44 Lead Generation Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

I started my first business together with my roommate when I was at university; a creative agency. We started out doing social media and online marketing campaigns. We pivoted to web design when we were one year in. We mostly build simple marketing websites for small businesses, also doing SEO and online marketing.

So instead of quoting my client, I suggested they pay $30,- per month for it. They said yes. This was my first validation for the product.

Besides client projects, I started over 10 projects to get out of the “money for hour” trap. All of them failed.

The most common question I’m asked is “how did you come up with the idea?”. Or the more expressive version: “are you crazy to dive into such a competitive area?!”.

That was actually an easy choice! 😁

I’m a startup folk. I launched over 15 tech projects: big and small, successful and not, profitable and fun-only. This gave me a huge experience in prototyping, designing and coding a landing page.

Growing up, I’ve always been into technology. I built my first website when I was in first grade, I built my first graphing calculator app when I was in sixth grade, and I used to run the internet’s largest website dedicated to Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.

I waited in line for the iPhone the day it launched in 2007, and I was instantly hooked. I knew I had to learn how to build software for this device. Eventually, I learned how to jailbreak my device which allowed me to run custom apps on it (this being before the launch of the App Store).

Even though I had a passion for technology, I never really wanted a career in it. My dream job was to work as a technical director for live television broadcasts, and the only class that was close to that at my school was the capstone course for the Professional Journalism program. I ended up switching my major from Computer Engineering to that and abandoned any dreams of professionally writing software.

My academic background has always been focused on management and strategy, I did economics, a PGDip in European Companies Management, and an MBA in England. Once I finished these studies, I started to work in Barcelona as a product manager for a couple of large companies. These were very well-known and large companies and, although I was in my twenties and I had achieved a relevant position in both companies but, for me, it was a waste of time.

At that time you could not expect to have a minimum influence in companies where all marketing decisions are always made in central offices, always abroad. Unfortunately, Spanish companies produced few goods and they merely buy and sell products manufactured in other countries.

I wanted to see all processes and, above all, feel that my efforts were worth something real and touchable. That’s why I decided that if I wanted to put into action everything I had learned, I should build my own company.

Our product is a website. The process of designing and developing it was very similar to designing and developing any website or an information system. As both I and the other main founder were software developers, this part was pretty straightforward for us. However, we still did some things pretty right and some things pretty wrong.

The funny part about any SEO-based business is that you can’t really make decent planning. Do you plan to improve some parts of your website and grow? Well, good luck with that, almighty G can have completely different plans for you.

What we made right was a decision to create a system that models all the relations and information about online casinos as structured data. As an example: almost every online casino has a list of countries from which it doesn’t allow residents to play. To capture this information we have created a database table casino_restricted_country and fill it with 1 record for every casino and every country that is on its restricted list.

ReferralHero is my 3rd company but when I launched it I actually didn’t think it’d be a company one day. The back story is actually kinda funny; I was working in London at my previous startup called EventNinja, an analytics tool for Eventbrite (today you’d call it “Baremetrics for Eventbrite”).

One day, one of our customers (and friend) suggested we could do something to help him get more attendees to his event. Around the same time, a startup in a pre-launch phase called Monzo, a “challenger” bank in the UK, was making headlines for their hyper-viral waiting list; in short, people could sign up and get in the queue but they could also “jump” the queue by inviting their friends. The more people they invited, the higher up they’d get in the queue and the sooner they’d get their invitation to download the app.

However, at the time we brushed off the suggestion since it wasn’t relevant for EventNinja and I wasn’t exactly sure how it’d work, especially inside a product like EventNinja. A couple of months later, exactly on Boxing Day’s morning, I woke up with the idea I had been waiting for months. Instead of adding this feature to EventNinja, I made it a stand-alone widget that could be added to any website in minutes. I jumped straight into building the same day and the MVP was completed four days later.

I have been in the internet marketing space since 2007 and have done everything from affiliate marketing to dropshipping. I must have created hundreds of online businesses and most of them failed. Along the way, I became very skilled in designing websites, writing copy, SEO, social media, and all other facets of digital marketing.

In 2012, I launched a digital marketing firm called the USA Marketing Pros and steadily grew my client base one project at a time. My clients ranged from startups, law firms, and all the way up to enterprise-level brands that are globally known. One thing I noticed that was similar between all my clients, is that no matter how much revenue they brought in every month, every single one of them was always looking for digital solutions at the lowest possible cost; and not wanting to spend money on new emerging marketing trends. A good example of this, that many people can still remember, is that when Facebook first came on the scene many businesses thought it was a joke to have their company actively on the platform.

If you really want to grow quickly you need to reach out to others in your niche and create partnerships. Sure, you won’t get 100% of the revenue from every sale, but you will get upwards of 100x more sales with every partner you sign up for.

I never really viewed myself as an entrepreneur. If you asked me as a young man the difference between me and Steve Jobs, I would have told you that he had a special ability or gift that I did not have. It wasn't until I got to MBA school that I realized how talented I was in the world of marketing.

