Howdy, partners!
In this here article, I’m fixin’ to present to you my #1 Business Model of the past several years: Digital Real Estate.
This just may be the rootinest-tootinest article this side of the Mississippi!
(not sure why I opened that way… enough of the cowboy jokes!)
A lot of you are frequent readers here at Degree Finders, so you’ve likely heard a lot about Digital Real Estate.
But for the newcomers out there, well – this article is made for you!
Whether you’re an absolute beginner when it comes to online business (or entrepreneurship in general), or if maybe you’ve tried a few things before, this business might just be your own personal god-send!
As I’ll get to in a bit, Digital Real Estate is personally responsible for my own success in business, which is why I shout it from the rooftops so often.
The specific type of Digital Real Estate that I use is called the Digital Rental Method, but we’ll get into all of that later.
I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m here to teach it to you step-by-step!
And if you’re lucky (hint, you are) I’m going to recommend a few programs you can check out if you’re interested in learning even more.
Now that we got that pesky introduction out of the way, let’s hop right in:
So, What Is A Digital Rental Method Business?
Well now… I’m very glad you asked!
Digital Real Estate works a lot like physical real estate.
You build a rental property, rent it out to someone lookin’ for a home, and collect a check every month.
With the Digital Rental Method, the property here is a website, and the “renter” is a local business owner.
Why would a business owner wanna rent a website from you? Another great question!
This website of yours has a phone number on it, and when that phone number rings, instead of answering it yourself, you send it to a local business owner that does that service.
Then, they pay you rent each month to keep that phone ringin’.
One of my favorite pieces of that whole process is that you don’t need to be able to do the actual work (e.g., you don’t need to be a landscaper to build a website for a landscaper).
You just make the connection between the landscaper and the guy with the ugly bushes, and take a cut (“rent”) to make it all happen.
Pretty cool, huh?
Why Would A Company Need A Digital Rental Property In The First Place?
If you’ve ever met one of these mythical “local business owners”, you should know one thing about them: they’re good at their trade.
But they’re really bad at their marketing.
And even if they wanted to be good at marketing, they’re simply too busy providing the service to their customers. AKA – they ain’t got time for it!
The fact of the matter is this: they need the internet in order to grow their business, and most of them have a hard time turning on a computer.
The “good ole days” of stapling a flier to a telephone pole and calling it a day is loooong gone.
So point being: if they can’t figure out internet marketing, their business will eventually die.
This is where you step in.
Don’t Believe Me? How Do You Think HomeAdvisor works!?
Home Advisor → Doesn’t provide any home services.
Airbnb → Doesn’t own any houses.
Uber → Doesn’t own any cars (well, now they do – but you get the point).
Home Advisor is doing the same exact thing I’m talking about: the only difference is that they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build their brand up to become the #1 search result all over the country.
If you’ve ever used it, you know what I’m talking about: you enter in some project details and your phone number, and next thing you know you’ve got 10 contractors blowing up your phone.
But here’s the kicker! They charge each of those 10 contractors for the Lead!
Yes, that’s right, when your phone number comes through for that house painting project, Home Advisor charges 10 different painters the same amount just to have your phone number…
Most business owners kinda hate this, but they don’t have any other choices (because again, they suck at marketing).
Why Is Using The Digital Rental Method Such A Lucrative Business Model To Get Involved With?
Going back to that mythical business owner of ours… if you’ve ever spoken to them, you know that they like to complain about stuff!
Specifically, the simple cost of being in business:
Employees, trucks, liability insurance… etc etc etc.
Well, with the Digital Rental Method, you ain’t got none of that! Your business expenses are super, super low. I’m talking less than $50 for all the tools, softwares, etc.
And that means one really nice thing – you have very high profit margins. Usually well over 80%!
Not to mention, nearly every business in existence requires the one thing you provide: customers.
So you can roll this process out anywhere, and for anyone: doctors, lawyers, concrete contractors, house painters, gym owners… I even have a friend who specializes in restaurants.
“Alright alright… Im Interested. But How Do I Generate These Leads?”
Yet another amazing question!
To really make money with the Digital Rental Method, you’ve gotta go where people are looking for stuff.
And in today’s day and age, that means: Google & Facebook
There are some others, sure – like Instagram, Youtube, Yelp, etc. But Google & FB reign supreme.
