I think my question got removed, restricted? Hey Nick, so I want to ask them again. Cool. Asset based outreach 800 sent total. First four days were really good. Got 8% reply and 29 emails sent. After that reply rates dropped massively.
Anyway, 8% positive reply and 29 email signs. Great. You're saying the emails are at 100% health. I wonder if it worked the first time you booked two calls and why it won't work out? Is that a numbers scam? Yeah, I mean like you know 800's not a lot really. So you probably just got lucky on the first 209 just to be blunt. You know, in reality your email reply rate is probably between 2.5% and 4%. And maybe right now you're just getting unlucky. I feel you about thinking you figured out the outreach, but don't sweat it too much. I mean, just scale it up. 2.5% isn't bad. Keep in mind though, this is like one of your first campaigns, so this is the worst it's ever going to be. So, it sounds like you're more demotivated and the stuck feeling is the problem more than the objective reality. Maybe do some thinking there. Yeah, if I were you, I'd just keep sending, scale up to like 2,000, do some iterations and split tests at 2.5%. That was my campaign on the watch me start and sell an AS service in 10 hours video—one of my most popular videos. I'm doing one-handed, so bear with me. But check this one out: 2.5% was my reply rate for that campaign, and I got about 10 or 11 positive replies in 10 hours. So you can do it, just a matter of scale.
You're sending about four proposals per day on average. If you increased that to 10 per day (2.5× more), you'd see roughly 2.5× more results. Your main bottleneck is the view rate, currently around 12 %; improving your CV, profile, how it stands out, and your writing to avoid generic templates could push that to 20‑25 %. Make sure the first 150 characters show you read the post, give something free, and present yourself as a professional. With a 12 % view rate, 16 viewed proposals translate to about five replies, which is rough but not hopeless. In my early days I sent 20‑25 proposals a day; I would have completed your 30‑day volume in about five and a half days, outperforming you six‑fold on views alone. Even without improving my view rate, that would have yielded roughly 90 views, around 30 replies, and three or four calls—enough to eventually land a deal. You can make up for any shortfall in volume with strategic effort, something I've done since day one. I'd still recommend you do it more effectively, but the principle holds.
Sure, I can talk about it now and, if there’s enough demand, I’ll make a full video later. The reality is that with a bigger budget you can move everything about ten‑times faster, maybe even a hundred times faster. For example, most people are limited to about nine mailboxes sending 30 emails each per day – roughly 270 emails total, or 135 new leads per day in a two‑step sequence. If you scale up to 90 mailboxes at 30 emails each, you’re looking at 2,700 emails a day, or 1,350 new leads daily, for a very low monthly cost (around $270 if you use a mailbox reseller). At a 0.02% reply rate that’s 27 positive replies, which can translate to three calls a day. With a good campaign you can convert 10‑15 calls per day, and even if 30% drop off you still get seven to ten quality calls. Assuming 45‑minute calls, you can fill an entire day’s calendar and close a couple of deals daily. If each deal is $2K, that’s $4K a day, or about $80K a month running 20 days, not counting upsells or retainers. In short, if you’re well‑resourced you can realistically schedule $80K‑plus a month with a productized offer by going all‑in on cold email, as long as you have enough leads to fulfill the volume. This means broadening your top‑of‑funnel targeting across more general niches. For a $5K‑$15K budget, $270 is only about 2.7% of the spend, leaving roughly 4% of margin for growth.
Great job getting nine positive inquiries from 29 emails—that's a solid start. However, the drop-off to calls is significant; you're only converting about 20% of those positives, which is typical for a first attempt, so don't worry too much. The big lever to improve is your positive reply rate. If you could achieve around a 5% reply rate, that would be phenomenal—very few people hit that. Right now your conversion from replies to calls seems low, and many people have better conversion rates there. It looks like your deliverability may have suffered. Check whether your deliverability dropped; a 5% rate might have been a fluke given you only sent 209 emails. To verify, run deliverability tests using free tools like Glock Apps or Mailbox Tester. Regarding costs, you're using Claude to create seven LinkedIn posts. I don't know the current pricing, but if you shared it I could help you work it out. GPT‑4 is decent, though not as good as Claude 3.7, but still usable. You might experiment with GPT to see if it fits your budget. Finally, if you were to sell this value‑based outreach automation system, the asset you’d provide is exactly what you’re doing now: the system that creates those LinkedIn posts, the proof of concept, and the ability to tweak tone of voice and run everything on autopilot. That’s the product you’d sell.
Sure. Let me cover exactly how I would approach these hypothetical scenarios. If I had $100, here's exactly what I would do to acquire clients today. First, I would find the most affordable cold email stack, which is the biggest leverage. I’d use the Instantly growth plan at $37 per month, giving 5,000 emails a month and the ability to roll over non‑responding contacts. For mailboxes, I’d choose cheap inboxes at about $3 each; with five inboxes that’s $15 per month, providing roughly 100 emails per day per inbox. I’d also need two domains at about $20 total (non‑recurring yearly). That totals $37 + $20 + $15 = $72 for infrastructure in month one. Domain costs could be amortized, but I’ll treat them as out‑of‑pocket. Next, I’d get leads via Apollo and scrape them with Apify. Apollo’s scraper is about $120 per 1,000 leads, yielding roughly 600 email addresses, which works out to about $2 per 1,000 emails. Sending a two‑step sequence at 100 emails per day (50 new leads, 50 follow‑ups) over 30 days gives 1,500 emails per month. At $2 per 1,000 emails, that’s $3 for leads. Adding infrastructure, we’re at $75 total. With $75 you can reach 1,500 people, a cost per lead of five cents. Assuming a 3% reply rate, that’s 45 replies; with a 20% positive reply rate, that’s about nine positive replies, roughly one meeting every three days. Higher reply rates could increase meetings proportionally. You’d still have $25 left. I’d spend it on Upwork: each application costs about $3 after bidding/boosting, allowing roughly eight applications. At a 20% proposal‑to‑reply rate, that might yield two replies and possibly one meeting. Combined, this strategy could book about ten meetings in the first month for $100, a cost per meeting of $10. If your service is worth $1,000–$1,500, closing one yields a 15× ROI; conservatively over 90 days you could make $4,500 on a $300 spend for a 15× ROI. Adjusting for realistic closing rates (15‑25%) and reply rates could push ROI higher. Additionally, free Loom videos (under five minutes) can be used to follow up with leads acquired via cold email, adding extra meetings without extra cost. In short, with $100 you can run cold email, buy leads, spend a little on Upwork, and use Loom to follow up, potentially booking ten‑plus meetings and achieving a strong ROI.