When it comes to advertising and marketing, everyone wants the same thing: results. You have to be able to get results or else you'll just lose your clients when they see you can't perform.

In MBA school, I partnered with two friends to start a business called Pocket Goals, which printed clients’ personal goals onto their credit cards. I was in charge of driving traffic to our website, which is when I got started with Google Adwords. I used my cafeteria money to run ads, and during the days when the business made a lot of money, I thought I was the king of the world, and during the days when the business lost money with no conversions, I was scared that I wouldn't be able to eat anymore. I've always taken that mindset with me when I work with clients, making sure every dollar spent on advertising is essential and needed for the business to succeed. I never waste money, and my team always focuses on performance for the companies that we work with.

The idea behind Influence Podium started back in college. I used to play NCAA basketball and we could only work a certain number of hours per week. As an immigrant who had just moved from Barcelona, I would “ghostwrite” my classmates’ papers for $10/page (money back if I got them less than a B, of course).

After I graduated, I had a short stint in finances (I lasted 30 days) until I quit and moved back to Spain. There, I went back to the one skill I knew I had -- writing.

I wrote on Quora for 6 months, got 2 million views, and a few people started reaching out to me to ghostwrite for them. They happened to be B2B CEOs, and that’s when I learned the power of content, personal branding, and inbound marketing.

It was the summer of 2012 in London, UK. At this point, I’d been working in (other people’s) advertising agencies for the best part of a decade. London was a great city and I enjoyed my career. However, I was getting tired of the stressful lifestyle, the commute, the office politics, and the grey, dreary weather.

I figured I was going to burn out if I kept on at it, so I saved up some money, enough to take a sabbatical from work and fund a year-long travel binge to cure my malaise.

When I started this business my dream was to create a successful location-independent company that I could run from anywhere with an internet connection, and that’s exactly what I have built.

I am a licensed attorney in India and right after my master’s in law, I started working with a leading company as a lawyer. I worked there for about two years before I quit my job to become more location independent.

Choose a niche in whatever you start. It is critical for streamlining your efforts and make money.

My job paid me well but I worked 12 hours a day, I was exhausted by the end of each day, spent my weekends sleeping and I almost quit the things I liked to do - for example, sketching, yoga, traveling, etc.

Before starting 1ON1 SEO Training, I had worked for 15 years in the SEO industry, where I successfully ran my own SEO and digital marketing agency, Design & Promote, for over 10 years. I built that business from the ground up, starting as the sole employee until it became a prominent business in the area with a full staff and multiple offices. Eventually, I got an offer I couldn’t pass up and decided to sell the business.

Sometimes people think that SEO is about broad strokes and taking general actions when in reality the situation needs to be looked at with a microscope to really pay off. Many times it is the smallest details that make the biggest difference.

With that business off my plate, it was time to take on a new project. I realized while running my agency that what I loved to do most about my job was teach others how to do SEO. In the past, I had become known for my “free services”, where I gave free consultations to clients that other companies normally charged for, and my free monthly seminars where other business people were invited to come and gain knowledge about search engine optimization. However, those moments had always been my way of giving back next to my business endeavors.

Ironically, my wife is a French teacher whose business I had helped build through years of SEO work. One day I thought about how she teaches classes from her own, and then the idea occurred to me that I could be doing the same with SEO, which has always been a passion of mine. I also figured that I could address a lot of the problems I ran into in my old business and rework them with my new one to better serve my clients - more about that later. This allowed me to offer a new and improved model for spreading the effectiveness and benefit of SEO to businesses.

Growing up, I went to private school and was very blessed that my parents cared about my education. Somewhere around 9th grade, my perspective on the education system changed. I realized through books and YouTube videos that the life trajectory of a lot of the people I looked up to, was not aligned with what I wanted in life.

I was never a fan of what was taught in schools. Instead of religiously following what was being taught in high school, I self-educated in business, personal development, and leadership. When I was fifteen, I tried out various online businesses. I failed miserably at first. At this time I was very much into Fitness and I tried to sell training and diet plans. I managed to sell a few plans to my classmates for like $50, but it never really amounted to anything and most importantly it wasn't scalable.

After that, I tried stock trading and the likes. That too didn’t really work for me. One day I stumbled across SMMA. I was so intrigued by the concept, so I went ALL IN. I didn’t care what people thought. I was going to make it big here. I needed some proof of concept, so I convinced my dad to make me run his restaurant's Facebook Ads. I watched 100’s of videos and read tons of blogs, to know how to run successful ads and we were both pretty stoked about the results.

I knew it was the right business for me, but it was not all gold and green forests. In fact, at the start of my “agency journey,” it was so hard getting my feet on the ground and getting my first few clients after my dad.

My intention during and after high school was to move to Europe and play soccer (football) as my career. However, I was persuaded to try my hand at college which eventually took me down the path where I am today.

I grew up in a family full of entrepreneurs, thinkers…people smarter than me so I was definitely lucky to be in the right room.

