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Rent Digital Assets: What Does That Even Mean?

Girl Holding Drone

Usually it means creating valuable properties on the internet and then renting them out to a business owner. For example, I might pick a niche like drone photography. Then a medium-sized city. Maybe Boise, Idaho. Then I’d snag a keyword rich domain such as BoiseDrones.com. And on that domain, I’d set up an itty-bitty site optimized for phrases like “drone photography Boise” and “aerial photographer Boise.” Are you still with me? Good. Scroll down, read on.

NEXT: How To Actually Do This Yourself

So yeah, this website, if you can even call it that, would be like a Home page, an About page, and a Contact page. That’s about it—at least, for now. I’d literally just put a headline, some pics like the ones you see here, a few paragraphs, and some bullet points. If it’s not obvious, my goal here is to generate leads for this particular niche, in this particular city. So when someone goes to Google and searches for a drone photographer (and they’re located in Boise), boom, they run into my digital asset.

I’ll then add what’s called a tracking number with a Boise area code. Eventually, when someone calls this number, I can forward it to an actual drone photography business in that area. Is this starting to make sense? Awesome, I knew you were smart. And don’t worry, this website is drag and drop. I can knock one of these out in a single morning, assuming my coffee does its job that day. When it’s good enough, I’ll hit publish, and now it’s live on the internet. Time to get ‘er ranked in Google, right?

This is done with citations and backlinks, which you can do manually or outsource for a few bucks. I prefer the latter ’cause I’m lazy like that. By the way, my mentor has tracking numbers, tech support, and all kinds of done-for-you options for each step of this process. Anyways, because we’re freaking snipers, and really good at this, and because we’re only “competing” against other drone photography websites in Boise—and none of ’em know what they’re doing—it’s easier than you might think to rank on page one.

Renting Local Sites

Still, you’re looking at a few days to a few weeks. In the meantime, I’d call, email, or DM all the drone photographers in the Boise area. Ask ’em if they’d like more business. Knowing they’d be skeptical, I’d just offer ’em a free sample to begin with. “Let me send you some leads for a few days; if you close any and you want more, hit me back and I’ll tell you about my paid service.” Whoever takes me up on it, I’d set my tracking number to forward to them. What if no calls are coming in yet though?

In the background, I’d also be listing my new digital asset on Google Maps. (Yes, it can be done without having a physical business address.) This can get ya a buncha calls in a hurry. If not, while you’re waiting for your site to pop to page one, you can always consider running a Google ad—which you can find coupons for, so it hardly costs you anything. Then, when you’re glued to the top of that coveted first page in Google, you shut off the ad and let your little lead gen site take it from there.

Say your trial client books a wedding and a big real estate project, adds $6k to the books—all thanks to you. They call you back. “Dude, this is amazing! Can you send more?” You reply, “Yeah, sure, no problem. It’s $1,500 a month.” (Or $25 a call or however you wanna do it.) But now you have a “tenant” for this “virtual property.” And they’re happy to pay you “rent” each month because they’re making that back several times over. So now you go and find five more cities and repeat the process, right?

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Katie Smith: Slip into your give-up pants, crack open a White Claw, and plop yourself down on the couch. We need to talk about the absolute dumpster fire that is the online course and coaching industry.