It almost seems oxymoronic—working pro bono, free of charge, yet somehow generating thousands of dollars in income? In this article, we are not only to go teach you how this nearly too good to be true venture can actually be your reality, but show you how you can achieve this with minimal upfront costs.
This entire method relies on a few simple skills you must know prior to starting.
1) Finding Business Niches
In business, there are saturated and unsaturated markets. A saturated market is a market whose potential customers’ demands are already met by many existing businesses. On the other hand, an unsaturated market is where there’s a want for a specific product or service that is not being met by enough businesses to fulfill customer demand. It is within these unsaturated markets that a business niche is in.
For example, “module pet homes” is specific enough to reach an untapped audience, yet the pet industry is big enough to have a legitimate volume of demand. Tapping into one of these will greatly help you achieve your goal of renting out websites. By picking a business in an unsaturated market, you can more easily rank for keywords to improve SEO, which will come in handy for the next step…
2) Create optimized website based upon the niche you had
This part sounds the most daunting. Create a website that outperforms other competing niches on search engines? Thankfully, the execution is actually easier than it sounds. Now a days, web visual composers such as Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and more make it easy to build a stunning website without any coding knowledge. Plus, there are plenty of cheap and even free tutorials available online to help you master visual composition, navigation, and other skills that help solidify your website’s online presence.
The website doesn’t need to be complicated, either. It should clearly feature what your business niche is and have a option to call for a free quote. This point will be explained further down below.
3) Get “Votes” to Your Website
One of the most vital aspects of any SEO strategy is back-linking. Back-linking, also known as outbound links, is when another website links back to yours, like this. The Google search algorithm recognizes when other websites redirect to yours, thus helping you improve your online reputation. Think of it like when a friend refers you to someone else, it improves their opinion and trust with you. Backlinks are the same concept, a good referral from a trusted site makes Google and other search algorithms view your website as more reliable.
But, how do you find and convince web masters and bloggers to link back to your website? There are multiple online platforms that helps with just this. One of my all time favorites is HARO (Help A Reporter Out). HARO is an online platform that journalists come to in search of potential interviewees to use for their future articles. By signing up as a source, you can respond to journalist’s request for comment about any industry of your choice that you have knowledge in. If the journalist decides to use your contribution for their paper, your site will get a valuable back link. The best part? Back links from news authorities are one of the strongest sites to boost your SEO score!
4) Find Businesses to Direct Leads
Now that your site is ranking high on Google and others, you will get clients calling for a quote regarding your niche. But wait! You don’t actually own that business, you simply made a website advertising for it. So what do you do? Simply, call businesses in your local area whom are within your niche and offer them to send them leads for free. The only no in this pitch is the fact that this is a no-brainer for the business owner. You’re doing pro bono work for them by sending them potential clients, and all you must ask in return is they let you know when a lead converts. Further, you should track your own lead conversions to ensure that no prospective customer who actually went on to purchasing the product or service isn’t being reported to you. For that, here are some great tips on tracking your leads.
5) Once You Convert Customers, Reel Businesses in For Money!
Success! Your leads have converted into real paying customers! You can now reach out to the business owner and offer them more leads, but for a cost this time. Even though the business owner won’t be receiving your work pro bono anymore, it’s still a win-win scenario (so long as your charge leaves enough margin for them to have a healthy enough profit).
Now Let’s Go Through That One More Time…
This entire marketing strategy revolves around building a successful landing page for an existing business and ‘renting it’ to them. You get to have the advantage of advertising for any business niche you choose, with no need for employees, product/service hosting, or anything. All you have to do is create a successful landing page and ‘grind’ a little pro bono to achieve the rewards you would soon reap.
And the best part? You are not limited to just one niche. You can create as many websites as you can handle, in as many fields as you desire, and do the same process for each! Just imagine that you run three websites with one client each, all of whom receive just five clients a month from your service. Say these clients pay you $300 for each conversion. This generates $4,500 in monthly income. That’s living rent free for the rest of your life in a luxury area. After a year, that’s $54,000 to place a down-payment on a half a million dollar home, or buy a car outright.
Renting little websites is just one of the many ways you can turn pro bono help into a major source of income. For more information on how working pro bono can revolutionize your life, be sure to check out our other blogs! And of course, to give or receive pro bono help, visit Joeprobono.com—where we match clients and professionals free of charge!