My first job was selling credit card machines and processing. I was raw in business but determined (or stubborn) to make it alone with the help of no one (NOTE, this was a dumb idea and everyone should get help at every stage of life). When I started, I thought I was in a finance position. It turned out I was in a sales position, responsible for calling businesses to sell them on our services. It was the best thing to ever happen to me at this stage in my young career.

I was forced to talk to people, negotiate, persuade, help strangers over the phone - I learned one of the greatest skills of all time, how to sell over the phone. I had never sold anything, I learned sales in 3 days, then practiced every single day. This position lasted 30 days, but the grass only got greener. I was somehow recruited to a company called Homestore, which owned Realtor.com where I eventually became a top sales account executive managing the East Coast as my territory.

I went from the worst at sales in the company to the top 10 in the company. I took my sales learnings from my first job selling credit card processing to selling to internet advertising to Real Estate Agents, Brokers, Lenders and those involved in the real estate transaction.

After just a few years, I left Realtor.com (for no reason whatsoever, I loved working there) to start my own company. Young, dumb, no plan, no office, no product, no smart idea, but I had one thing to offer… I decided to help realtors manage and promote their listings on the internet.

Hello, my name is Chase Dimond and I am the Co-Founder of Boundless Labs. We are an email marketing agency that specializes in working with eCommerce brands. We currently work with 30 eCommerce brands that do anywhere from 6 to 8 figures in annual revenue.

We ended up bringing on our first full-time employee in Q3 of 2019 and started onboarding clients again. For the second half of 2019, our business grew by ~$12K per month and we’re now making ~$90K per month. We just recently hired our second full-time employee and anticipate we’ll be at $100K per month in revenue by the end of January 2020.

• Steve Weiss founded MuteSix, a company that specializes in customer acquisition. They run Facebook ads, Google ads, and email campaigns.
• This business is a full-funnel performance marketing agency that adds value to DTC brands.
• The company was founded in 2016 and their team size has increased over the years and they now oversee an advertising budget of $300 million.
• Compared to other agencies, the MuteSix team of experts scales brands to success more quickly and effectively.

Read the full story on martechseries.com ➜

My name is Janina Moza, and I’m the Chief marketing officer of Flipsnack. I’ve joined the team a year after launching Flipsnack and I’ve been part of this project for almost 10 years now.

We’ve been on the market for over 10 years now and over the past few years, we’ve increased our business revenue by over 50% year over year.

Hello! My Name is Mahamud Hasan. I am a graphic designer, entrepreneur, startup business consultant, and one of the founders and CEO of Zovo Team Ltd. In My career, I have worked as a freelance graphic designer at Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer and our Bangladeshi based Kajkey platform since 2016. We (Zovo Team Ltd.) provide full-stack digital marketing solutions, web development, search engine optimization, graphic contents (image+ video), app development, content writing, copywriting, and full brand identity solutions. We have six subsidiary brands to provide A to Z solutions for entrepreneurs. The estimated revenue is 12.5k$/month and yearly 150k$+. The sub-brands of Zovo team Ltd. are;

So, you can say that our teams are focused only on the development of new entrepreneurs by our effective solutions.

Hello! I am Mark Thomas, the managing director of the Thomas Hemingway Group of companies and CEO of EventBookings, which I founded in 2017.

Fast forward to today, we are now running the business with 25 employees and are currently on track to reach our next revenue target of $1M.

Hi! I’m Jordhy Ledesma, founder, and CEO of Bitfari. We are creating the largest advertising network in the world and have bootstrapped the business to a 70M fully diluted market cap valuation in less than six months using the latest technologies, crowdfunding, and cryptocurrencies.

Our customers are advertisers, billboard operators, and mall shoppers. We provide something of value for each. In most cases, this is saving and for this purpose, we cut out multiple middlemen and keep no commissions on most transactions.

Hi everybody, my name is Philip and I’m the founder of Tiiny.Host - the simplest way to host & share your web project online. It’s perfect for prototyping, demos, testing, learning to code, and small web apps.

I started it around 2 years ago and to date, over 40,000 websites have been uploaded. We’re currently at $2,000 MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and doubling every 3 months. It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years, we were making less than $100 MRR for about the first 12 months but revenue then skyrocketed. It just goes to show the trajectory of SaaS businesses on the internet.

Hi there, my name is Robb Fahrion and I am the Co-Founder and Partner of Flying V Group, a digital marketing and advertising company located. We service clients all across the globe and help them grow their business through the power of the internet. My passion is for business and there is nothing more rewarding than helping others grow their businesses and share in their successes.

Today, Flying V Group employs 12 people, has worked with over 300 clients, operates internationally, and is on pace to double revenue for the second year in a row. Crazy to think about being here when my brother and I both got up and quit our corporate jobs and put $5k into the project to get us started!

My name is Slavi and I started a website more than 10 years ago that serves quick, short, simple trivia questions and nothing more. It is called Random Trivia Generator.

More than a decade later, I still run the site and it serves over 200,000 visitors per month.