174. The Exact Playbook To Make $10K+ Month as a Side Hustle

0:00What if you could ditch the 9-to-5 grind, achieve financial freedom, and build wealth through a business model you've never heard of? The easiest way to make$10 ,000 a month is to spin up three lead generation websites and create a revenue share agreement with every one of those businesses. The best way to escape the nine to five is by learning a valuable skill that you can monetize. Local service businesses need this service because they can't control and scale on their own. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to HealthFit Podcast where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses.

0:32Today, we're thrilled to have Luke Vanderveer join us. Luke left his six-figure HR job at the age of 29 to create a life of freedom, leveraging his expertise in SEO and lead generation to rent out websites to businesses. What? That sounds incredible. Luke's here to share his journey, his strategies, and invaluable insights you can use to start your own path to financial independence. Luke, thank you so much for being here. Great story and great concept. So yeah, I'm excited to dive into it more. Yeah, I love it, man. Thanks for having me on, Ryan. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's going to be so, so good.

0:59And you really promote leaving the rat race. And that's something that you did at like 29. So let's jump there. Like what pushed you to leave your six figure job, which is crazy and start your own business. I've just never agreed with this path, right? Everybody tells you that like society, parents, friends, everybody, you know, is always like, you know, here, here's the path to success. You just got to go to school, you learn all this stuff, then you're just going to work. And I was like, what do you mean? We'll just work. And then, and then what? And it's like, Oh, just work until when? I don't know, 65, 70, then you can retire.

1:32I'm like, cool, then what? Now you enjoy yourself. I'm like, what if I don't want to wait that long? That's the problem. Yeah, I love it. So I'm curious, did you have like entrepreneurial parents or anything? Was this just like truly like, I don't want this path for me? I mean, I guess partially. My mother's a nurse, clinical nurse specialist. She's a psychiatric nurse. My father's a chiropractor. He owns his own practice. So there's some little entrepreneurial piece, but he's still working. He's working there. He's the sole practitioner. it's not like he's stepped back and just running something oh interesting so let's go to that 29 and you're like okay i don't want this life for me you decide to quit your hr job i mean what are you doing what's that first entrepreneurial venture for you yeah i mean i decided way sooner i was just immediately i want to say six months after getting out of the nba program at albany and just being at work i was just not loving this corporate life and i was like i gotta get out of this.

2:27And I looked at a lot of stuff. The first attempt after Googling how to make money online was a multi-level marketing with market America. And I was just going event to event and listening to trainings and sales stuff. And I would sit out in my car at lunch and like listen to the audios. And I was trying to do this, but it was so difficult because I'm, I'm introverted. I could force myself to talk to people. But that's not where I'm like comfortable. That was the first attempt. I want to ask for that. I like how long did you do the multi-level marketing or anything? Okay. How long did you do that?

3:03And there's some valuable skills for that. Two and a half years. Wow. It put me up in front of people. It got me comfortable speaking in front of people because you'd have to like memorize a presentation. I'm always like presenting and I felt like I was pretty good at it. Like 17 people in six months. And I was like, ah, I got this. I But like, even with that, I built this like team and we would go to events together and all these people are on stage making all kinds of money. And like, even with this little mini group I built, like 17 people is a lot. It took me a lot of work to do that. And it was only bringing in$1 ,500 a month after two and a half years of doing this.

3:38And I'm like, I can't, this is too much. Oh my God. That's so interesting. So multi-level though. I mean, talk to us about the benefits. I'm not promoting MLM schemes here. I just want to make that clear to the audience here, but I'd love to hear like the benefits that you had of it. I've met people that do better in it. I think the biggest benefit I got from it was just getting out of my own skin a little bit, just being a little bit more extroverted and being open to the idea of something that's not traditional in terms of making money instead of just going to a job and going home, trying something else.

4:08I think that was just the best benefit, just pushing me toward a different direction. Not necessarily that model because I don't think that model works very well, but I'm still glad that that happened because it pushed me in the direction I needed to go. Interesting. And let's talk about the direction that you do go in. Is this the website rental? Like, how did you first discover website rental? And like, talk to us about website rentals. This is a new concept for me and on the podcast. So yeah, talk to us about this. And how'd you discover it? So it kind of started with lead generation. I was doing all these different models and trying things at Amazon FBA and drop shipping.

