Quick one on Apollo list building on the free plan: would you scrape 100 leads directly with Amplifiers? Is it worth paying for Apollo early to scale volume?
For Apollo list building on the free plan, I wouldn’t scrape 100 leads directly with Amplifiers; instead I use Apify (pay for it) to pull thousands of leads. To keep list hygiene I rotate geography and company size between saved searches, accepting that it won’t be perfect but focusing on usefulness. A simple way is to duplicate the search, tweak the queries, and store each version with a new name in a file or Google Sheet.
These days most people are using LeadsFinder, which costs about $1.50 per 1,000 leads with emails; there are a few newer similar tools popping up at around $1.70 per 1,000. Even though I don’t have an Apollo account (so I’m effectively out of credits), I’d just scrape using one of these alternative services—they’re plentiful on Apify, and you can also scrape other platforms. If you run out of Apollo credits, the same approach applies: use a lead‑scraping tool like LeadsFinder or another provider to build your lead list, then proceed with your outreach (e.g., Instantly) as usual.
The last option is the Ampify/Apollo scraper, which requires breaking your search into batches of 100 leads. It’s more granular and cheaper per lead, though you have to manage many small searches.
I usually don't use Ampify to scrape Apollo these days because those leads are outdated; we're sitting at about 20-30% junk leads, which is high. If you want high-quality leads, you need to go direct to LinkedIn and ideally look for people who have posted in the last 30 to 90 days, as older data is incorrect and leads to mismatched locations and business names, making the outreach trash. It's unfortunate, but that's just how it is.
To gather leads on Apollo for your target niches, start by building a list in Apollo (e.g., real estate agencies, hiring agencies, digital marketing agencies). Export that list’s URL and paste it into a scraper like Apify (or Ampify) to pull the data and extract email addresses—this is cheaper than scraping LinkedIn directly. If your initial list is too small (e.g., only 50 leads), broaden the filters (remove overly specific sectors) to increase volume. Export the results to CSV, then run them through a workflow that combines the emails with profile fields (such as headline, title) and uses AI to generate personalized one‑line icebreakers. Finally, feed those icebreakers and emails into a platform like Instantly to automate your outreach.