#114 · $350K/M AI Automation Expert Answers Questions For 80Mins
Recruitment agencies are currently the best niche because they operate heavily on LinkedIn and email outreach, so a lead‑gen system feeds both candidate sourcing and employer sourcing. Digital‑marketing agencies, coaches, consultants, and service providers also work, but recruitment agencies give the highest ROI right now.
Well, logically speaking, if you're searching LinkedIn for leads, you're accessing the same leads others scrape with Sales Navigator, so they aren't necessarily less saturated. You might customize outreach more than someone using AI. Beyond that, I'm experimenting with buying a big Bright Data list of about 100,000 contacts, which will be fun. You can also scrape data sources yourself—for example, if you're selling to MBA students, you could pull emails from a university directory like Stanford's, build a system to click through profiles and collect emails, and get details like their field of study. While those emails may not have high deliverability, the list is large and unsaturated. Creating your own list is the way to get truly unsaturated leads. Another approach is to email conference organizers or managers and ask for vendor lists; many smaller conferences will share them for free. You can then pitch to attendees by referencing the conference. The trade‑off is either paying for saturated, competitive lists or investing time to build your own differentiated list.
Any niche that has a landing page actively collecting inquiries, or runs an ad‑based funnel where people click a Google or Facebook ad, fill out a form, and are directed to a landing page. Essentially, any niche using lead‑capture forms can benefit from a speed‑to‑lead system.
To grow your business, focus on four core systems: reach, acquisition, closing, and expansion. Reach systems get you in front of customers (e.g., cold email, ads). Acquisition systems turn interest into meetings (speed‑to‑lead, follow‑up, conversion‑rate optimization). Closing systems turn meetings into customers (proposal generators, automated follow‑ups on proposals/quotes). Expansion systems increase lifetime value by continuously re‑pitching existing clients on new systems. Spend 99.9% of your time on these four areas rather than on back‑end or bookkeeping systems.
Searching for cold email and lead generation roles on Upwork is a solid way to niche down. You will run into a variety of lead gen styles on the platform, but it aligns well with high-value systems that focus on outreach and acquisition. The main rule to follow is volume: as long as your niche search terms still allow you to find enough high-quality jobs to submit about 10 consistent applications a day, go for it. If narrowing your search prevents you from hitting your daily outreach target, broaden your criteria to include wider growth and conversion systems.