4:38And I'd have like varying degrees of success or money with each of these, but I could never really figure out how to get something where the money's coming in, but I have my time too. It would always be one or the other. I either have a ton of time and no money's coming in. I have all this money and I just be working all the time. And I'm like, there's got to be a happy medium somewhere. I'd like, am I like an idiot? So I just, I'm like looking for all this stuff and I found lead generation. I was listening to somebody talk about just generating leads for businesses and I was like, this is really cool.

5:07Let me try to learn SEO. So I'm paying for all kinds of coaches and courses and all this stuff. I get SEO. I build a little agency. I got a bunch of clients. I'm like, all right, this is good. it's making more than my job. I'm like, this is okay, this is working. But then I start to notice all the problems with that one. And that clients are bothering you to do things that don't make a difference. They're arguing with you on what's best, even though they've never put what they're talking about. And it's just becoming a massive headache. And I'm like, it's like they own me, or they act like they own me, just because they're paying me a retainer.

5:37And I was like, I can't do this anymore. So I just one night, I had a client call me on a Sunday, wake me up in middle of the night, freaking out about his rankings, which is crazy because I brought him from nowhere to getting tons of leads. And he was complaining. And I just snapped, honestly. I was like, that's it, you're done. I freaked out. And then I just shut down the whole agency. And I started building websites in all of the niches that I was already in. And I was like, maybe I can just build it and rent it to them. It's like, if I have control of it, they can't tell me what to do with it.

6:06Doing that was the difference maker, because then I don't have to listen for what they want to change. Okay, let's talk about this a little bit more. So for people listening here, because we have entrepreneurs who are like, okay, I want to start a business and I want to make passive income while I'm at it. So just as I'm comprehending this, you built websites and then just rented them out to companies to be like, hey, I have the design, everything built, you just need to plug everything in. Right? Yeah. So let's backtrack a little bit. I think it'll make more sense with an example. Like so the tons of people searching for businesses all the time on Google, right?

6:38Let's say the driveway, the driveway is all messed up. There's like potholes in it. What would you do, Ryan, if you had just potholes in your driveway? Who are you calling for that? I would Google how to get rid of potholes or like pothole removal businesses. Okay. All right. So are you doing it yourself or are you going to go to home? Oh God, no. Okay. So you're going to hire a business, right? Yeah. All right. So you Google your, you know, pothole removal service or whatever. And then out of the people that come up, all the businesses, Who do you pick? Usually the top person. Okay. So this is the same response everybody gives.

7:08Yeah. What happens? 93 % of the searches go to Google and then out of Google, everybody just wants the top guy. They don't want to go seven pages deep search for people when everybody offers the same service. So all I did was build a website in that niche, get it to that top spot and just treat it like digital real estate. I would rent it out like an apartment building. I just lease out the top spot in the search results to a business who does that service. Interesting. So it sounds like this is a very, very strong background in SEO to get this at that top ranking spot then. That was from the previous, all the stuff I did to learn that.

7:43So I was like, let's just parlay this into something passive. Okay. That is a super, super interesting. So you painted that picture for us. I want to talk about like landing your first client then. I want to make this very actual for people that are listening. Okay. Like I want to do like the same thing here. steps you took to land your first client with this? And from what you know now, like what steps would you take? It was a lot of trial and error for me, but build a site, get it to the top. Customers start calling because they see it, right? That top spot gets a ton of traffic. So it's like the number one spot organically below the maps, 31 % of whatever is being searched.

8:17A thousand people, 300 some are going to that website. A portion of those are going to call and those are calling my website now. They're either filling out the quote form on the website or calling the call tracking number, which I can actually take the call and forward it to anywhere. What I was originally doing is I just answer the phone and be like, yo, whatever the name of the company is. So I'll just make it up. Dallas Tree Service. And then they'd say what they needed. Oh, I need a tree removed in my backyard or whatever. I'm like, cool. All right. All of our guys are busy. Let me give you a call back in like two hours.