I want to paint a scenario for you:
You’re driving down the road, headed to that 9-to-5 you hate so much (or somewhere else), and all of a sudden, your car breaks down!
Yep that’s right… it starts making weird noises, and slowly grinds to a halt.
What do you do next?
….
….
….
I’ll give you a second to honestly think about it.
Your car is now broken down on the side of the road: what do you do?
Most people are going to pick up their phone, head on over to Google, and type in something to the effect of: “tow truck near me” or “emergency roadside assistance”.
Then a bunch of stuff is gonna pop up on their phone, and they’re going to click the first thing they see that claims they can come help them out with their car.
So… The Digital Rental Method ensures that our customers (the ones that pay us $1,000/mo to make their phone ring) comes up in the #1 spot.
So I Can Just Slap Up Any Ole’ Ad And This Will Work?
Nay!
Just like anything in life, you gotta have a vague idea of what you’re doing.
For example:
Imagine a pipe bursts in your house and water is spraying all over.
You whip out your phone, type in “emergency plumber near me”.
Which of these ads are you more likely to click on?
An ad that says: “Emergency Plumber Near You – Can Be On Site In 10 Minutes”
Or
An ad that says: “Drain Cleaning Plumber & More”
Unless you’re a… weirdo… you probably picked the first one.
Why? When the ad is incredibly specific to what the person is asking for, well then the people that click on that ad are hot hot hot buyers.
Meaning, your client is going to be head over heels in love with you for making his phone ring.
The Power Of Google Ads
If you’ve been a reader here for long, you know my personal story.
I had a failing Garage Door & Fence Company myself, and was near bankruptcy before I found this system.
Sure, it took me a few tries to figure out the right way to do things, but once I did… it was a no brainer!
So I know what this business model looks like from both sides of the equation. I’ve been a business owner with a Garage Door company that would happily pay for this service…
And I’ve been the person providing this service to others!
It’s a win-win, no questions asked.
Now I have tons of freedom, and get to spend time with my wife and kids:
Here’s a simple example website that makes me $1,000/mo practically on autopilot:
I think I pay around $20 per year to run this thing. A few bucks for the website hosting, and then a few bucks for the tracking phone number you see circled in red.
I recommend you specialize in a specific “niche”. For example, I know a lot about Fence companies (since I owned one)… so I specialize in Fence Repair.
That way, it’s really easy to just duplicate my website over and over and over again in new cities, which takes an hour tops.
I do have to check it a few times per year to make sure all is well and good… but I’ll take that trade any day of the week!
I’m scratching my head here trying to think of any other business that gives you profit margins above 70% that is as simple and straightforward as this is.
Now, I’m not saying you don’t have to work at all… far from it.
But it becomes more about front-loading work once and then collecting a check for years to come.
True Success Comes From Innovation
When I say “Innovation”, I mean taking something that exists already, and modifying it to do something else entirely.
For example, with Digital Real Estate: some of the wealthiest people that have ever existed made their mark through Real Estate.
That’s cool… but Real Estate takes over $100K to get started with successfully.
So all we’re doing here is taking the idea of Real Estate, and innovating.
Specifically, we’re applying it to the internet.
Again, not to beat a dead horse here (…I hope that’s the saying):
Being in the Top Spot with your ads is kind of like owning a prime piece of real estate that everyone wants to live in, in the best part of town.
Sometimes they all want it so badly, they’ll start a bidding war for it!
Nothing quite beats having a semi-passive, reliable source of income, like you get with The Digital Rental Method.
And I forgot to mention!
If a “renter” decides he doesn’t want to rent anymore, we can just send the calls to someone else, because we own the phone number!
I can go over to their biggest competitor and say, “hey, I was working with Joe The Roofer and he decided to stop paying me. I was sending him about 3 roof replacement jobs per month… are you interested in taking these jobs instead?”
I can almost guarantee you he’s going to say yes.
Alright… You’ve Stuck With Me Till Now, Let’s Break Down The Process In Detail, With One Of My Actual Clients!
Step 1: Picking A City & A Niche
We’ll use a real life example here. This is a landscaping company that I actually work with located in Allentown, PA.
Allentown, PA has a population of about 125,000 people and climbing (not including the additional couple hundred thousand that reside in neighboring towns), which is right in the sweet spot telling you that there will be enough homeowners looking for services.
