already responded to, so that you can continue your conversation.


You will also receive email alerts when someone new is looking for a quote, it’s best to respond to these sooner than later.

You’ll notice in the picture below that they will give you a little description of what the requester is looking to get done.

In this case he wanted to have some bathroom tile re-caulked.


The flooring niche example I show is really good one, because in my target area I have very little people competing against me for these jobs!

So here’s how I go about getting these leads.

Click the “Send Quote” button.


Sometimes it will ask you to put in a price and other times it won’t.

When it does ask I normally stick with something low, to get their attention.

Here’s the message I type in the box in order to get a lead that I can sell.

Hi Scott,


We do this type of thing often and would be happy to assist you! Can you tell me the best phone number to reach you at so that I can learn more about the job and give you a more accurate quote? Without speaking with you it's hard for me to say an exact amount.

Look forward to speaking and helping you get this taken care of.

The above is the EXACT copy that I use and I get really great response rates from it.

Here’s an example screenshot of what happens after sending this message.

You can see here after sending Molly my message, Thumbtack tracked that she viewed my “quote” and then she messaged me back her phone number.

It’s at this point I would reach out to my flooring customer and sell them the lead.


Not all Thumbtack requests require you to ask for a phone number.

Sometimes you will be given the phone number instantly after submitting a “quote.”

Remember, I’m not actually giving them a quote at all yet.

I’m making the initial contact and asking for a phone number so that we can give them an accurate quote.


In the case of my flooring client, he actually calls the customer up and then visits their home to measure the new flooring and gives them a quote / closes the deal.

So you’re probably wondering, what happens if the customer never views the quote request you send them?

Good question!

Luckily Thumbtack will refund your credits when that happens, which is nice, because you don’t pay for any bad leads.


Selling The Leads

So now that you’ve got the customers phone number it’s time to broker the lead.

This is the part where you arbitrage it to a local business owner!

I’m going to give you my EXACT email template for how I broker these leads, actually it’s a two-part template because we’ll be sending two emails..

Here’s email number one:

Subj: Can I get a ballpark estimate on this?

I’m looking to get our carpet replaced with hardwood floor.

It’s approximately 500-1000 sq. ft.

Can you tell me approximately what this would cost?

Short and sweet!

Now the information you’re using to type this email will be the same info you got from the lead on Thumbtack.

You’ll want to email this out to several businesses in the area that you think you’d like to work with and you’re sure to get a response.

You can find people on Google, Yellow Pages, Craiglists, AdWords, etc…

This email template works for me every time.

So what happens next?


They’re going to respond to you either with an estimate or they’ll want to talk with you to gather more information.

So how do you transition from this to explaining to them that you’re not actually the customer?

This is where the second email comes into play:

Thanks for the response NAME.

This is actually a lead that came in through one of our several online properties.

I’ll happily give you access to this one as well as all future leads that come in for NICHE in CITY.

What do you think would be a fair price?

-YOUR NAME

What we did here was reframe the conversation and follow up with a very direct question.

What do they think is a fair price?

If they gave us an estimate in the first email you can use that to your advantage for negotiation, because they already told you what the job is worth to them.

See how I did that?

I’ll wrap this up here, because at this point it’s up to you to work out how you want to charge them, etc..

Which of course will vary client to client.


Conclusion

This is truly one of the easiest ways to make money with local marketing.

Whether you want to use this as a way to get leads while you wait for SEO rankings, or you want to get started without learning the typical local marketing stuff - I’m confident that you can do really well with this method.

Figure out how much Thumbtack is going to charge you on a per lead basis and use that to help you figure out what you’ll be charging your client for leads.

You may opt to charge them on every single lead you give them or you might go with a profit sharing business model.

Typical profit sharing for lead gen in my experience is about 10%.

So how that would play out in the flooring example is say my client sells a wood floor install for $3,500.

I would get 10% of that $350 for that install.

There’s some up’s and down’s to this of course, but it can be far more lucrative.

Decide what business model is right for you and take action!


Just a reminder that if you didn’t pick-up my special “Shotgun SEO” course, it’s highly recommended that you do that ASAP as it’s a special I’m only running for this launch.

You can grab it here.

To your success,

Paul Jameswww.pauljames.com

https://localleadarbitrage.com/shotgun-seo

http://www.pauljames.com/

by: paul jamesthumbtack to get leads (especially in the skilled trades niche) generic profile ideas...

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