8:43And I just call up a tree company and be like, hey, I got people to refer to you. Here's the details and like talk to them and see if they were open to like working out some kind of structure with me where they pay me a little bit, I get caught and then just create that relationship. So I'd refer a few people over and then make a deal. Oh my God, that is so genius, honestly. I want to ask, so you would build this website and basically pretend like I can do this, not pretend, but like advertise for this service. You have a strong background in SEO and then you're a middleman for another company.

9:14Yeah, I basically just turned myself into a lead broker. If you're looking to start and build a successful business, UpUp Academy is where you need to be. We offer step-by-step programs from active entrepreneurs running thriving businesses, like Adam Hill, who works just two days a week and brings in over$58 ,000 a month with his vending machine business, or Vlad Kikunso, who has made over$3 million in just three years with his Etsy business. These aren't your run-of-the-mill programs. These are proven blueprints used to build seven-figure businesses. Whether you're just getting started or looking to grow your business, UpUp Academy has everything you need.

9:49Just click the link in the description and try it out for free today. I want to ask, like, how long did it take with SEO now? Like, how long does it take really to go from, you know, page seven to page one? And I'd love to hear, like, how do you identify industries to go after now? Yeah, I mean, so it really depends on the niche. If you pick something super competitive, it's going to take the standard four or five months, whatever it's going to be. But if you pick something that's easier, lower competition, it's not like that. It could be 60 days, 90 days. I had a client do it in a couple of weeks.

10:19Wow. This is really cool. I can't say it's going to be that all the time because that's a one-off. You have to find those interesting scenarios. It's areas where it's not as big of a population, like it's not going to be in New York City. Three, four hundred thousand people. We want five, six, seven businesses, something like that. Not too many. And there can't be none. There's got to be enough where I have people I can talk to in case I blow my first pitch to the first guy. It'd be the only company I could work with. Different types of niches. I want something like quick turnaround time with the type of business it is, like the sales cycle.

10:51Pool construction, for example, terrible because it takes forever. You're a pool company. I give you the lead right now. You're not closing that lead for another three months. So that lead to you doesn't seem like much. You're like, yeah, I don't know how it works out. I'll let you know. I want to know right away. I want them to see the value in working with me. So I want stuff that closes quick. You know, plumbers, electricians, blue collars, really something that works really well for this. So there's some white collar stuff too, but I really like the contractor type stuff. because people want it done now.

11:17They're not going to wait weeks and weeks to get whatever it is done. And they're not going to price shop too much either. Yeah, so it sounds like you're targeting industries where like a plumber, like if I need plumbing, like I need someone to come like today type of thing. Yeah, we need it now. We can't wait on this. I'm trying to pick things that are like that. And then I'm just looking at the search results to see, you know, what are the other competitors look like? Do they have a ton of reviews or are they oblivious? Like, is their website look like it was made in 1990 or is it brand new and tons of content on it?

11:47And if you can find just Googling in different niches and cities, finding these things, you can really crush it with this because you're competing against people that don't know what they're doing. So even if you messed up half of it, you're still coming out ahead. And that's what's making it passive. Yeah, that's what I love about the opportunity in the home service business is right now, there are a lot of older people in home service businesses and it's starting to become like a more trendier thing to get into. And that's why I like the Upflip podcast because it's such a great resource for that, where essentially you can identify nothing against like a 55-year-old guy that's been doing it forever.

12:21But like his marketing might not be up to par as someone that's, you know, under 35 that like knows what marketing looks like and how to have great SEO. That's what I love about the strategy. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. It evolves and they're focused on their trade. They're really good at what they do. They're not great at the marketing and stuff. So they're growing off referrals and people telling them about it. but that's not a consistent way to grow. You can't control and scale fast if you're just hoping that you get people coming in. I love it. I wanna get actionable here and stay actionable here.