Now, luckily enough we’ve got a tool or two at our disposal that allows us to see an estimate of just how many Allentown residents out there are looking for landscaping services monthly…
By my calculations that’s roughly 150 people every single month (1,800 each year). And we’re only looking at one smaller city located in eastern PA.
Let’s run some numbers real quick…
The average, basic landscape installation would run ya at least $2,000 (25k or more for something advanced – but let’s keep it to the “worst-case” scenario for this example).
And let’s say only 10% of these people actually end up following through with their landscaping plans:
15 x $2000 = $30,000!
Ask yourself a question now… would you be willing to bet that a small business owner would slide you $2,000 or even $2,500 a month if you’re bringing them back $30,000 a month that they didn’t have before?
You betcha.
Step 2: Finding A Small Business Owner That Needs Your Help
Alright, so now we’ve got numbers laid out for an offer that any small business owner would be foolish to walk away from.
At this point we just need to find a business owner that actually needs our help. Someone that is looking for more customers.
There are a lot of different places you can look for them – and more importantly, places that will let us know that the business owner already spends money on marketing their business…
Angi – I mean just check out the screenshot below. These are 7 businesses right here that are already paying Angi a pretty penny for the potential of landing your business.
Think they’d listen to you based on the numbers we just ran?
Numbers we ran aside, they’re currently competing with 5 other business owners for your services – but you could guarantee them exclusive leads.
Check!
Or how about these businesses that can be found paying for ads on Google already…
Like I said earlier, these businesses are already paying for marketing. We know that they’d be willing to pay a little sliver to deliver some fresh leads to their phone lines.
A lead sourcing platform like Angi will charge a business $50 or more for just one lead while selling that same lead to 3, 5, 8, sometimes more businesses at the same time.
Quick math tells us Angi could be pulling in $400 or more for a single lead they’ve generated.
And put yourself in the shoes of that lead / homeowner for a second – you just went to Angi because you’ve seen them all over TV, you enter some information thinking you’re going to find the perfect business to do your landscaping.
Next thing you know you have 8 different businesses blowing up your phone, all of them fighting over your business so they aren’t out money.
By this point you and anyone else would probably be a little ticked off.
In a situation like this the only party winning would be Angi.
The business owner? They’re out $50+.
The homeowner? Ticked off.
Now the beautiful thing about Digital Real Estate is it creates a win-win for the business owner and the customer. In this case, YOU are the business owner.
So you might be asking yourself, “if a platform like Angi is so bad, why do so many business owners use it?”
Fair question. The answer is: they don’t have a better option sitting in front of them.
Business owners barely know how to open their emails, let alone generate their own leads. Furthermore, platforms like Angi dominate market share.
They don’t realize there’s a better way. Not until you show up anyway. Just show em’.
Step 3: Build A One-Page Site That My Grandma Could Create
We’ve gotten through Step 2, which means the “hard part” is over.
Niche… check.
City… check.
Business owner that needs customers… check.
Now let’s build the machine.
We’re going to be building a one-page website that looks something like this:
This is something even my grandma could handle, and she still uses a flip phone…
I mean, sure, it doesn’t look like the best design you’ve ever seen but that isn’t necessary and it didn’t take much time to build.
Just a simple design, with a tad bit of content on it and a phone number that’s clearly visible & easy to access.
Attach it to a hosting service, like Cloudways.
Just a few simple steps and we’ve got a very functional website set up in less than an hour or two.
Time to run some numba’s!
12 months x $2,000 = $24,000
For the sake of remaining conservative, we’ll say I’ll spend an hour or so each month maintaining this one-page beast (it won’t).
That’ll boil down to roughly 12 hours a year in maintenance and add in the 1 hour it took to build it. That’s 13 hours in total.
Easy math tells us that this site will deliver roughly $1,800 an hour. Sign me up!
Keep in mind we only ran these calculations for a single one-page site.
Pretty remarkable!
Step 4: Generating Customers For The Business Owner
At this point, it’s time to go produce the money-maker.
Leads.
And money loves speed as the old saying goes.
Which means the quicker you can generate leads & customers for the business owner, the faster you put money in your pocket.
The most efficient way for you to do that is to set up a simple Google Ads campaign that even my grandma could build out (sorry, can’t help myself).
