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#268 · BEST lead scraping setup in 2026 ($10 vs $40 per 1k)

youtube ↗Client Acquisition

Dylan asks: As a software engineer with 4 years of experience expecting to be a father, I want to earn extra income on the side. Should I get a job doing AI implementation for agencies or start my own freelancing AI implementation business? What would you advise for the next 6 months?

Great question, and congratulations on the upcoming baby. If you're asking whether to take a job doing AI implementation for agencies or start your own freelancing AI implementation business, I'd recommend the freelancing route. You'll have far more freedom and flexibility over your schedule, even though you may need to outwork the alternative in the short term. In the long run, owning your time is a major part of what I enjoy discussing. Acting on knowledge is more important than just learning it. In Maker School, many people in your situation—working a stable job but wanting something more—find success through daily consistency: build an outreach habit where you connect with business owners who might need your services, and repeat that effort virtually every day. Over six months, that's about 180 days. Doing 10 unique, high‑quality custom outreach pieces per day yields roughly 1,850 touches. If those pieces are truly high quality and unique, the chance of not getting at least a 2‑3 % booking rate is very low—2 % of 1,850 is about 36 meetings. It's also unlikely you'd fail to turn at least one of those meetings into a paying client. If you really want to get started, just throw the kitchen sink at it: use every tool and tactic you can to generate leads and demonstrate value.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Agency Operations

I've been using AI for 2-3 months (vibe coded a budget tracker, tried content creation, lead scraping, AI clone videos). I'm a performance marketing freelancer making close to $3K/month but spending 7-9 hours a day delivering to current clients, making it hard to scale. I'm considering joining Maker School and can commit 1-2 hours a day — will that be enough to make meaningful progress toward my first AI services client?

Yes, you should join. Though 7-9 hours a day for performance marketing freelancing is a lot — are you paid on commission, or a flat retainer to manage ads? Either way, before adding more on top, look at changing your fulfillment structure or deliverable, or identify your lowest-paying client on an hourly basis and replace them with someone who pays more. Those moves either free up time or raise your effective hourly rate, which is really the same lever.

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youtube ↗Mindset

How do I know if I'm hitting the hammer right when starting an agency? Should I spend time looking for projects or learning the skill first, or a combo?

He says you first need to anchor what a lot of money means. AI automation agencies have the lowest barrier to entry and lowest capital cost—comparable to website design agencies in the late 1990s or social-media marketing agencies in the early 2010s. In this space, a lot of money is probably just a few hundred dollars. Any business outside this vertical will cost significantly more than a few hundred to get up and running over a three-month period, so you should expect to spend money to make money. Regarding your specific situation—bidding for email-setup projects on Upwork—lack of experience isn't a time issue; it takes only a couple of weeks to become proficient with any tool well enough that someone will pay you to save them time. So you should combine learning and prospecting. He recommends doing Maker School's introductory automation agency tutorials to gain foundational knowledge and learn to read the language of the tools. Once you understand the language, you can communicate with AI, use Google to find answers to specific questions, and you don't need to know how to do everything right away. The key question is whether a future version of you could solve this problem in the next couple of weeks—and the answer is almost always yes.

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youtube ↗Agency Operations

Over the next four months, what should I focus on—content creation, learning new skills, building projects, finding clients, or something else? I'm an 18‑year‑old with limited cash but plenty of time and ambition. What should I do?

My recommendation is to get the paid versions of the AI tools as soon as possible – they’re significantly better than the free tiers and will let you work the way businesses actually use them. Use a modest amount of money (e.g., $20 a month from a parent’s credit card) to subscribe and start delivering real value for someone, even if it’s just helping your mom with a task so you can practice. Don’t wait four months; you can start today. After you’ve set up a small service, keep consuming content like mine and look for problems people are struggling with. When you spot a pain point, reach out with cold emails, DMs, LinkedIn messages, or short videos offering a solution. I’ve found that many agencies have low‑hanging inefficiencies – for example, they don’t follow up quickly or personalize communication. By signing up as a client yourself, you can see these gaps and then build a service to fix them. Start sending a consistent number of cold outreach messages each day, scrape public creators to identify gaps in their funnels, and pitch ways you can improve their business. This proactive, value‑first approach, especially when powered by AI, is the fastest way to land your first clients and grow an agency.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

Nick, I want to start working in the AI sector and I'm thinking of beginning with AI automation. The problem is that everything changes so fast. New tools keep coming out, so I'm confused about where to start. At first, I planned to learn NA. Then I started seeing agentic workflows everywhere. Now there's AIOS as well. Over the last 3 to 4 months, I watched videos on different topics, but instead of getting clarity, I'm just become more confused. Since you work on advanced AI project yourself, I'd appreciate your guidance to hit $10,000 per month. If you starting from scratch today, what would you learn first? When would you start offering services? And how do you get your first few clients?

First, I’d join a community like Maker School—not just to use my own products but because membership gives you deep discounts (often a 10x return) on AI platform credits and payment‑processing fees. With those savings I’d start by learning a visual drag‑and‑drop automation builder (such as the n platform) for about four to six hours; that teaches you the fundamentals of systems, workflows, JSON, HTTP requests, etc., which accelerates everything else. Next I’d spend another four hours on a Claude‑code course that covers the technical setup, agent communication, model selection, and so on—roughly ten hours total. After that foundation, I’d devote virtually all remaining time to acquiring customers; the first 90 days would be less than 1% spent on learning and the rest on outreach. You need a customer to actually enter the arena, so I’d use Maker School’s day‑by‑day accountability to hit call and outreach targets, then loop back to upsell from any lower tier to higher ones as the relationship grows.

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