12:50It sounds like a good idea of the industries that we go after, but locations, like how are you identifying good locations that go after then? It's looking for all those things. It's looking for how many businesses are in there, what are the businesses we're competing against, whether they look like they know what they're doing or they're paying somebody, or it's like old, not a lot of content, less reviews, don't even have a website. We're specifically looking for that. So you just pick a niche and start going through the cities to find this. And when you find it, that's what you go after. Oh my gosh.

13:19Is it like a typical like population wise? Is it typically like 50 to 200 ,000? What does it like typically look like here? Couple hundred thousand. Oh man. Sometimes you get just a gem that'll be like, you know, New York City and there's some niche that's just perfect and there's no competition, but it's hard to find that. Interesting. And so for the SEO part, I mean, that's obviously probably the most important aspect. You can identify everything you want, but you need to be able to like do the SEO. I mean, what are some principles that you teach that people should know about when it comes to like SEO and actually being able to rank here?

13:52Yeah. I mean, it's like an 80-20. So it's doing the keyword research and seeing what your other competitors are promoting. And I like the idea of looking through all the competitors and seeing every possible service you can provide and then trying to rank for all of it. Because the interesting thing is Google is going to do what it wants, regardless of what you put. So, you know, maybe I want to rank for like roof repair and roof inspection. And I really wanted repair, but Google just ranks me higher for inspection, even though I optimize the same and whatever. Okay, cool. I guess I'll just focus on that.

14:23Like I just go for everything and then we see what sticks. I just kind of pare it down based on who I'm going to work with. Content foundation is a really big piece. And then obviously there's a lot of other technical things too, like get a map, get it listed in places, get websites to link to you, it starts to get pretty in the weeds. Yeah. I was going to say that is a whole content strategy, especially like when it comes to SEO. I mean, for someone that is just starting out, like what's the reasonable amount of like websites that they can own and what is really like the max if someone's in year one of this?

14:52Oh God, that's how fast you can get those up. Like I'll take one website, come up with a design. You don't even have to do it yourself. You pay somebody to do it. Come up with a nice, fast loading design and then template it and then just fresh content, same template, plug it in, pop it into a new city. You just, it's going to be finding the opportunities and then trying to manage your team. So I'm like, I have VAs and things that do this for me. So you get it down, you learn it, you see that it's working now and then we train the VAs to do it so you don't have to. And now you're just project managing.

15:23Ah, that's so interesting. So let's just say you get like a new website up. Let's keep going with the plumbing example, for example. So basically you'll list your services as like plumbing and whatnot. I'm in need of plumbing. I'm going to call your website. Take us through your workflow. Like how do you guys identify people that actually like do the job then? Because basically you're just like outsourcing it here. Yeah, I mean, they're just going into Google and they're just looking for companies that provide these services. So like upfront, when they're doing the research on what content to write and keywords to go after and so forth, they're going through to see what services they offer.

15:53So different companies are going to say they do different things. Pipe repair and toilets and showers and all this stuff. And we're trying to find a company that fits that. and my favorite types of companies to go for are the ones that are already paying for leads because I don't want to work with somebody who working with me would be a new bill. I want it to be something where they're going to reallocate money they're already spending to make it an easier switch and then they'll just try it with me. Like if I have somebody who's already spending thousands a month on Google ads like some plumber, he's going to love it when I give him organic traffic that closes at a higher rate.

16:28So I'm like, dude, just spend a couple thousand with us and test it out for a month. So that's what I want to ask. Like, how do you then price it to these customers? And how do you identify who's like paying for leads already? Two questions that I'd love to have those answered. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, there's lots of ways to do it, right? So think about any type of pay for lead service, advertising service. You can look on Facebook and go to the app library and see what plumbers are paying for ads there. You could look in Groupon and see what plumbers are paying for Groupon, right? They don't want to offer their inspection service for$35 when it's like 150 bucks an hour.