The great thing about Google Ads campaigns is that you can be confident that the people seeing them will be highly interested in the offer / services you’re putting in front of them.
I’m sure you’ll recognize them, they look a little something like this…
Now, Google Ads appear above the organic Google results (Google wants to make money, duh).
Generally your client is the one footing the bill for the ad spend – which is a huge plus for you!
One of the biggest advantages with Google ads is you can be sure that almost all of the leads generated will be solid leads.
This is due to the heavy intent searchers have.
I mean think about it.
If someone searches “landscaping company allentown pa” how likely are they to be interested in what your website has to sell?
VERY likely.
Let’s ballpark your ad spend at $25 per call generated, which is a fair number given the industry we’re talking about.
Even if the business owner pays for $500 worth of ads (which isn’t asking for much), that gives you the ability to send them roughly 20 new calls – or potential customers.
And you get to walk away with the $1,800.
Not too shabby!
Step 5: Get Paid!
I mean… isn’t this pretty straightforward?
Let’s reflect on what you’ve done to this point…
Business owner has seen the numbers… Check.
Leads, customers, results have been delivered… Check.
More value delivered than companies they’ve worked with such as Angi… Check.
You’ve removed every reason they could have to stop paying you – unless you’ve sent them sooooo many customers that they just can’t handle anymore.
In which case, you go target one of their competitors and simply share your results with them.
And then, you just keep on keepin’ on!
Step 6: Do What You’ve Done – Again, Again & Again
Ask yourself this question, if you do something once how likely are you to be able to do it again?
And again?
Why not 150 more times?
I mean, I know plenty of people that have successfully.
And why would you not?
You’re talking about a highly scalable, easy-to-follow process.
All you need to do is go find the next city and/or niche that you want to target.
It’s a pretty simple process that it took us, what, a few hundred words to break down?
So, Why The Name “Digital Real Estate?”
Well, most of this question can be answered with a quick look at the similarities between digital real estate and traditional real estate.
But none of those overshadow the similar potential to create life-changing income streams & long-term wealth leveraging income that is semi-passive in nature.
AND… you avoid the negatives that come along with the traditional real estate investing models.
It’s important to note that Control and Reliable Income is a strength of Digital Real Estate.
Remember that you own the digital assets, in this case the website; which is just like physical real estate.
The difference here is you don’t have to come up with hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars up front for an initial investment.
Instead, you can build one of these simple one-page digital assets for no more than $100.
Even if you wanted to avoid doing the work yourself and outsource most of the process, you’re only talking about a few hundred dollars.
With upfront costs that are this low – your repeatability / scalability becomes supercharged.
If you wanted to invest in 10 homes, how long do you think it would take you to come up with that money?
I don’t know about you but most of us don’t have a few million laying around.
On the flip side of this, you could go out and build 10 digital assets in a week.
And mind you, it’d take less time than what most people clock at their 9-5 in that week.
For way more return!
We’re talking about starting the week out at $0 in semi-passive income and potentially ending it with roughly $20,000/mo worth of digital assets on the table!
This is what Digital Real Estate can do for you (and more specifically, my preferred Digital Real Estate program – the Digital Rental Method).
All of this, with more control.
In the event one of your business owners (I like to refer to them as Tenants) stops paying, becomes a hassle, or gets too busy – there’s no legal tie.
Meaning you have the ability to go find another tenant that wants to pay you for the results you’ve already proved that you deliver!
This website right here is your digital assets…
You own it!
And even better yet, this is the phone number that you control…
Turning off call flow to a tenant is just a couple clicks away!
And then you go find another tenant that wants those leads, click a couple more buttons – and your calls are now going to a new tenant in no more than an hour or two.
So you don’t have to…
Repair damages? Nope.
Create and maintain paperwork? Nope.
Have attorneys on retainer? Nope (unless you pull one in as a client of course, lol).
Filling and maintaining your digital asset really boils down to..
Dragging your mouse around a screen, clicking it a couple of times, making a few calls to find a tenant that wants your help and that’s it.
The money keeps rolling.
Let Me Tell Ya A Story About How I Landed My First Client For $2,000 A Month
I didn’t exactly see myself as someone making on the internet a handful of years ago.
