

Ask HN: Should I try Lead Generation? - gottschalk

Hey HN, I'm posting this under a fake name because I'm kind of embarrassed to be asking this.<p>Today learned about "leadgen" sites where you basically put up a form, get customer information, and then sell it to someone who needs that customer. Apparently its a huge business (for which there was even a conference in Vegas recently).<p>By day, I work doing datamining / machine learning with Hadoop. I'm comfortable with doing A/B testing in Rails, and I'm competent in photoshop. Surely I could compete on a technical level, but is this even worth spending time on?<p>I realize the market for the "big 4" (mortgages, loan modification, automotive, online schools) is very saturated. That said, I think there may be a lot of opportunities in the local space for smaller categories: handymen, personal trainers, wedding photography, (maybe cosmetic surgery?) etc.<p>Let me give you an example: The other day our phone rang and it was a man in his thirties who was short on work. He asked my wife if we had any handyman work we needed done. My wife said that we didn't and he continued by suggesting a list of work he could do (plumbing, painting, yard work, etc.) We politely refused because we don't need anything done, but I felt bad for the guy.<p>He seems like an ideal candidate for selling a home improvement lead. I can only imagine that in this economy there are many more individuals and companies like him.<p>I don't want to get rich, I just want to make a couple hundred thousand to pay off my mortgage.<p>So HN: what are your thoughts? Is this a sleazy, saturated market for which I will be selling my soul in exchange for pittance? Or is it a viable side business for making a little cash? Any legal issues or pitfalls you want to warn me about?
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maconic
From an ethical perspective, I think it just depends on how you will use the
leads. If you make sure you're giving the leads to a scrupulous company who
will offer the customer a valuable service that (s)he was looking for, then I
don't see any ethical problem there.

From a business perspective, I think you'd need to figure out who would buy
the leads after you've generated them. Perhaps you should start by coming up
with a niche with a dearth of lead generators, find a company targeting that
niche, and ask them if they would be interested in buying leads. By ensuring
there is "customer" for your leads you can save yourself wasted time. Customer
development (a la Steve Blank) for lead generation, so to speak ;)

