How do I make money from leads I can't close myself?

I built an apartment-locator site, left it alone for about nine months, and it kept producing four to seven leads a week statewide. I'm not an apartment locator, so those leads aren't mine to close.

That's a good problem, and there are a few ways to solve it.

What's a lead like that worth?

A closed apartment lead is worth roughly one month's rent to a locator, about $1,500. You won't get that. But it tells you the buyer can afford to pay real money per lead.

What are the options?

Option	How it pays	Best for
Sell to an aggregator	About $10 to $20 per lead	Fastest path to cash, no extra work
One local partner per city	Flat rate, around $250 a month	Steady, high-intent local leads
Referral partner	Fee per lead or per closed deal	Categories you'd never run yourself

My first plan was the aggregator, partly because a friend of mine resells insurance leads at scale with the same model. On a later call I shifted to the flat-rate version: sell all of a city's renter leads to one local apartment locator for around $250 a month. Four or five main cities produce most of the volume, so the goal is one locator partner in each top city.

Why does flat rate per city work?

Organic leads are high intent. The person found you on their own instead of being pushed by an ad. A local partner who gets every lead in their city, without competing with other locators, has a simple reason to keep paying.

What about leads for a service you don't offer?

Partner with someone who already does it. If you can see demand, say for Christmas lights, you don't have to start that business. Find an existing operator and take a referral fee per lead. It costs them nothing if you fail, so as long as you get in front of them, they'll probably say yes. I've proposed this; I haven't reported a signed deal.

What has to be in place before you sell leads?

1. Define a qualified lead. What did the person actually ask for?
2. Capture consent and source. Where did the lead come from, and did they agree to be contacted?
3. Match the buyer. The lead has to fit what the buyer sells.
4. Set duplicate and replacement rules. What happens when a lead is bad or already in their system?
5. Track follow-up. Check whether the buyer actually contacted the lead.

One caution: a burst of leads doesn't prove stable demand or a stable price. Watch a few months before you lock in a contract.

Subscribers who ask for something specific, like apartment help or a local service, can be worth more than the campaign that brought them in. For the newsletter version, see how a signup flow pays for its own growth.