I was too busy makin’ ends meet building fences, hanging garage doors and anything else I could do to make some cash and put food on the table for my two young boys.
But here I am, from building fences to building one-page websites that generate me more income every month than I could’ve dreamt of hanging garage doors.
All it took was following the process that’s laid out for you in the Digital Rental Method course by Josh and Sean.
I followed it to a T.
And here’s the result (doesn’t look the best but it damn sure gets the job done!)…
I really don’t care if you’re hanging garage doors or 84 and still trying to figure out a flip phone (shoutout to my grandma) – the simplicity of this process has accounted for the success of people from all walks of life.
Retirees. Warehouse workers. Hair stylists. Real estate agents. Electricians.
You get the pictures.
If they can, then why can’t you?
End of rant. Let’s go back to the landscaping site we’ve been looking at.
This thing took me just a couple hours to build. Heck, even the layout was inspired by another website I found in the area.
Sure, it’s kinda crazy that this website only took a couple hours to build.
But even crazier than that…
I haven’t really had to touch anything on this website since the time it was built.. And the client is still paying me that cool 2k every single month.
I collect some statistics via the phone number. I can even go in and listen to those calls when I want to.
It’s super simple for me to generate a quick breakdown of performance for my client as well when needed.
Just a couple clicks there.
It allows me to show my client just how much value I’m delivering to the business.
If I’m able to continuously show a client that I’m delivering 10k, 20k, 40k in revenue for their business every single month, they’ll be happy to continue paying me for what I’m good at.
All while they’re handling what their good at.. Fulfilling the service.
Just don’t expect that a single client will ever turn you into a millionaire.
Not only is it unrealistic, it just isn’t necessary.
The goal is to build 50, 100 or 200 of these simple websites in various niches and cities.
Just imagine duplicating this process 100 times. Imagine 100 x’ing the numbers we’ve already laid out.
And so long as you’re delivering, your clients will never leave. Why would they?
Maybe you have some of these clients paying you a flat-fee (like my client), sprinkle in a few per lead deals and then a couple percentage deals in higher end niches!
Just think about having a client that installs solar panels on people’s homes. Or a client that fulfills commercial concrete deals that cross the million dollar threshold.
It’s not impossible to acquire 15%, 20% or even 30% of the value of the jobs you bring in. That’s crazy!
At the end of the day, you need to find something that allows you to make more money, while spending less time.
It’s called leverage.
You don’t need to leave one day job, just to take on another.
That certainly isn’t what I wanted for myself either.
I wanted control of my life. To build a better life for myself and my family.
True freedom.
I got that from Digital Real Estate.
Take A Look At The Differences On This Graphic I Spent Far Too Much Time On (🙃)…
My Parting Thoughts
The opportunity to take back control of life with the Digital Rental Method is crazy.
Out of all the business models I’ve seen and done myself, I haven’t found anything quite like it.
There are many professions out there (I’m lookin’ at you Doc) that sacrifice a TON of money and a TON of time to have any realistic shot at making the type of money that’s possible through the Digital Rental Method.
Here’s the thing..
Quality of course material and training is extremely important. It sets a pretty good foundation.
But nothing is a substitute for mentors that are actually present and care about your success.
I, for one, know that I wouldn’t be in the position I am today without top-notch mentorship.
If you know someone that’s produced real wealth. Some amount that transcends the historical average within their family tree.
I guarantee they had a mentor. In fact, they had more than one.
Also, it isn’t just about mentorship. It’s about having a community of people around you striving for the same result.
You might’ve noticed at some point that successful people – or people that have achieved financial freedom – tend to spend a lot of time around each other.
It’s pretty awesome when you have other driven individuals trying to achieve the same results that you are.
Networking. Learning from one another. Supporting one another.
My mentors actually go live on their learning platform weekly to connect & assist the students!
These are always great opportunities to introduce yourself to the community, connect with Josh and Sean – and ask plenty of questions!
Listen, I’m just a guy that used to hang garage doors on people’s homes and dig holes to lay fence posts in their yards.
I owe a lot of my successes to a couple of mentors that gave me an option that was different from the norm.
Of course, nobody else was going to take it and run. That was all me, but it was certainly made possible by others!
But, I can’t and won’t discredit the business model (the vehicle).
I’ve learned through personal experience just how important the vehicle is.
Digital Real Estate.