What email service do you recommend for cold email, Zoho Mail or Google Workspace?
I've read your point about building a personal brand generator for consultants that does all the work for them, packages it into a file, and sends it to the prospect. It sounds really cool, but it's too high scale—if you plan to mass DM, you'll burn through resources. What do you mean by 'too high scale'? How much does it cost to generate one? Maybe around 25 cents? If you send it to 100 people, that's $25. What do you think your open rates on these pitches will be? Probably pretty big—you might connect with about 25 out of 100 people, so roughly a dollar per connection or meeting. I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea; that's what I'm trying to say. I'm looking forward to hearing more about it. Please post in the right channel; don't sweat it.
I recommend using Apify to scrape leads, which provides Apollo scrape databases for about $150 to $2 per thousand leads. These lists have a high bounce rate, so run them through a verification tool like NeverBounce, Million Verifier, or Mail.so. After verification, you'll have around 1,000 emails costing $2 to $3. For sending, my go-to stack is Zap Mail at about $3 per mailbox per month. To send 1,000 emails a month, you need roughly two mailboxes, costing $5 to $10 monthly. Add a domain at $10 per year (~$1/month). So far, you're at about $10. Then you need a sending plan: Zap Mail's $37 or $39 per month plan brings the total to roughly $50 per month. If you want to scale beyond 1,000 emails a month, remember that cheap cold email only makes sense if you're sending sufficient volume; otherwise, reconsider the effort.
I’ve been in the same spot. I started by rotating a handful of Gmail accounts—sometimes five—sending about ten cold emails a day from each. It’s not ideal, but it works to get started as long as your emails are well‑researched and the approach is solid. Gmail accounts have lower deliverability, especially new ones, so they need to warm up. You can also buy cheap inboxes (e.g., three Instantly airmail inboxes for around $4 each per month plus a domain) which gives you roughly 90 emails a day. Build a quick lead list, template your messages, and spend the first hour‑and‑a‑half each day sending them. You can also DM prospects. The key is to keep sending, refine your copy, and don’t worry too much about the tools at the start.
I praised the stack and said the key is to treat outreach as a lever. Early months will have a low input‑to‑output ratio, but as you refine your process you’ll see massive leverage gains. I advised starting with Upwork to build credibility and earnings, then add cold‑email outreach in parallel. Don’t abandon the core lever (Upwork) while you experiment with outbound. Focus on improving average revenue per user—if you can tie your emails to an upsell or higher‑value service, you can justify higher pricing. Start with a modest package to get the first client, then increase rates as you accumulate case studies and results.
Don't focus on the output goal (number of clients) — focus on the input goal, since there's no way to reliably predict output that precisely; you just have to start. You can apply everything I teach about cold email to cold DMs and get the same effect for zero cost — it's less effective and rate-limited, but free. Apply the same optimization concepts one-to-one: subject line, profile picture, teaser copy for email map onto a LinkedIn connection request's profile picture, name, and the first visible words of your message above the fold — all analogous levers you can optimize. Beyond that, also look at communities, and if you can afford it, Upwork Connects are the simplest and easiest way to land a client, because Upwork skips the first two steps of the sales process (convincing someone they have a problem, and convincing them of your solution) — you only have to convince them you're the right person to execute it, which is a lot less work for a beginner than cold DMs where you carry the whole sales process yourself.