17:00They're doing it because they're hoping that they can get a customer long-term and they're sacrificing it up front. It's like the, uh, what, what is it? Is it Sam's club? Somebody gives away like really cheap food just to get people in the door, the rotisserie chickens or something. It's the same concept or like Google and just, you know, plumbing service NYC. And I look, I'm looking at who's got the ads. All these companies that are there, if they're local, like I'm ignoring national people. Cause I want the local guy. Those are some of the picks. so you then call these people like hey i've got a lead for you at address like what are you going to pay for i'd love to hear like that workflow once that happens then yeah i mean it's tough to script that one because you kind of got to be able to wing it a little bit but it's basically like you know hey you know ryan i know you guys do plumbing do you service like queens and they're like yeah i'm like cool so i got a house with whatever and i just pretend it's like my lead I'm just going through all the problems or whatever asking if they can do it kind of qualifying them And if they say they can do it i'm like, all right, cool So this is actually a referral that I wanted to give you guys Like how quickly would you be able to get to this if I send that over?

18:08And if they tell me they can do it like right away or they sound like they're serious cool If they sound like they're not going to get to it. I'm like All right, i'll probably just go with somebody else. Thanks. So just call the next person And then I try to create a little bit of a relationship up front Oh, that is super interesting. And then honestly, the more you do that, probably you can build that relationship and they can always be your plumbing guys. How do you exactly price it then? So if I paid$150 to you for plumbing, like what do you charge the other guy? Okay, customer comes in. Let's just say it could be anything.

18:38Pipe repair. We'll go pipe repair, and we'll say it was like a thousand bucks from the plumbing company. That lead's coming in, and I'm just giving to them, I'm just asking for some kind of commission or something up front. You could do it where you just generate a bunch of leads. You got a million things coming in, and you just set a flat fee initially. But if you want the lowest barrier to entry, it's pitching them a commission deal because there's no resistance. What do they have to say no to? They don't have to pay me unless they close the deal. So they go close it, and then I just follow up with them to see how it went.

19:05Trusting that they're going to be honest. And if I send them a few leads and they're not paying me anything, they either stink at sales or they're lying to me. In which case, I don't want to work with either of them so I'm going to find somebody else. That is literally so interesting. I've never heard of this business idea. So it's like, it fires me up to talk about this. Let's just say it's like$1 ,000 for easy round numbers. What do you typically charge for like a commission? It probably varies, of course, by like relationships and by industry, but is it 30%, 15 %? I'm going to try to go 15 % of whatever it is just up front.

19:36And then once we have a relationship and we got a few leads coming in, I'm immediately switching that to a flat fee so that it becomes passive because I don't want to be the person that has to follow up on things. Like that's manual work for me to follow up and listen to the things or manual work for my VAs. So I'll get it to the point where it's 30, 40, 50 leads, whatever minimum. And then I'm switching into a flat fee with that person. And it's part of my conversation up front. Like as we're chatting and seeing like how these jobs are going, I'm like, here's what I'd really like to do. I'd love to send you these for a little while.

20:05You could just pay me a commission. We'll see how it goes. And then I'd like to talk about switching to a flat fee, you know, if I can get you enough business and it makes sense for both of us. Yeah. It does sound like a lot of it is like relationship building once you do like break down that door. Yeah. And like, they're super open. It's because I'm not approaching it like a marketing company where I'm calling up and promising all this stuff that's going to happen four months down the road. It's like, I already have proof of concept in my hand. Like here are the leads. I have them right now. Like there's customers that want this.

20:31Do you want it or not? This is so nuts to me. Like I literally have never heard of this. This is like crazy. I want to ask like for people listening, like they might be as fired up as I am on this, but like realistically, what can someone like, of course, it depends on variables, how hard you're going to work, time commitment, you know, a question I'm about to ask, how much like money can you make from this a month? Oh my God, stupid money. You could make, you could make millions a year. It's not, not even a joke. Like 10 K you could do in 90 days. If you did it, if you put in enough work to do it.

20:58The crazy thing is like, not just, I guess it depends on how passive you want it to be. If you want it to be passive and with renting out the website, so you don't have to do a ton later, it's just literally sitting there and paying you and you don't look at it like some of the sites I have, then that is going to take a little bit longer to build. But if you want to do something like a revenue share, you could knock out somebody's full-time income really fast. Wow. Like, what are we talking? Like two months, three months? Yeah. Easy. Oh my gosh. I had three calls yesterday. I was on another podcast.