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How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months

89 points| mike2477 | 10 years ago |getsimpledata.com | reply

24 comments

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[+] fweespeech|10 years ago|reply
I have really mixed feelings.

On one hand, I want to congratulate them on getting their dream....on the other hand, as someone who regularly has to tell the receptionist to screen my calls....

Yeah. This is really a tool to collect prospects to spam and cold call. I'm sure it will last the OP awhile, possibly it'll be a project that survives forever with different data sources, but at the end of the day "lead generation" is really just a way to collect people's information to pester them. This sort of marketing is, frankly, invasive and for every person you get from this...you've also likely convinced a dozen or more people never to have anything to do with you.

[+] HeyLaughingBoy|10 years ago|reply
Some people want to be contacted. If I need something and you have it, I'd much rather you contacted me than I spend hours searching for it.

That's the point of targeted email/communications: don't waste time contacting people who don't want what you're selling.

[+] Berone|10 years ago|reply
hahahah this comment is absurd
[+] iokevins|10 years ago|reply
I found each point illuminating; this one stood out, for me, as a good description of market positioning: "When you hear Volvo what comes to mind? Scandanavians, but more importantly you probably think “Safe car.” How about Honda? Odds are “Reliable car” came to mind. This is the basic idea of positioning. What comes to mind when people hear {company name}?"
[+] mike2477|10 years ago|reply
Thanks iokevins! Glad that was useful :)
[+] theworstshill|10 years ago|reply
Congratulations, this is great.

"Whether you’re working on a startup, side project or contributing to a larger company, the place where you work should be a place where you go to grow, interact with people, and have fun. It should never be a place where you derive unhealthy stress, anxiety or fear. "

Good perspective as well, hopefully once your side project grows into a real company you'll recall this line for your own employees.

[+] metalliqaz|10 years ago|reply
Somewhere between 80-99% of people do not have that luxury.
[+] mike2477|10 years ago|reply
Thanks theworstshill! I absolutely plan on keeping this cultural value as the company grows!
[+] barryhand|10 years ago|reply
Great read.

I found it very interesting in how this might scale for you. Is it possible to continuously source, say 2000 leads/month for your clients?

Some further questions.

1. What process do you go through to both source the contacts, and to verify their quality (e.g UpWork team to scrape etc.)

2. Have you any feedback on how successful this has been for clients (e.g response rates)

Good luck with this, and really hope it works for you.

[+] pavel_lishin|10 years ago|reply
That whole post is duplicated about five times - in entirety - in various <meta> tags. Kinda weird.

The email he sent to the founder of Growth Geeks also appears to be missing (after this sentence: "After receiving a couple marketing emails from the company I sent this email to the founder:")

[+] mike2477|10 years ago|reply
Hey Pavel, the author here -- thanks for catching that! What do you mean by the meta tags?
[+] gue5t|10 years ago|reply
Passive income is the epitome of privilege.
[+] sp332|10 years ago|reply
Do you mean this how-to guide probably isn't useful?